Australia! Amanita and Forest Fires

[Imme]

Can you assies help me with this? I am seeing fruitings in areas where there were forest fires where formerly Amanita did not grow. Since you guys really got hit hard this early 2020 with fires, can any of you possibly go out to these areas and see what's up? Can you share this idea on social media and ask others to, who can? Can you report back here for us? Thanks in advance...

[mmmskyscraper]

Hi @amanitadreamer

I’m in Aus, but not near where the fires where... that said I might me going up to stay for a short holiday near where some were in a few weeks so I will take a look. I won’t be able to compare the amanita distribution now to before though, but I will be able to tell you whether they are fruiting now though if that’s any use?

[Eddie]

Hi there @amanitadreamer ,
I can try and scope out some sites in a couple of weeks near to where I forage that were burned recently to get an idea. Many of these fires were very high intensity and I know have killed outright some areas of forest. Also, there was significant rainfall shortly after fire went through some places which caused a lot of topsoil erosion. In light of this I am not hopeful of finding much in the burned out forests. What I can tell you is our mushroom season is on!
Thoughts on finding newly fruiting areas that were burned:
-The intensity of the fire would come into play i.e. lower intensity fires that don't kill trees or cause the humus layer of soil to combust would be more likely to show fruiting post-fire.
-Maybe following low intensity fires, there is some degree of disturbance to the humus layer underneath the char that stimulates mycorrhizae, and favours some fungal colonies over others?

[Donn]

-Maybe following low intensity fires, there is some degree of disturbance to the humus layer underneath the char that stimulates mycorrhizae, and favours some fungal colonies over others?

In my area the morel is well known for this behavior, fruits in great quantity after fires in the predominately conifer forests. My guess is that they are mycorrhizal symbionts, and this happens when they out-survive their tree partners. In that situation, they are looking forward to a significant, lengthy decline while the forest trees recover, so it makes a lot of sense to put their now excess resources into spores. But ... around here, only morels are known for this behavior, while there are plenty of other presumably mycorrhizal fungi, so it may not make too much sense to use them as a model for the explanation.

[Eddie]

Can you assies help me with this? I am seeing fruitings in areas where there were forest fires where formerly Amanita did not grow. Since you guys really got hit hard this early 2020 with fires, can any of you possibly go out to these areas and see what's up? Can you share this idea on social media and ask others to, who can? Can you report back here for us? Thanks in advance...

I went to a severely burned-out area today in the mountains. The roads in these places are mostly closed so I only went to the edge of the forest however this is often where fruitings can be found. Alas, nothing at all appears to have survived and recovered except for the blackberry (a weed here) and the newly germinated pine seedlings (also a weed when they escape the plantations). Quite depressing, really. Lots of fruitings going strong in the older forests that were spared of fire.

[Cloudykinz]

Hi. I live in South Australia, we were hit pretty hard with the bushfires here. However, our Amanita muscarias grow profusely in introduced pine plantations, which were not burnt. Muscaria has been noted to have formed a mycorrhizal relationship with eucalyptus trees (of which many were burnt in the fires) but there really needs to be a pine or other introduced host tree in order for the relationship to form. So the prevalence of muscaria in native bushland is virtually nil. Although we do have many other amanitas, including our native A.xanthocephala which is a gorgeous little red and yellow mushroom - the properties of which are unknown.
However... This season's rainfall has not been so good since 2008 and I am seeing Amanita muscaria growing more plentifuly than ever before, and in more pine forests than ever before, this year specifically. I have been foraging mushrooms for over 20 years and I can tell you with much certainty that what I am seeing is about two things - the age of the pines in the plantations and the rainfall.