Natural History

After rain at cooler times of the year, the bush is full of fungi. Fruit-bodies of mushrooms, truffles, puffballs, morels, slime moulds and other larger fungi spring forth in a great variety of shapes and colours. For select Australian fauna and flora, such as birds, reptiles or orchids, there are comprehensive and richly illustrated field guides, which have sufficient text to assist the user in putting names to species encountered. However, existing guides to Australian fungi cover a rather limited number of species, or lack text. Putting names to the multitude of fungi is therefore rather difficult.

George Seddon is well-known as an environmentalist and academic. Western Australian readers will remember in particular his Sense of Place (1972). He is currently an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Studies in Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia and Emeritus Professor in Environmental Science at the University of Melbourne.

In his scientific foreword to Descent of Spirit, E. J. Steele, currently a Visiting Fellow at the John Curtin School of Medicine in Canberra, asks: