Hemimycena sp.

In this group of mushrooms, the longest stem measures about 4 millimetres. The stems and caps are densely covered with short hairs (which I emphasize in Photo 2). I assume the hairs help trap and retain moisture in humid conditions. These mushrooms were growing on wood (some long-dead branch, around 30 x 5 cm) that was lying on the ground underneath a mass of shrubs in a suburban garden. That area is largely sheltered from breezes and, with the recent moisture, the micro-habitat below those shrubs would have been in fairly still and quite humid air. On first seeing these mushrooms I had thought the species would be Hemimycena tortuosa, which I had collected about 10 metres away in the early 2000s (in another humid micro-habitat). Macroscopically they were similar (including water droplets!) but the recent mushrooms lack the spirally twisted, knob-ended hairs of Hemimycena tortuosa. While I will keep these as a herbarium collection (Australian National Herbarium, Canberra, collection number HL6132) it is a very poor collection. For the moment I have put the wood back under the shrubs, in the hope that it will produce additional mushrooms.