Now lonely fungus hitchhiking around the world

It's 11 years - almost to the day (27 April 2010) - since I first and last posted here on the Starfish Fungus. At that time I had to borrow pictures from the web. It was growing in my garden on the North Shore of metropolitan Sydney but apparently I didn't get a good picture of it.

This time I can illustrate with my own images, snapped in the Melbourne Gardens (of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria) in early January. Two fruiting bodies popped up next to the sinuous Kanooka (Tristaniopsis laurina) on 12 January but it's taken until now for me to shuffle them through my Talking Plants queue.

It smells like rotting meat which is why it attracts the insects you can see crawling across these fruiting bodies. The bulk of the fungus, it's extensive hyphal networks, are of course invisible beneath the soil.

There are plenty of evocative and appropriate common names based on what you see above the ground. In addition to Starfish Fungus, you'll find (Sea) Anemone Fungus and Stinkhorn (although this applies to a number of fungi with similar characteristics) in common use.

I saw this fungus in the UK when I was working there in 2011, but it was introduced there from Australia (apparently, in soil via the Netherlands in 1828 to a Kew Gardens glasshouse in 1829). It was, as I reported last time, the first fungus to be scientifically collected and described from Australia.

The collection was in 1792, at Recherche Bay in Tasmania, by a member of the D'Entrecasteaux expedition, Jacques Labillardière. Labillardière published the scientific name Aseroe rubra in 1800.

In south-eastern Australia, the Starfish Fungus grows naturally in grasslands and woodlands at higher altitudes, as well as some nutrient-rich soils in lowland areas. You'll also find it these days in gardens across the country, such as Melbourne Gardens, often carried in on eucalypt wood chips. This fungus is a saprobe, living off dead or decaying material. In this case, decomposing wood - hence hitching a ride on woodchips.

Aseroe sits within a family of fungi called the Phallaceae (previously Clathraceae), named because some are rather phallic. Not, I think you'll agree, this one (which is described as an egg when unopened). 

There are others with a similar non-phallic shape, such as the Seastar Stinkhorn, Anthurus archeri, and this one, the Claypot Stinkhorn, Colus pusillus, being dried for incorporation into our herbarium collection here at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria a few years ago.

There seems to be only one (or two) species of Aseroe accepted these days. Aseroe arcachnoidea is now in a new genus, Lysurus. Similarly, the recently described Aseroe floriformis has been moved to the newly established Abrachium. And I'm unsure of the status of a species described from Japan and then found in India called Aseroe coccinea. 

In any case, a fascinating fungus, first collected for science over 230 years ago and now an unassisted attraction in our botanic garden.