At the talk on the 8th September 2016 meeting of the Armadale Branch , Kevn Griffiths gave a talk on Fungi. Kevn began his talk by informing the group that his interest in fungi started when his daughter Donna, a gifted artist, was asked to do a book on fungi, but she had no time to do so and that he took on the project for her. He knew absolutely nothing about fungi at that time and he soon found himself on a steep learning curve.
Fungi in Australia are virtually unnamed, but Dr Neale Bougher, a Western Australian fungi expert, renamed and reclassified many fungi that had been previously documented here in WA.
There are many different fungi found in a woodland and their main role is composting. A mycorrhiza is a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and the roots of a vascular plant such as a tree. The fungi help the tree by clinging to the roots where they get sugar and the tree gets nutrients far from the base of the tree because of the way that fungi attach and spread from tree roots. Fungi also breakdown leaves to compost and small animals such as Woylies eat fungus and disperse the spores far from the parent fungi.
Read more and see images of fungi : Fungi by Kevn Griffiths