Australian National Botanic Gardens

ANBG fungal course - 2006

Mushrooms, Stinkhorns, Cannonball Fungi and more...

by Heino Lepp

Visit Heino's Fungi website

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Is this course for you?

It is aimed at anyone who is curious about what fungi are and the roles they play.
If your only interest is eating fungi - this course is DEFINITELY NOT for you.

You don't need any previous fungal or botanical knowledge . I will carefully explain the few essential technical terms.

There will be one lecture per week for 9 weeks, as well as some time looking at fungi in the ANBG. We'll arrange those dates during the course.

There will be two streams of lectures:

Thursdays and Sundays The Sunday lecture will repeat the Thursday lecture.

The two streams are there simply to cater for different groups of people: some cannot come on weekdays, others cannot manage weekends.

Starting dates and times: Thursday May 4, at 2:30pm and Sunday May 7 at 11am

Where: the theatrette at the ANBG

Cost: a gold coin donation to the Friends of the ANBG.

Bookings :

To be made at through the ANBG Visitor Centre (02) 6250 9540.

Here's an outline of the sessions and topics

Session 1 - The basics

• What is a mushroom?
• Hyphae: the thread-like building blocks.
• The mycelium: the out-of-sight network of hyphae that produces mushrooms.
• What are macrofungi and microfungi? The course will deal mostly with macrofungi.
• Ascomycetes and basidiomycetes - two classes of macrofungi.

Session 2 - Spore release & dispersal

• Review of the fundamentals from Session 1.
• A look at how spores are released - the mechanisms vary from passive to explosive.

Session 3 & 4 - Reproduction, lifestyles and habitats

• Reproduction, survival strategies and life cycles.
• Fungal lifestyles - an introduction.
• Habitats and some biogeography - where and why do you find fungi?

Sessions 5 & 6: Some aspects of fungal ecology

• Fungal lifestyles - in detail. The essential ecological roles of fungi.
• How fungi interact with plants, animals and other fungi.

Session 7 - (i) Classification & identification; (ii) Australian fungi

• How do we go about classifying and identifying fungi?
• Finally - What is a fungus?......The full, scary definition.
• What's known about Australian fungi? Some useful books.

Session 8 - Some history, mostly 1500-1850

• The development of our understanding of the basics of fungi.

Session 9 - Fungi and humans

• A look at some of the economic, social and cultural impacts of fungi.