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Foraging for fungi turns up rare treat
Forty-five fungal enthusiasts, both amateur and professional, from around the world gathered in Otago recently for the 22nd annual New Zealand Fungal Foray. The week-long event included collecting fungi in beech forest, mixed broadleaf/podocarp forest, manuka/kanuka stands and montane grassland. However, it was the discovery of a very rare European mushroom on an Otago beach that has excited mycologists the most. The fungus, Hohenbuehelia culmicola, also called the marram oyster, is so rare it’s listed on European ‘red data lists’ of organisms under threat of extinction.
The mushroom is unusual in that part of its diet comes from digesting the remains of small nematode worms that become trapped on sticky glue-like blobs on the gills on the mushroom’s underside.
The rare mushroom was found nestled in the dunes on a beach near Dunedin clinging to marram grass. The grass was introduced into New Zealand from Europe over 100 years ago to stabilise sandy areas. The excited scientists are baffled about how the mushroom has arrived in New Zealand.
Landcare Research scientist Dr Jerry Cooper says it was a remarkable find.
“What kind of luck do you need to bring over a population of marram grass that happens to have associated with it such a rare fungus in Europe?” he asks.
And, on closer inspection Dr Cooper discovered other unknown and equally intriguing fungi were also nestled nearby. “So here in Otago we’ve got this sand-dune fungus community with some really bizarre things in it, including red data species, and probably other new species that have never been described anywhere in the world.”
Landcare Research scientist and member of the fungal foray organising council, Dr Peter Buchanan, says one in eight of New Zealand’s most threatened organisms are fungi. This event was an opportunity to increase public understanding and appreciation of these often overlooked ecologically important organisms.
