Roldana Petasitis - Velvet Groundsel - 2/8/14

This plant is growing in the bush against the side of the house and started flowering week or so before I took the photos. The starbursts of tiny yellow flowers are pretty stunning in the bush but I also really like the shape of the leaves. Up close the plant seems a bit straggly and messy although maybe it’s just the ones at our place - the parts seem more interesting than the whole. When you’re standing back and just see the flowers in amongst the bush they look great.

It’s a member of the daisy family, so the flowers are shaped like daisies. I managed to identify it with the help of the amazing Weeds Key on the Landcare Research website - you get a list of identifying features of the plant and tick as many as possible after which it gives you various possible options for what sort of plant it is. Fortunately there are photos of most of them to help.

Roldana Petasitis is considered a weed in New Zealand, mostly because it pushes out native plants. It comes from Mexico and Central America (although the Auckland Council website says South Africa), where it grows in tropical mountainous areas. How it came to New Zealand I don’t know

Originally called Senecio petasitis, it was renamed by Dr. Pablo de La Llave (1773 – 1833), a Mexican priest and naturalist. He gave the plant the name Roldana to honor Eugenio Montaña y Roldan Otumbensi, who died in 1825 and was thought to be a hero in a battle on the plains of Apam near Mexico City. 

At our place there is just one patch of the plants but I’ve seen a few others around, including one section that has several bushes at the front of the property that look quite stunning in flower. In fact a couple of the photos are of that plant, although the flowers had lost most of their pollen by the time I went there.

http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/resources/identification/plants/weeds-key

http://www.smgrowers.com/products/plants/plantdisplay.asp?plant_id=2580

http://longwoodgardens.org/roldana-petasites

Auricularia Cornea 17/7/14

One of the most fascinating aspects of mushrooms is the juxtaposition between growth and decay. Fungi, like animals, need to absorb energy from the surrounding environment, but in doing this they aid the breakdown of wood which can then be broken down further to create soil… and so it goes on. (humming “the circle of life”…).

There's a great book I've been reading called Mycellium Running by Paul Stamets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium_Running) that talks about how important fungi are in the ecosystem and how much the fungal networks support and sustain trees and plants. It seems the complex role of fungi has only begun to be appreciated in the last generation and there is lots to be learnt about how they can be used to restore degraded environments and be used as part of sustainable practices in farming, forestry and general land management.

Aside from that it’s been fascinating trying to muddle through researching the mushrooms that I’ve found. From photos on New Zealand websites I’ve identified these as Auricularea Cornea (Woodear mushrooms), although they also looks like Auricularia polytricha, and are similar to Auricularea auricula-judae (Jews ear fungus). I’m actually not sure if these are all slightly different species, or just different names for the same mushrooms. But it seems like they’re pretty common and found in many parts of the world. They’re also edible, although I didn’t find that out for a while and now they aren’t looking so tasty!

The most interesting thing I’ve found about these fungi is that because they are edible and also used in Chinese medicine they were a major export from Taranaki in the 1870s. Chinese immigrant Chew Chong (Chau Tseung?) settled in New Plymouth after he discovered how prolific the fungi were there and set up an export business which made his fortune and resulted in Taranaki becoming known as the ‘fungus province’. Woodear mushrooms continued to be exported until the 1960s when the Taiwanese worked out how to cultivate them on sawdust.

A more detailed account of the story can be found here: http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/fungi-te-henui/jews-ear-fungi.html

Ok, stay tuned for the next installment which is not a mushroom!

Favolashia calocera — Orange pore fungus 14/7/14

These guys are pretty easy to spot because they’re so bright and there isn’t much else in the bush that orange. I found them down the back of the section growing on some fallen beech tree. I took some photos there in the bush but then brought one of the branches out into the light to try and get some better photos - is this cheating? Anyway, what surprised me is how different the colour was, much redder under the canopy and  more of a yellow-orange where there is more light.

Ok, apart from being very cute the most interesting thing I found about orange pore fungi is that they were first observed in Madagascar. It’s not known for sure if they originated there or came from somewhere else in Asia, but now they’ve spread through a number countries including Australia and Aotearoa. The worrying part is that, like other introduced species, it’s possible that they’re displacing native fungi.

Which just opens up a bunch of other questions, such as how did the orange pore fungus get to Aotearoa? Have any fungi been introduced on purpose e.g. by the Acclimatisation Societies (which I’m sure I’ll get to in due course). Maybe the field mushrooms that we buy in the supermarket? And which fungi are native to Aotearoa? Are any of them endangered or being displaced by introduced fungi?

So plenty more to learn about fungi, as well as all the other plants around the section.

Gymnopilus Junonius Mushrooms - 11/7/14

I found these mushrooms the day after a huge storm, the third really big storm this year with some of the highest winds on record. Clumped around a stump by the parking bay at the top of the section, they’d been there for a few days when I saw them but most were still in good condition despite the massive winds and rain. Lola said she’d seen them at the start of the week, but they would have been much smaller then. By the time I saw them they were packed densely together like a miniature alpine village spreading up the side of the stump.

I took the photos quite quickly, this was less than a week after I’d had my appendix out so I didn’t feel like getting down on the ground or spending too long trying to get the right shot. I wished I’d gotten up earlier with the light coming from a lower angle, but I was glad it was overcast so there weren’t any harsh shadows.

After spending time researching what species it was I’ve decided that mushrooms are my new favourite thing. I’m not totally sure I’ve identified these correctly, but the websites below are pretty straightforward with the identifying features they list, as long as there is a picture that matches. The really interesting stuff is how mushrooms grow and work in the ecosystem to break down organic matter, in this case the tree stump that the mushrooms are growing on. The actual fungus, or mycelium is a network of filament-like hyphae that are growing into the stump, using enzymes to dissolve the wood which they consume. When two hyphae in the network connect they can form a knot from which a mushroom grows. So the mycelium in our stump must be made up of hundreds of hypha which are connecting to grow the mushrooms.

One of the things that I’m slightly confused about after the reading I’ve done is that it seems like the whole mycelium network is often referred to as though it’s a single organism, whereas it is composed of many individual hypha which (I think) are genetically distinct. That said, one the hyphae connect and send up mushrooms, the spores of which have the combined DNA, then they’re not so separate anymore. So I’m not sure if I’m reading things wrong, or just that fungi don’t work the same as animals and plants, which is why they have there own kingdom in the biological taxonomy.

Now that I’ve started learning about them I’ve started seeing more fungi around, so expect a few more posts about them!

Here are some good websites about mushrooms:

http://www.hiddenforest.co.nz

http://virtualmycota.landcareresearch.co.nz

http://www.allaboutmushrooms.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium

A kaka in a nikau tree - 18/4/14

A couple of days after cyclone Lusi had blown through this guy turned up in one of the nikau trees at the top of the section. Tui, B, Lola and Lupe saw him as they came to visit, so I grabbed my camera to take some photos. I’d just bought an old Tamron zoom lens which was the longest lens I had, although not particularly sharp when the aperture is opened wide which I needed to do, but the photos are ok. I ended up walking down the neighbours driveway to get a good angle to shoot from with the trees giving a good background. The kaka watched me a little but didn’t seem too concerned, much more interested in tearing into the nikau berries. He’d use his beak to help swing from flower to flower, then pick out a berry, transfer it to a claw to hold it while eating.

Apparently there is a small group of kaka who live at Onetangi now, but before that they were thought to stop over on the way from Little Barrier to the Waitakere Ranges. I’m not sure what he was doing at our place but maybe the storm had blown him off course and he was having a feed before continuing. I haven’t seen any other kaka since then, but I’ll keep my eyes open around the island and maybe see some more.