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Uploaded on behalf of the collector, Kym Brennan

Small, fragile, 10cm tall. In leaf mould in heavy shade, lowland spring-fed monsoon forest, on drier part towards margin.

This is a normal gilled mushroom that has a very thin cap flesh, which splits radially (between the gills). Further drying lifts and twists the gill-segments into the flower shape in the image. The type specimen from Vanauatu had the same form on all fruitbodies, but the author was unsure whether this was an oddity, or the normal condition. The find of this Australian specimen shows that it is the norm, but it would be great to find young fruitbodies to understand exactly of the final form develops – at what point in development does it depart from a mushroom shape?

The species is Hausknechtia floriformis, a monotypic genus only described in 2020, with a single species described (by Anton Hausknecht) in 2003, previously only known from Vanuatu. I have been on the lookout for it, great to know it occurs in Australia too.

A link to the genus description: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11557-020-01606-3

A link to the original species description: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjwh767wJD0AhWQXisKHV56AnkQFnoECAgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zobodat.at%2Fpdf%2FOestZPilz_12_0031-0040.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2rG4jlSDVwwBUmwAkpRYGM

Only two plants seen.

Measurements from a small sample, tchester#1284:

st ~10-12 ridged, shiny, sticky, gland-dotted.

lvs mostly not evident on plant. one stem had lvs up to 12 x 3 mm, narrowly elliptic, with a few minute glands or teeth along the margin and tip, gland-dotted.

infl terminal clusters of ~10-20 flowers

invol 2.0-2.5 mm, phyllaries in 4 graduated series, edges membranous.
ovary vestigial, corolla 1.8 mm, pappus of many minutely-barbed bristles 2.5 mm.

After I keyed it out to B. sergiloides, I looked for chaff scales in the receptacle to confirm the id, and found a few still present.

Differences from B. brachyphylla:

It didn't look like the B. brachyphylla at the mouth of this upper canyon branch, which had heads in very open panicles. This has heads in dense panicles. The staminate invols for B.b. are 3.8-5.2 mm, much bigger than the 2.2-4 mm of B.s., which fits my sample's 2.0-2.5 mm. B.b. also has no chaff.

See also this obs of a B. brachy from a bit farther down the canyon, from the same day:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146319241

At the time of my collection, there were no vouchers online from this area.