19/08/2026
A tiny Galerina I found recently in subtropical rainforest at Nightcap, NNSW. This species is very fluorescent under 365nm UV light.
Pics at the end show scale for size and habitat.
I used to think this little mystery mushroom was a Simocybe but with help from the mushroom community on iNaturalist and Facebook in both Australia and New Zealand, we've come to realise that this is a little Galerina which looks very similar to Galerina nothofaginea, a species described from NZ.
However, there seems to be several similar species yet to be described! Making a formal herbarium collection of something so tiny requires at least 60+ individual mushrooms.. it was a slow and delicate process to collect these and in the end my collection looks like a bag of crumbs😅
Once these are sequenced, we will have better data to compare against those from NZ and future collections which will contribute to further species being named. This also helps us assess if these species may be threatened or not.
This one is rarely documented in Australia but I feel it's small size, drab orange/brown caps and tendency to fruit under the shaded side of logs makes it pretty easy to miss. I've also seen it in the NSW/QLD Border Ranges and Yarra Ranges, VIC.
For now, I have given it the Undescribed working name: Galerina AUS "aff. nothofaginea" which Australian iNaturalist observations can be tagged with. This makes it easy to still find observations of this species until it gets formally described.
Let me know if you've seen this one anywhere 🤩
on Widjabul country, 8/8/26
