The lost world

When I worked as a mycologist at Forest Research, in Rotorua, a part of the campus, the Long Mile, was rented to a film crew. They were making a television version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World and were filming in the Red Wood Grove, in the town belt, behind Forest Research.

When it finally screened, it was exciting to watch explorers’ first encounter with dinosaurs in Rotorua’s grove of North American redwoods with their understory of native ferns. However, biological and geographic credibility flew out the window as the explorers ran out of the redwoods on to the shore of a South Island lake surround by kahikatea! Another illusion destroyed.

Rotorua’s red woods in the Lost World (2001)

I had also read that Doyle’s lost plateau in South America had features that corresponded to those in his home county of Sussex. Seeing the map of Zealandia sanctuary reminded me of that lost plateau.

The lost world of Zealandia

I was invited to help with Zealandia’s bioblitz school holiday programme at the end of April. I haven’t collected in Zealandia before and wasn’t expecting to find much this time because of the very dry weather we had been experiencing. However, with the help of the kids we found quite a few fungi.

The old Karori reservoir [photo Geoff Ridley]

The beginning of the hunt [photo Geoff Ridley]

Our first find was the wood-ear jelly [Auricularia cornea] on a dead branch. The fruit bodies are very shrivelled due to the dry conditions but will revive when they are made wet rain.

Auricularia cornea [photo Geoff Ridley]

This little parasol mushroom, about 5 cm across the cap, is somewhere around Leucoagaricus rubrotinctus.

Leucoargaricus rubrotinctus ? [photo Geoff Ridley]

Leucoargaricus rubrotinctus ? [photo Geoff Ridley]

Growing on a well-rotted standing trunk was a leather bracket of Cyclomyces tabacinus.

Cyclomyces tabacinus [photo Geoff Ridley]

These little mushroom, up to about 4 com across the cap, where pinkish brown and slimy, with white gills that did not reach the stem. I want to say a Limacella?

Limacella ? [photo Geoff Ridley]

Limacella ? [photo Geoff Ridley]

 A group of small mushrooms, .05 – 1 cm diameter, growing on a standing dead tree. They were fawn in colour with purplish gills.

? [photo Geoff Ridley]

Zealandia started life as land that had been cleared and burnt for farmland, then became Wellingtons water catchment areas with the building of Karori Reservoir. The catchment area was replanted in a mixture of trees including exotic Pinus radiata. A number of well-rotted pines now litter the floor of the regenerating bush. This plum woodknight [Tricholomopsis rutilans] was growing from a rotten pine stump. It is almost always found on rotting pine wood.

Tricholomopsis rutilans [photo Geoff Ridley]

This is a typical mushroom [Agaricus sp.] with its fibrous to scaly cap, prominent ring on the stem, and its dark brown gills.

Agaricus sp. [photo Geoff Ridley]

Agaricus sp. [photo Geoff Ridley]

Growing close to the Agaricus were clusters of black birdsnests [Cyathus novaezelandiae]

Crucibulum striatus [photo Geoff Ridley]

 These are fruit bodies of dead man’s fingers (Xylaria sp.] on a standing dead tree.

Xylaria sp. [photo Geoff Ridley]

 This little, about 1 cm diameter, yellow fruit body was in deep wood dust / frass inside a very rotten log. It is a parasol and possibly a Leucocoprinus sp.

Leucocoprinus sp. [photo Geoff Ridley]

 Growing in the litter were a group of Cloudy funnelcap [Clitocybe nebularis]. The large fruit bodies were about 6-7 cm in diameter.

Clitocybe nebularis [photo Geoff Ridley]

 Another parasol [Lepiota sp.]

Lepiota sp. [photo Geoff Ridley]

 An artist’s porebracket [Ganoderma applanatum]growing from the trunk of a living red beech [Nothofagus fusca]. Southern beech is not native to the Wellington peninsula and this tree would have been an experimental planting by the catchment board.

Ganoderma applanatum [photo Geoff Ridley]

 Note the pinkish brown spores all over the horizonatl surfaces both below and above the bracket.

Ganoderma applanatum [photo Geoff Ridley]

 A little-gilled conch with dark brown spores [Melanotus sp.]. There were lots of these growing from very wet rotten branches used to line the edge of an open drain.

Melanotus sp. [photo Geoff Ridley]

The forest and kids [photo Geoff Ridley]

Further reading

Darren Naish, 2015. Piltdown man came from The Lost World … Well, no, it didn’t. Scientific American blog.