Mushroom, mushroom

Last week Zealan­dia pub­lished a glo­ri­ous lit­tle pho­to-essay An Enchant­ment of Fun­gi, alert­ing us to the fact that after a long dry sum­mer, the recent rains have brought forth a rich crop of fun­gal fruit­ing bod­ies.

I went for a walk there last Fri­day and found plen­ty of vari­ety amid the damp for­est, espe­cial­ly on the Val­ley View and Swamp tracks. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of Sticky Bun boletes and the angry red caps of Aman­i­tas make them hard to miss, but some of the more fas­ci­nat­ing species are minus­cule and del­i­cate, requir­ing a keen eye to detect them among the drip­ping moss­es and ferns.

If you’d rather not spend $18.50 to look at some mush­rooms, there are plen­ty of oth­er places to look. Mycol­o­gist Geoff Rid­ley (who assist­ed Zealan­di­a’s Hay­ley May with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion advice for her pho­to-essay) has a blog rich with field notes from Otari-Wilton’s bush, the Botan­ic Gar­dens, Bolton St ceme­tery and else­where. Hay­ley also linked to a use­ful iden­ti­fi­ca­tion guide on T.E.R.R.A.I.N., though myco­log­i­cal tax­on­o­my is noto­ri­ous­ly tricky, so I would­n’t rely on that for culi­nary or (ahem) oth­er recre­ation­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pur­pos­es.