Question: How many kinds of native truffle are there in Australia? Answer: 1000 and still counting. Question: How many of them are edible? Answer: Native furry things eat them all, and some are not poisonous to humans (which is how I have to put it so I don’t get sued!).Question: And how many of them taste like, well, truffle? Answer: Not the one we’ve just found in the Blackheath Primary School yard (an undistinguished Rhizopogon) which tastes and feels like that foam they pad car seats with when it gets old and grungy and hard. Native truffles form 80% of the diet of smaller marsupials like bettongs and potoroos, but it’s no surprise to learn that bettongs, at least, faced with this unappetizing fare have turned to raiding the Perigord truffle farms in Tasmania.
