Oh, play that fungi music white boys.

You have some interesting natural hobbies david.

My mother was a great quilter and went through a stage where she would die her own fabric using various types of natural plants such as fungi and lichens found on my parents property in NSW.

I remember being fascinated by the resultant colours - often very different from the actual fungi. Very bright purples, mustardy looking yellows and various shades of green. She made my daughter a skirt which looks very hippy with all its bright coloured panels.

Nice post David. Will your next one be internal fungus, like cancer?
Will you be the one telling the truth about this fungus,I hope so.

“What is a simple way to tell the difference between a flutter-bys and moths?”

Examinator, the classic difference is in the antennae. Butterflies have slender clubbed antennae, while moths have various forms, most classically comb or feather-like, but often simply filamentous without a club.

There are however some butterflies that lack a club and moths with clubbed antennae!

The skippers, which are considered to be butterflies, are pretty moth-like in many respects. In fact, I’d consider them to be closer to moths than butterflies.

Moths are vastly more diverse and numerous than butterflies. In reality, butterflies should just be considered to be one group of moths, or three groups perhaps; the true butterflies, the skippers and the so-called butterfly moths.

Ah yes, Michael Braby’s ‘Butterflies of Australia’. That 2–volume set sits on my bookshelf and is often referred to. What a magnificent biological composition.

David, I remember some years ago while exploring caves as part of a potential new national park, that we should tread gently and not kick up the dirt on the cave floor in areas that were potential ghost bat haunts, as there was a fungus that grew in bat dung which had spores that could grow in your lungs cause you a lot of grief.