Cyathus sp.

A Bird's Nest Fungus at Ainslie, ACT

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Identification history

Cyathus sp.	22 Mar 2016	MichaelBedingfield
Cyathus sp.	18 Mar 2016	KenT
Unidentified	14 Mar 2016	ShaneBreynard

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5 comments

NathanaelC wrote:

15 Mar 2016

Has that area been burnt? Looks blackened. Whatever those things are (and I can't even begin to guess) does it appear they've been opened or exposed by fire or mechanically?

CathB wrote:

19 Mar 2016

Looks like a bird's nest fungus, a species of Nidula.

KenT wrote:

19 Mar 2016

I think CathB is right about about it being one of the bird's nest fungi. The last worldwide monograph on this group seems to be by Brodie (1975), (The Bird's Nest Fungi. Toronto: University of Toronto Press) with a supplement published elsewhere in 1984. More species have been described since then. With the absence of striations and the presence and type of hairs It looks like Cyathus stercoreus, a species with worldwide distribution but I've not seen enough of these to make any more then a guess as to species.

Heino wrote:

22 Mar 2016

This is a species of Cyathus, quite likely stercoreus as KenT says. They haven't been burnt and the initial covering membrane disappears naturally to expose the 'eggs'. Each egg contains numerous spores (and other tissue), within a hard coat. Here (http://www.cpbr.gov.au/fungi/birds-nest-cannonball.html) you can read about the splash dispersal of those eggs. Here (http://www.cpbr.gov.au/fungi/images-captions/cyathus-peridioles-0252.html) you see three eggs in which I have carefully teased out the cords that are initially compressed into the hollow you see in the photo. Bird's nest fungi are frequent enough in Canberra (especially C. stercoreus), but easily overlooked because of their small size, more so if only a few have appeared, but you can get quite large colonies, densely packed.

MichaelBedingfield wrote:

23 Mar 2016

Hi Shane, and thank you for this contribution. It is our first sighting of this genus on CNM.

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