The Great Aussie Fungi Hunt
- Katherine Wilson
- Jul 4
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 7
July is a majestic season for fungi.
The forest is alive with all sorts of mushies. Squishy little jellies, polka-dot toadstools and exploding puffballs. There's the delicious and the deadly, medicinal and magic. Nature is just amazing.
The diversity of mushrooms is not well recorded in Australia. We don't have many mycologists, and there's not much funding for research. But the good news is that regular folks like us can have a go at being citizen scientists and help record mushroom sightings.
In July especially, everyone is encouraged to record their mushroom finds on iNaturalist. It's a free app where you upload photos of plants, fungi and animals, and some nature nerds will help identify what you've found. Every observation helps scientists build a better picture of what species exist and where they occur.
It's also a helpful app to see what other people are finding. I like to use it to get an idea of where to go mushroom hunting, and I love seeing what people have spotted in the streets near my house!
To encourage extra iNat observations of mushies, Fungimap is hosting a special event called The Great Aussie Fungi Hunt, and are offering some fun prizes for those who upload.
So give it a go! All you need to do is head outside, wander through the bush or your local park, and snap a few photos of any mushrooms you find. Upload them to iNat, and you've just become part of one of Australia's biggest citizen science projects.
Generally you'll need to take a few photos of each mushroom to help identify it. Not all mushrooms can be identified by a single pic. Upload some shots of:
• The cap
• The stem (if it has one)
• The underside (gills or pores)
• The surrounding habitat, including nearby trees
A photo of the top of a mushroom cap isn't enough, so you'll need to get down and dirty on your knees. Sometimes that's actually half the fun!
The photos need to be clear and in focus. Even the best and brightest myco-nerds can't tell what you've got from a blurry pic.
One extra tip: don't just accept the AI suggestion for the species name unless you're 100% confident it's correct. AI is rubbish at identifying mushrooms. For most gilled mushrooms, you can identify it as the order Agaricales. Or even leaving it at Fungi is perfectly acceptable. Let the mushroom nerds work their magic, they'll come along later and help identify it.
One tiny blue mushroom hidden in the depths of the forest could be something common or something extra special! You might even get lucky and stumble across a species that hasn't been recorded before. It really happens more often than you think, because mushrooms are so poorly recorded in Australia.
Why not head out with your friends for a mushroom hunting adventure this weekend? Explore the forest hotspots in Neerim, Mount Macedon, Kinglake, Daylesford, Emerald, Cockatoo or Sherbrooke. Or record whatever you find locally, even if it's just something on the nature strip or in your backyard!
Happy hunting, and may the forest surprise you. Check out the video below for some extra info about the project.
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