Sclerotium of Laccocephalum mylittae, dug up in March 2016. Photo: Danielle Calabro.

In late March 2016, Danielle Calabro, a Ranger at Flinders Chase National Park, Kangaroo Island, was digging up Bridal Creeper (Asparagus asparagoides) when she came across a dark brownish-black, monstrous lump approx. 0.5 m underground. Danielle dug it up and contacted Pam Catcheside, Hon. Research Associate at the State Herbarium of South Australia, who works on fungi, to ask if she knew what it was. Pam was able to tell her that it was a sclerotium, a tuber of one of the ‘fire fungi’, Laccocephalum mylittae. Danielle reburied the sclerotium and in late June she, Pam and others (David Catcheside, Flinders University, Helen Vonow, State Herbarium, and Teresa Lebel, National Herbarium of Victoria) who were over in Flinders Chase surveying fungi, went to dig up the fungus.

Sclerotium of Laccocephalum mylittae, held by Danielle Calabro and Pam Catcheside at excavation site, June 2016. Photo: David Catcheside.

Danielle had found the sclerotium in sandy soil under the branches of a fallen Eucalyptus cladocalyx in a disturbed, burnt area of the park. When exhumed, it was found to weigh 7.2 kg and measure 27 × 24 × 19 cm. The interior is white, marbled and solid. It was taken back to Adelaide and dried. Half will return to Flinders Chase, to be put on display at the Flinders Chase visitor centre. The remainder will be kept as an herbarium specimen (PSC 4459, AD-C60004).

Laccocephalum mylittae (Cooke & Massee) Núñez & Ryvarden, native bread, is one of the phoenicoid, the fire fungi, that fruit only after fire. In the case of L. mylittae the mushroom-like fruit body may emerge within a few days after fire.

Native bread is a member of the basidiomycete family, Polyporaceae. The whole fruit body is white to cream, often soil-stained. It consists of a cap which may reach 200 mm diameter, is irregular, flat to dome-shaped, smooth, soft but tough. It has pores, not gills, which are small and rather irregular. The stem is central to slightly off-centre, varies in length and diameter and is tough and solid. It leads down to a sclerotium, an underground tuber which has a dark brown to black skin and a white, marbled interior. Texture is rubbery initially but becomes hard and rather tough. The sclerotia may weigh up to 20 kg.

Site of sclerotium of Laccocephalum mylittae, March 2016. Photo: Danielle Calabro.

Laccocephalum mylittae is a saprotroph, breaking down woody substrates. It is a brown rot fungus, so called because it rots the wood, resulting in a brittle brown cubical mass.

Sclerotium of Laccocephalum mylittae, July 2016. Photo: Bob Baldock.

Fire stimulates the sclerotium to send up a fruit body. This produces spores which, if they land on a damp log, will germinate and form a mycelium, a mat of fine tubes called hyphae. The mycelium proliferates through the log and into the wood, sending the break-down products into the developing sclerotium, rather like the formation of a potato tuber. This sclerotium remains dormant under the soil, sometimes to depths of 0.5 m, until the next fire.

Laccocephalum mylittae produces a true sclerotium, one that is composed of only hyphal matter. Others of the so-called stone fungi, such as L. basilapiloides and L. tumulosum, produce a false sclerotium, one that is mixed with soil and grit.

References

1. Kalotas, A.C. (1996). Aboriginal knowledge and use of fungi. In Orchard, A.E. (Exec. Ed.), Mallett, K. & Grgurinovic C. (Vol. Eds.). Fungi of Australia, Vol. 1B: Introduction-Fungi in the Environment. (Australian Biological Resources Study, Canberra). (Pp. 284-286, as Polyporus mylittae).
2. Robinson, R. (2007). Laccocephalum mylittae – Native Bread. Fungus Factsheet 18 / 2007. (Dept of Environment & Conservation, WA) (500KB pdf).

See also fungi references listed in July’s Plant of the Month blog post.

Contributed by Hon. Research Associate Pam Catcheside.

Bands or zones of growth 10-20 cm wide on concrete walls of the West Beach marina, exposed at low tide and between waves. Upper green band of a wiry green alga (Chaetomorpha linum); lower band of red mat algae (L. monochlamydea and Gigartina brachiata). Photo: B. Baldock.

A diminutive turf-like red alga, Lomentaria monochlamydea (J.Agardh) Kylin, has been found growing as a band of turf on the concrete wall of the West Beach boat marina, Adelaide. This species has been known previously from asexual spore plants, but female and male plants have now been found for the first time in South Australia by State Herbarium Hon. Research Associate Bob Baldock and phycology staff member Carolyn Ricci. Why the excitement? — Well, descriptions of red algal species are never complete until the three separate plants – female, male and spore plants – have been found.

This alga has flattened, yet surprisingly, hollow branches and a growth pattern described by Allan Millar when he found it at Coffs Harbour in NSW as saltatory or “skipping” — an arched horizontal runner puts up vertical branches, pinched at the base, touches the rock or jetty pile surface, then continues on in “leaps and bounds” forming bright red, tangled mats.

Intertwined plants of L. monochlamydea (left) and the cohabiting red mat plant, Gigartina brachiate (right). The coin used as a scale is 23 mm across (or about 1” in diameter). Photos: B. Baldock.

For a while plants found at the West Beach marina were so intermingled with another intertidal red alga, Gigartina brachiata (tangled Gigartina), that we failed to spot that we were looking at two entities. Can you see the differences in the two images above? One is a littler darker in colour with more pointed branch tips?

Once back in the lab and sectioned under the microscope, features of the anatomy made identification easy. (This protracted procedure is often necessary and explains why getting an identification of an alga takes time — and experience.)

Silhouette view of a cluster of flask-shaped female structures at the base of a branch (left) and section view (right) with central mass of spores that grow into a separate asexual plant when released, continuing the life cycle of L. monochlamydea. Photo: B. Baldock.

Female structures after fertilisation produce bodies (actually separate stages vaguely like wombs and embryos in mammals) that look like miniature flasks. No “babies” are produced, however, just spores that germinate into sexless (asexual) plants when released through the opening in the duck-bill-like flask beak.

Male structures are pretty obscure — merely extremely small cells that ring each cortical or “skin” cell in patches on branch surfaces (see image below).

We have yet to locate a critical stage in female reproduction where a microscopic fertile cell (carpogonium) with a long terminal hair (trichogyne) snares a sperm cell floating past and fertilisation is accomplished, inducing the flask (cystocarpic) stage to develop.

Surface of a male plant. Extremely small spermatia form as rings around the larger surface cells. Photo: B. Baldock.

Lomentaria monochlamydea has not often been collected, so it is difficult to make a pronouncement about its distribution. It was first collected in Pt Phillip Bay, Victoria, is found along the NSW coast and there are a few female specimens in the Western Australia Herbarium (although these are attached to another red alga and may be a different species). Previously, in South Australia, it has been collected at the Pt Stanvac jetty and at Robe in shallow water.

Perhaps it has been overlooked or mistaken for Gigartina brachiata, as we initially did at the State Herbarium — which suggests there is a lot more searching and collecting still to come before closing the books on Lomentaria monochlamydea.