Fran Guard author and project coordinator home from the printers.

I am delighted to say that on Friday 15 March 2019 in Innisfail we will be launching our ‘Australian Tropical Mushrooms & other Fungi pocket guides’. The launch is being hosted by the Johnstone Ecological Society and Queensland Mycological Society.

A number of events are being held in the region to support the launch, so please check out the information here.

The guide focuses on the Tropical Monsoon region of Australia and illustrates 118 different fungi that commonly occur in tropical Australia, as well as some that are new finds. This is a product for tourists with an eye for colourful fungi, and students of mycology alike. They are packed with information to enjoy and learn from. It includes an introduction to the fungal kingdom and its different morphogroups, plus information on ecology, substrate, trophic role, size, spore print colour, and toxicity for each species.

A big thank you to the various mycologists who helped bring the guide together, providing photos, text, ideas, editing and support: Roy Halling, Teresa Lebel, Nigel Fechner, Sandra Abell, Roz Hart and Donna Davis. We appreciate the tremendous support from many of the locals and groups over the last few years. There was an even bigger group of supporting photographers some of whom didn’t get their images included this time but we hope this will be the first of more identification resources for Tropical Australian Fungi. So thanks to Connie Kerr, Peter Newling, David Bender, Renier van Raders, Barry and Jen Muir, Orionne Albert-Mitchell, Raymond Palmer, Bruce Fuhrer, Renier van Raders, Geoff Lay, Marcin Skladaniec, Susan Zilberstein and our iNaturalist team.

If you would like to help out with future work you can share images and tropical fungi records with our iNaturalist project.

The pocket guide is being supported and distributed by the Queensland Mycological Society and supplied locally by many information centres and the Tropical Australian Herbarium. It is also for sale on our MycoShop and profits go towards Fungi4Land project.

For more information about future Tropical Australian projects please contact Fran Guard (memsec[at]qldfungi.org.au).

McMullan-Fisher, SJM, Guard, FE & Barrett, MD 2019 Australian Tropical Mushrooms & other Fungi. Queensland Mycological Society.

Cover and first panel of Australian Tropical Mushrooms & other Fungi