Last week I did a post about the giant fungus growing on our front lawn. These monsters appear at this time every year and even though I love mushrooms I can’t really love these guys. They are big and boring and when they die they turn into a slimy puddle of ick.
Well, obviously today is the day it begins the transition from lawn fungus to slime puddle. I got home from work and it saw drooping sadly, by the time I got the kids from school it was a mound of brown horribleness. I expect tomorrow it will be more puddle than mound. Jennifer was interested in seeing it so I took a few photos, if the rest of you aren’t interested in fungusy death please look away now….. 🙂
If you look closely below (although I totally understand that you might not want to) you can see a couple of the many tiny little wigglers who have hatched out. I wonder if the hatching causes the fungus to die or if the dying causes the hatching?
Buried words and Bushwa. 
YUCK !!!!!
It certainly is! A good excuse for avoiding mowing though, imagine hitting that squidgy monster with some spinning blades! Bleh 🙂
It looks like something from the BBC props department for Dr Who……that is one ugly fungus – and that’s really saying something!! Over here in QLD we try to ‘spot the insect of the day’, we have quite a hoard now of sightings of unidentifiable bugs that we’ve only ever seen once, Australia can be a strange and fascinating place to live sometimes….even if you never got further than your own backyard!
We certainly have some interesting things here, don’t we! I love the sound of your ‘spot the insect’ game 🙂
Ewwww!!! Even with that warning, you know it’s difficult to not look! 😛
I only put the warning ‘cos it was the right thing to do, I knew most people wouldn’t be able to resist! I was looking at them and going “ewwww, look there’s some more… ewwww, look! more! ewww….” 🙂
Does this fungus smell? I mean before it liquifies? Just wondering if it deliberately attracts some insect for pollination or spore dispersal. Ugly as hell but rather fascinating.
It doesn’t have any discernable smell at any time, thank goodness for that, look at the size of it, imagine if its stink was comparable to its size! It would definitely get mowed as soon as it showed its face then!
I am not sure what attracts the critters to it, it is not unusual to see tiny grass flies on it but I haven’t seen anything else showing interest. The wigglers clearly show me something bigger than them is using it for reproduction but I am not sure what it is.
It is ugly but at the same time it is completely irresistible. As soon as the kids got out of the car after school they noticed it had changed and raced over to see what it was up to. All I could hear was “Ewwww, gross, cool!”
lol – I agree, you can’t mow down something with so much, um. personality? I’m glad it doesn’t smell. The only mushrooms we get are little nondescript ones. No personality whatsoever
We are lucky to have so many, even ickily cool ones like this.
We even have purple ones up the back although I think Jack has decimated most of the population this year.
We’re on a ridge and the land slopes so I’ve had to put in terraces to try and trap the water a little. Hopefully one day I too will have a few good fungus spots.
We have a very steep dry block without any topsoil, it is just clay dotted with a few gumtrees. The fungus come up everywhere and we have many tiny sundews in patches too. Once it warms up a little the tiny native orchids will be out too. It took us many years for the block to go from dry claypan to what it is now, the demise of the rabbits certainly helped too!
Isn’t it odd? We’re not that far the way the crow flies yet you have quite a different ecology to me.
If we dig deeply enough the topsoil is still there in places! I think our hill/area was so heavily logged that most of the good stuff washed away 😦
I don’t know enough about the history of Warrandyte to know whether it was heavily logged or not but the lack of real soil is a gardener’s nightmare. I’ve stopped the erosion caused by putting in the septic lines but it’s taken many shallow terraces to build up any kind of real soil.
Eewww.. thank for posting. It rather gross. Love what the said though.. it’s ewww, gross and cool all at once, jus the way kids love it 🙂
I’m looking out of the window right now and it is even grosser that before. Might have to get a few more pics to share 🙂 Gross…ewww…cool!
yes please!
Those Bad Fairies! What a party that must have been 🙂
😀 Can you imagine the landlord coming around for an inspection?
He’s just standing there on the grass shaking his head and putting a big red X on his clipboard. I hope he bought his gumboots…ick… 😉
I think the landlord must be a toad in league with the goblins. Gosh, what a funny thing to have on your front lawn! I’d be tempted to have a sample analysed 🙂
I love fungi. This is particularly revolting one though.
It certainly it although that is now part of its attraction! If it was small and gross we would quickly overlook it, being so large it is irresistibly horrible!