Happy Halloween

Will the tree spirits howl tonight? This tortured looking one seemed to be warming up.

There are ghosts in the forest too.

And skeletons.

Witch’s butter awaits.

And corpses line the pathways.

Pathways that lead you deeper and deeper into the forest and seem to never end.

But they do end; they end at midnight, when the tree spirits begin to howl and the moon shines brightly.

Backward, turn backward,
O Time, in your flight
make me a child again
just for to-night!
~Elizabeth Akers Allen

Have a Happy Halloween everyone. I hope you all made it through the hurricane unscathed. Thanks for dropping in.

 

Read Full Post »

More Fall Color

We haven’t seen much sunshine lately but it sure has been warm here in southwestern New Hampshire. I thought I’d get a few more pictures of the fall foliage in case the hurricane comes along on Tuesday and strips all the leaves off the trees.

Beech trees (Fagus) are starting to turn. These trees grow where the soil is deep, rich, moist, and well-drained. This is also a beech tree. It’s amazing how many colors-from yellow to bronze to orange and red-these trees can be. Beech trees were used as food or for medicine for centuries by virtually every Native American tribe.

Many oaks look like this now. But some oaks are more red than orange.

Many maples and birches already look like this. Deer tongue grass is a weed, but a colorful one.

Some ferns get paler before they fade completely. 

Most meadow grasses have dropped their seeds. 

This vernal (spring blooming) witch hazel lives in a local park. Its amazing color drew me to it from several yards away.

This was the view at one of the local lakes last weekend. 

The mosses seem greener than I’ve ever seen them.

And before long mosses and evergreens will be the only things left that are green.

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart ~Hal Borland

Thanks for stopping in. Remember: This is the time of year that hunters appear in the woods, so be safe.

 

 

Read Full Post »

More Fall Mushrooms

Before nature interrupted this nature blog with its show of colorful leaves and frosty flowers I was hunting for more fall mushrooms. What follows are a few of those I found.                       If you wear glasses you might want to keep them handy, because some of these mushrooms are quite small. These worm like coral fungi (Clavaria fragilis) were just about the size of toothpicks.

This puffball was blue. I can’t even guess why.  These two couldn’t have grown much closer together. I think the coral fungus might be cockscomb coral (Clavulina cristata.) The mushroom looks like one of the amanitas, some of which are deadly.

These lemon drops (Bisporella citrina) start out orb or disc shaped like in the photo, and then become cup shaped as they age. None of those shown was larger than a pencil eraser. I put a nickel on this pine dye polypore (Phaeolus schweinitzii) so you could see how big it was. It was about dinner plate size. I’ve never seen this one, but I loved the colors in it. Pholiota squarrosoides doesn’t seem to have a common name but can be recognized by their scaly, slimy caps. These were growing out of a crack in a log. This bracket fungus is one of the most showy that I’ve seen. I can’t find its identity. 

Pinwheel Marasmius (Marasmius capillaris) have been abundant this year-possibly because the oak leaves started falling early and they need oak leaves to fruit on. 

Quite often if I see a purple mushroom the woods are full of them. The same is true with orange mushrooms, but for some reason yellow mushrooms usually appear singly as this one did. I think this might be a Hygrocybe ceracea, which is one of the wax cap mushrooms.

Even mushroom experts agree that small brown mushrooms can be hard to identify so they are often lumped into a category known as LBMs, or little brown mushrooms. Little brown mushrooms are found everywhere and in all seasons. Some, like the Galerinas, can be deadly, so they are a good thing to stay away from.

A Connecticut woman just poisoned herself and her entire family by feeding them mushrooms she picked in her back yard. Doctors say that they are lucky to be alive. If you are interested you can read the story by clicking here.

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering ~ Augustine

Thanks for visiting.

Read Full Post »

A Frosty Morning

Last Saturday morning I had errands to run but I also wanted to see if the weathermen had been correct with their frost predictions.

It was clear that we had had a good frost, but I wasn’t sure if it had been a freeze. A surface has to have a temperature colder than the surrounding air before water vapor will freeze on it to become frost. Frosts can happen when the air temperature is above freezing and are usually brief-happening just before sunrise and then melting quickly. A freeze happens over a longer period of time, and the temperature falls lower. The temperature might be 36 degrees for a frost and 28 degrees for a freeze. Below 28 degrees is considered a hard freeze.

Everything was coated in white. 

At the town landfill I spotted this colorful pile of crushed glass shining in the sun.

My second stop was the Ashuelot River, where nearly every plant had a coating of frost. This is a Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii.) this small, prickly shrub was introduced as an ornamental from Japan in 1875. Of course, it has escaped cultivation and now grows in forests all over New England. I like the way the frost formed a rim of needles around almost every leaf. 

These goldenrod blossoms looked like they had been snowed on. 

The asters looked the same-covered in ice needles. 

But when the sun touched a plant the frost disappeared quickly. 

What I didn’t expect to see was the native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) blooming, because the flower’s ribbon like petals are temperature sensitive and only unfurl when it is warm enough. On this morning it was about 30 degrees but the sun was shining brightly and the witch hazels were getting plenty of it, so it must have warmed them up enough to bloom. Since it is an understory shrub the leaves of the trees above it also kept it from getting frost covered. 

I probably won’t be seeing any more Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora) until next spring. 

The ripples under the bark of the muscle wood (Carpinus caroliniana) tree are what give it its common name. It is also called American hornbeam, blue beech, and ironwood. It’s in the hazelnut family and it will take a lot more than frost to hurt this tree. My last stop was at a local lake and the ripples in the sand echoed those of the muscle wood. This shot, taken through about 6 inches of water, shows how brightly the sun shone and how still and clear the water was. It was warming up quickly and that meant I could head into the cooler, shaded woods, but that’s another story for another day.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening

To Silence ~ Thomas Hood

Reminder: It is turkey and black bear hunting season here in New Hampshire. Be safe in the woods.

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »

Lichens

As the leaves continue to fall more lichens are becoming visible, including some that are fruiting and some that I’ve never seen before.                       A pine tree had fallen and taken this Beard Lichen (Usnea scabrata) with it. It is called old man’s beard and I picked it up off the ground and hung it on another tree so we could see it in all its glory. It was the longest beard lichen-probably 6 inches or more-that I’ve seen. These lichens have been used medicinally for centuries. This is also a beard lichen called bristly beard (Usnea hirta.) many lichens grow so slowly that they can take decades to grow a fraction of an inch. They are thought to be among the oldest living things on earth.

According to my lichen book moose hair lichen (Bryoria trichodes) is also called pine moss or horsehair lichen. Beard and hair lichens are extremely sensitive to air pollution and will only grow where the air quality is high. Deer, moose and squirrels eat this lichen and there are stories of deer rushing out of the forest and eating it out of the tops of felled spruce trees while loggers with chainsaws were still cutting the trees up. This one grew on a white pine trunk and it’s the first time I’ve seen it. 

These British soldier lichens (Cladonia cristatella) grew on an old stump in full sun. The very bright red color at the end of branched stalks makes these easy to identify. The red tips are where spores are produced. They are also why this lichen is called “British soldier.” 

If I understand what I have read correctly, the chief difference between the British soldier lichens shown previously and the lipstick powderhorn lichens (Cladonia macilenta) in this photo is that British soldiers branch and lipstick powderhorns do not. They both have the same red spore producing tips and otherwise look identical to me. I just noticed that the pine needles in the background have a reddish cast to them, so I wonder if this lichen’s released spores are red. Common powderhorn lichens (Cladonia coniocraea) look just like lipstick powderhorns, but without the red tip. The spores are released from the pointed tip. These were also growing on a decaying log.

Another view of common powderhorn lichens (Cladonia coniocraea.) 

Mealy Pixie Cup (Cladonia chlorophaea) lichen look like little trumpets from the side but from the top they look like tiny cups. The cups are where the spores form and this lichen relies on raindrops falling in them to disperse its spores. This lichen is called “mealy” because of the grainy reproductive structures (soredia) covering its outside surface.

Trumpet lichens (Cladonia fimbriata) have much finer and smaller reproductive structures (soredia) than the mealy pixie cup lichen (Cladonia chlorophaea.) The splash cups of mealy pixie cups are also slightly larger than those of trumpet lichens. This is the first time I’ve seen either of these trumpet shaped lichens.

I’m not sure what this foliose lichen’s name is, but it was a pleasure to see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one so white. This leaf like (foliose) lichen always reminds me of leaf lettuce. I think it is a fringed wrinkle lichen (Tuckermannopsis Americana.) Its colors are unusual. Rock Foam (Stereocaulon saxatile) grew directly on stone in full sun. It is a fragile looking lichen which caribou will eat if they can’t find reindeer lichen. These lichens are often used as a prospecting tool because a simple lab test will show what type of rock they grow on and what minerals, like copper or magnesium, are present.

I’m not positive about this lichen’s identity but it might be the sulphur firedot (Caloplaca flavovirescens.) Sulphur firedot lichen grows on rock with high calcium content and on unpainted concrete and leans toward orange-yellow in color. It could also be common goldspeck (Candelariella vitellina,) which is much more yellow than orange. In this area yellow lichens aren’t often seen.

I found this very large grayish tan crustose lichen growing on a boulder on the lake shore in full sun. The cup shaped formations are apothecia, or fruiting bodies, and they are where the spores are produced. I couldn’t see these tiny cups until I looked at the picture because they were too small.

A witches broom on a plant is a deformation which forms a very dense, compacted cluster of branches. The witches broom in the photo was high up on a white pine (Pinus strobus) and was absolutely covered with lichens of many kinds.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. ~ Albert Einstein

Thanks for stopping by.

Read Full Post »

Found in Woods and Fields

This post is another of those that contain those interesting things I see that don’t seem to fit anywhere else.

Forked blue curl (Trichostema dichotomum) seed pods show four round, dimpled seeds. These are so small that it’s hard to see them without magnification. This plant in the mint family is an annual and depends on its seeds growing into new plants the following season. The beautiful blue flowers appear quite late in the season. 

It had to have been the light, but these Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora) looked just as blue in the woods as they do in this photo. I can’t find any reference to blue Indian pipes, either in books or online. Even my color finder software sees blue. I wonder if anyone else has ever seen this. We don’t pay much attention to this plant once the flowers go by, but Indian cucumber root (Medeola virginiana) has quite showy fruit. The plant’s common name comes from the flavor of its small root. The spiky seed pod on this jimsonweed plant (Datura stramonium) might be trying to tell us that its seeds can be very dangerous if eaten. It’s no wonder the plant is also called thorn apple.

I love the colors found on a sycamore tree (Platanus occidentalis.) If you walk around to the backside of this tree where it never gets any sun, it looks totally different-nowhere near as colorful. Whenever I start to think that I understand nature I run into something like this tree, which reminds me that I really know very little. Is this tree’s bark a light color so it reflects, rather than absorbs heat from the sun? That’s just one of the questions I have about sycamores.

I’m glad I didn’t accidentally grab the branch this tussock moth caterpillar (Lymantriidae) was on. Many caterpillars in this family have hairs called urticating hairs that are very similar to those found on stinging nettles. It is said that their sting can be quite painful and last for several days. These caterpillars are supposed to be voracious eaters and can cause quite a lot of damage to crops. 

This turtle was really craning his neck to see what I was up to, so I took a couple of shots and left him alone. Turtles spend winter buried in the mud of the pond they live in. They also sleep there, and can breathe as well as absorb oxygen through their skin. I think it might be a painted turtle.

This great Blue Heron had his back to me and didn’t seem to care what I was doing. He flew off shortly after I took this photo though. I’ve seen this bird here many times and he always seems to be waiting for the sun to come up because when it does he flies off.

This great black Cormorant fishes at a local pond and another one-or maybe it’s the same one-fishes in a river near here. The sun was dropping fast and I had to almost shoot into it, so I really didn’t think I’d get a picture of this bird. It’s not the sharpest picture I’ve ever taken, but it is the only one of a great cormorant that I have. The feathers on this bird’s belly and leading wing edge look more like scales than feathers, and it has big webbed feet so it can really move quickly when chasing fish under water. They can also hold their breath for quite a while under water.

The partridge berries (Mitchella repens) are ripe. This one shows the two dimples left by the twin flowers whose ovaries fuse to form one berry. This small trailing vine can form colonies that are several feet across under the right conditions.

This mushroom had released its spores, making it look as if someone had spray painted the pine needles. Mushroom spores should never be inhaled. There are documented instances of spores actually growing in human lungs. 

Maple leaved viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) is also called arrow wood. Its beautiful white flowers turn into blue-black berries, which aren’t often seen. This plant’s fall foliage is some of the most colorful in the forest and I always look for it. The shrub is called arrow wood because its branches grow very straight and some believe that Native Americans used it for arrow shafts. 

Maple leaved viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) really lights up dark spaces in the fall.

If you have ever tried to get one of these spiky seed pods out of your dog’s fur you have a good idea of one reason rough cockleburr (Xanthium strumarium) is considered a noxious weed. The hooked spines on the seed pods get caught on just about anything and are why this plant has spread far and wide. I found this one growing on a riverbank, but they will grow just about anywhere.

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper ~Eden Phillpotts

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »

Fall in New Hampshire

Winged euonymus or burning bush (Euonymus alatus.)

 

False Solomon’s seal fruit (Maianthemum racemosum.) 

Maple-leaf Viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium)

 

Every path leads to colorful leaves, the smell of them drying in the sun, and the sound of them falling-almost like rain.

 Royal fern (Osmunda regalis) 

Double arch stone bridge over the Ashuelot River in Keene, New Hampshire. Built with no mortar in 1840.

 

Now autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods

And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt ~ William Allingham

Thanks for visiting.

Read Full Post »

Still Blooming

When I was a professional gardener I always assumed that we would have a frost between September 15th and September 30th. More years than not, that assumption was accurate. Then last year happened and all of that went out the window. We still hadn’t had a frost when we got about sixteen inches of snow on Halloween. This year-here we go again-still no frost here. In fact just yesterday it reached the mid-70s.  The heat I can handle, but I’m hoping there won’t be another Halloween storm like the last. In any case, the flowers love it and many are still blooming.

This nodding burr marigold (Bidens) found a home with a roof, so it won’t have to worry about a frost.

 On a recent rainy day I found a clump of native beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana) growing near the road. The Epifagus part of the scientific name means “upon the beech” and that is where these parasitic plants grow. They don’t produce chlorophyll to make their own food so instead they insert a root like structure called a haustorium into a beech root and take what nutrition they need to survive. Native Americans made a tea from this plant that was used to treat mouth sores.

Purple-brownish beechdrop flowers are very small and hard to photograph. Each flower is tubular and has two lip-like “petals.” They produce nectar and attract insects. Tiny, scale like leaves press flat against the stem and are very hard to see. These plants are found from Canada to Florida and west as far as Louisianna. 

Native Blue toadflax (Linaria Canadensis) is another tiny flower, but easier to get a picture of than beechdrops. I found this one growing in full sun on a riverbank recently. It had just about finished blooming. This plant resembles Kalm’s Lobelia (Lobelia kalmia) but the lobelia lacks the nectar spurs found in blue toadflax blossoms. Toadflax boiled in milk is said to make an excellent fly poison.

 Native small flowered water plantain (Alisma subcordatum) was also blooming along the river a couple of weeks ago. The blossoms have now faded but the plants still thrive. These small white flowers have only tree petals so they are hard to confuse with other plants. The egg shaped, thick, fleshy leaves are also unusual. There is also a large water plantain (Alisma triviale) with flowers that are about twice the size as those shown. These plants often grow in the water at the edges of ponds and rivers. Native Americans used to eat the dried root. 

It’s easy, especially at this time of year, to be fooled into thinking that this plant is an aster, but it is actually a chrysanthemum-another popular fall garden plant. I found this one growing in a local park. Its leaves give away its identity.

This is an aster that I found growing on the side of the road. I turned around and went back to get a picture because it was such a deep, dark and beautiful purple-much different than the lighter purple varieties seen.

 This jimson weed (Datura stramonium) is another roadside plant, but it was growing in a pasture along with hundreds of others. Jimson weed is considered poisonous to both humans and livestock so I was surprised to see it in a cow pasture.  This hallucinogenic plant in the nightshade family is also called loco weed and was used by Native Americans on spiritual quests. The original common name was “Jamestown weed” which was given to it after English soldiers in the Jamestown colony began to behave oddly after eating leaves of the plant. It is said that they “behaved like animals for several days.”  This plant is considered exceedingly dangerous due to poisonings and deaths by people trying to get high.

 I have a white flowered native obedient (Physostegia virginiana) plant trying to overtake my gardens and not too long ago someone posted a picture of a beautiful pinkish purplish one like the one in this photo. I told the blogger that I hadn’t ever seen that color obedient plant flower and then, that very day, I found this one. It seems like if I can’t find a plant all I need to do is say that I can’t find it on this blog and before you know it, I’ve found one. That has happened several times.

Red clover (Trifolium pretense) is looking a little bedraggled, but still blooms just about everywhere I go. Native Americans made a tea from the plant for use as, among other things, a cough syrup. Today scientists are researching its value as a cancer treatment and for respiratory ailments.

 I wasn’t surprised to find sand jointweed (Polygonella articulata) growing in pure sand along an old road but I was surprised to see it at all, because I had been watching for it for 2 or 3 weeks without any luck. These plants grow to about a foot tall but the thin, wiry stems and small white flowers easily blend into the sand and make them hard to see.  The leaves are small and lie against the stem so the plant appears leafless. The plant gets its name from the way the stems are jointed.

These sand jointweed (Polygonella articulata) flowers looked like they had a bit of pink in them. These plants seem very hard to photograph-I had to make 2 or 3 attempts before I got something I could live with.

 

It’s easy to see why sedum is such a hit in the fall. This pink one I found in a local park is probably a cultivar called “Autumn Joy, “which is an old favorite. I think it would be even more beautiful planted with some dark purple asters.

 When I took its picture I thought this was the last rose of summer that I’d see on my rose bushes. They had a hard time this year with the extreme heat and dryness, but once the rains started in they bloomed more and more until now they are loaded with blossoms. Last year it was still blooming in December.

Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,

We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves ~ Humbert Wolfe

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »

Fungi

The first few light frosts won’t kill the mycelium that mushrooms fruit from, but they will go dormant when the weather is below freezing both night and day.  For now there are still plenty of them in the woods. Here are a few that I’ve seen recently.

These white mushrooms with black stems were tiny and very hard to get a picture of-their stems didn’t seem much thicker than a human hair and the caps were less than the diameter of a pencil eraser. I’m fairly sure these are pinwheel mushrooms (Marasmius capillaris) because this mushroom fruits only on oak leaves and that’s exactly what those pictured were doing. When there is no rain these mushrooms shrivel up to the size of common pins and wait for the rain, after which they come back as they are seen in the photo.

This cluster of what I think are Anise seed Cockleshell  mushrooms (Lentinellus cochleatus ) was growing at the base of a stump. The common name comes from the way some of these mushrooms smell like anise. That isn’t a good way to identify them though because my mushroom guide says that many of them are odorless.  I like the darker edges. This brown “Witch’s butter” jelly fungus isn’t much to look at but it’s the first one I’ve seen this year. Yellow and orange ones are everywhere, but brown and black are hard to find. Fan shaped jelly fungus (Dacryopinax spathularia) is “widespread but not common,” according to my mushroom book. I’ve seen several of these this summer. They are small, orange or orange yellow, and fan shaped.  I see them growing out of cracks in cut branches or which have had the bark removed, often in shaded brush piles. When dry they shrivel and shrink, but when it rains they plump right back up again. 

I found quite a few of these yellow orange spindle coral mushrooms growing together over quite a large area. My mushroom guide tells me it is Ramariopsis laeticolor. One website calls it the “handsome club,” which it is.

I don’t see many jelly fungi with stalks like these have. Apparently most other people don’t either because I can’t find any that resemble them in three different mushroom guides or online.

These yellow cup like fungi were so small that I had to crop the photo even though it was taken in macro mode. If you take a yellow crayon and make dots on a piece of paper you’ll have a good idea what these actually looked like to the naked eye. One website calls these “Yellow fairy cups” (Bisporella citrina) and says they grow in dense clusters, which these were doing. Each cup starts out as a spherical yellow globule before opening to the cup shape seen in the photo.

Since this coral fungus has sprouted on a log and not from the ground I think it might be Crown coral (Clavicorona pyxidata.) Crown coral branches at right angles like a candelabra and each branch ends in a tiny little crown, just like what is seen here.

 This coral fungus is tan, yellow, orange, maroon, olive green, and a few other colors as well, but since it is mostly yellowish tan I believe it is Ramaria abietina. My mushroom guide says this species should be identified microscopically, so my identification should be taken with a grain of salt.  Ramaria abietina has no common name that I can find. 

This is another of the coral fungi that I believe is Clavaria ornatipes. This fungus is described as spatula or club shaped and greyish to pinkish gray. It grew directly out of the ground. This is one of the tooth fungi, called Hericium americanum. One website also calls it bears head fungi, but I don’t know how accurate that name is. My mushroom guide says this many branched fungus always grows on the side of a log or stump and that’s exactly where I found this one. It reminds me of icicles hanging from the eaves.

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Read Full Post »