Earthstar
When I lived in Ely in Cardiff I had a number of
strange plants and mushrooms that came up in my garden and one of the most
curious of all was a fungus that is known as the Earthstar. They suddenly
arrived one autumn amongst the dead leaves under the bushes and trees at the
bottom of my garden. It was almost like a peaceful invasion of some very small
alien beings
It seemed a very suitable place to find them, but a
real mystery because they are said to grow most frequently under Beech trees in
woods, and there were none anywhere near my house. In fact the nearest forest
was about a mile away. Not only that but they are not a common fungus in any
case. Why had they picked my garden as a home?
Earthstars are in the family Geastraceae, which
translates as "stars of Ge/Gaia" (the Earth). The species that was
growing in my garden was Geastrum triplex. Although none of these
weird fungi can be described as “common” this species is probably the one that
is most often seen. They are always included in books about British, European and North American fungi.
Earthstars are unmistakable. There is nothing else
quite like them.They have a body like a puffball with a hole right in the
middle that will puff out millions of spores, and around it is a formation of
arms that makes it look like a star. It looks more like some weird sea creature
than a fungus. Like a starfish living on the land perhaps?
Dry Earthstars
The arms peel back and can crack or they can curl up
when the weather is very dry. The whole fungus can break off from its base in
the ground and get moved about like fungus tumbleweed. The Earthstar fungus is
the only fungus I know of that can actively move around, although all species
move very slowly as they grow bigger.
Rain also helps the fungi disperse their spores that
get puffed out of the central sack in heavy showers as the raindrops hit the
Earthstar. I can only assume they arrived in my garden carried as spores on the
wind. The Earthstars were growing under a rescued Christmas tree and under a
very large Privet bush and by a small Yew Tree. Every autumn they appeared for
several years in a row and were still there right through the winter. They
tolerated very cold spells and drying up too. Rain revived them but eventually
they got eaten away by snails and woodlice. They might still be growing there
if the new people living there haven't destroyed the end of the garden.
I made a point of puffing out millions and millions of
spores and like to think that I was helping the Earthstar fungus colonise somewhere
else on the planet. I watched them blowing away in the breeze. And they do appear
to be a colony, a colony of weird alien creatures. They not only look like
stars but look as if they have come from the stars!
Bard of Ely with some of the Earthstars
