#1659 & 1660 - Gyroporus aff. cyanescens & Hypomyces chrysospermus - Variable Gyroporus & Bolete Eater
Another fungus from up at Dwellingup - in fact, two fungi. It’s a large bolete being parasitised by a ascomycete.
Gyroporus is a small genus of bolete, with brittle stems with hollow cavities in the mature stem, and yellow spores. The colour they change when cut is an important diagnostic feature when IDing them. In G. cyanescens, the flesh turns blue when cut, but in this one it turns a deep violet, so it’s almost certainly not the same species despite being nearly identical in other respects. The real G. canescens is found in Eurasia, the eastern US, and apparently here in Australia too, but it’s entirely likely that many of the latter are imposters.
This one was growing under a tree next to pasture, in shallow leaf litter, but it’s also found in sandy and grassy areas.
The Bolete Eater, on the other hand, is found in North America, eastern China, and Europe, where it is common, and here in southwest of Western Australia. A slightly odd distribution, and may indicate that it was introduced by people, but it’s far from the only species of fungus that widely scattered.
The fungus spreads out over the pores of the infected bolete, and eventually the rest of the mushroom, forming a continous white crust that turns yellow and then reddish brown as it matures.
Other fungi in the same genus target other kinds of mushroom - H. lactifluorum, the Lobster Mushroom, for example, attacks gilled mushrooms in the family Russulaceae. Fungi thus infected turn the orange-red of a cooked lobster, and actually do have a seafood-like flavour. Eating them is still potentially unwise, since the host fungus could easily be poisonous in its own right. Hypomyces chrysospermus, on the other hand, is flat-out inedible, and may be actively poisonous.
