Fungi
Other fungi on wood
Other non-black fungi

Other non-black fungi

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As the heading suggests, this subgroup holds a mixed-bag of on-wood leftovers. A few examples of what you find in this subgroup are:

 

Some polypores. Mostly these would be the flat or sheet-like polypores (technically resupinate polypores), commonly found on the lower surfaces of dead or live wood. There are also a few species that produce pendant fruitbodies (and most likely to be seen in the Canberra Nature Map area are the rusty-brown Coltriciella fruitbodies on the underside of rotting wood).

 

Corticioid fungi. Mostly these occur on the underside of dead wood lying on the ground, though a few are found on live wood. Mostly the fruitbody is fairly thin (often like a coat of paint or a skin on the wood) and many have featureless surfaces, so it is understandable to see them sometimes called paint fungi. However, the surface may be rough (e.g. warted, toothed, densely wrinkled), though the roughness is usually under a millimetre in depth. Furthermore, fruitbodies range from a thin and almost invisible wash to densely cobwebby to leathery in texture.

 

Septobasidium. The fruitbodies in this genus are brown, velvety patches that appear on branches of live plants. Though the fruitbodies appear on wood, the fungi parasitize scale insects and under a velvety Septobasidium patch you will find scale insects.  

 

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Other non-black fungi

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Discussion

Heinol wrote:
7 Nov 2025
@Hejor1 sometimes the sexual and asexual states of a given fungus appear at the same time but it is also common to see just one state alone. The different states may need different triggers to start their development.
zzz puzzles on wood
Hejor1 wrote:
6 Nov 2025
@Heinol this is fascinating, thank you! I see these (or something similar) on exposed, weathered but hard wood just as you say. They aren't exclusive to the shaded side of the wood either - they're all over. I don't have any pictures of black lips and I can't recall seeing them. They were probably present but I didn't notice/realise I was looking at fungi so didn't photograph them. I will certainly be in the lookout from now on!!
zzz puzzles on wood
Heinol wrote:
6 Nov 2025
Yesterday afternoon I collected what may be the same fungus as yours – numerous tiny, firm brown lumps with powdery spores that are easily picked by a finger rubbed over a lump. They were on some exposed, well-weathered but still-hard wood in my yard. This morning an identification key to asexual forms quickly brought me to the genus Coniosporium. Also on my wood, intermingled with the brown lumps, were a number of fruitbodies of possibly the species Oedohysterium insidens – the fruitbody of which looks like a pair of tiny black lips, about a millimetre or so long. You can see the black lips of another Oedoysterium species here: https://canberra.naturemapr.org/sightings/3379086. The black lips of Oedoysterium insidens produce sexual spores and the same species produces asexual spores in a powdery brown lump that has been assigned to the genus Coniosporium. It is a basic principle of biological naming that a given species should have only one name – so how can a fungus have one species name in the genus Oedohysterium and another species name in the genus Coniosporium? Black lips and powdery brown lumps are visually quite different, with nothing to suggest a connection between the two. In the 1800s fungi were named on the basis of visual features and, especially in the later 1800s, with the help of a microscope. An 1800s mycologist who looked, macroscopically and microscopically, at the black lips and the brown lump would see that they were dramatically different down to the microscopic level and would naturally assign them to different genera. Just because brown lumps and black lips grow together doesn’t prove that there is a connection. In the later 1800s people did begin to establish sexual-asexual connections by growing fungi in culture in labs and showing that, say, a sexual spore could germinate and the growing fungus could produce an asexual form. Nowadays such connections are also produced by molecular analyses. Getting back to Oedoysterium insidens and brown lumps, whereas in the old days such a lump would have been identified as a species of Coniosporium what people would say today is that the brown lump is the Coniosporium state of Oedohysterium insidens.

Your photos are a little blurry and I cannot tell whether any black lips are present or not. There are several other genera of such ‘black lips’ fungi, macroscopically similar and where identification depends on features of the sexual spores. Some years ago I collected a specimen of a different genus but one where similar ‘Coniopsorium’ lumps were present with the black lips. So, though I suspect that your fungus is a ‘Coniosporium’, I cannot say which black lips genus it might be associated with.
zzz puzzles on wood
Heinol wrote:
5 Nov 2025
This is very likely the asexual sporing state of some fungus. I had thought that I had worked on a specimen of this that I'd collected in my yard - but can't immediately lay my hands on it - so perhaps that's a faulty memory. My recollection is also that I didn't work out the genus. At times I will successfully work through an identification key but I am largely ignorant of these asexual states - though many are quite interesting under the microscope.
zzz puzzles on wood
Heinol wrote:
17 Oct 2025
The identification is based on a microscopic study of the specimen.
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