Can a fungus be rude?

Here’s a bit of late Summer wildlife from the veggie garden. Demonstrating our innate need to make sense of what we see, mycologists have named this genus of fungi Phallus. It’s doing well on the decomposing grass in my plot down on the Mid-levels, and sends up a fruiting body every week or so. This morning I saw what appeared to be two squid rings sitting on the grass (outside the veggie patch fence), and then realised that they were Phallus fruiting bodies that had been neatly eaten off. I’d…

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Biological control?

It’s nice to see that caterpillars sometimes eat the weeds too. This mallow burr is a major weed here, and comes up on any disturbed ground. It gets up to 2 m high and has burrs that stick firmly to any fabric. Fortunately it’s relatively easy to pull, when young, but I was delighted to see some caterpillars helping me with the job. This caterpillar is in my old school colours, too! Green, black and gold, and even the red head fits with the later addition of the red house. Biological control…

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Sandpaper fig

This attractive tree is growing on our driveway, decorated with its red fruit. There are a few sandpaper figs locally, but this is the rainforest (upland) species Ficus fraseri. The creek sandpaper fig, Ficus coronata, has edible fruit, but these ones just taste recognisably figgy – thats as far as I’d go for palatability, although the fruit bats love them and land for a feed every evening. By the way, the name is for real. The leaves are very finely rough and can be used for sanding wood. I think…

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Red Aztec maize

Red Aztec maize is worth growing just for the wow factor. The deep red cobs look great, and I couldn’t resist them from the seed catalogue. I had everything to learn about growing maize, and it’s been an interesting crop, but the first lot of cobs are mature now. From the main picture you can see that they’re not the big, full cobs one might hope for, but with this lot I would at least recover my seed.

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