Here are a few more of those odd and unusual things that I see that won’t fit into other posts.
I like discovering grass flowers and this one is a beauty. The flowers of native big bluestem grass (Andropogon gerardii) grow in pairs of yellowish male anthers and feathery, light purple female stigmas. This grass gets its name from its blue green stems. It is the dominant grass of the tall grass prairie in the U.S. Before Europeans arrived this grass had a quite a range; from Maine to the Rocky Mountains and from Quebec to Mexico. At one time it fed thousands of buffalo. Because of its large root system, early settlers found it was an excellent choice for the “bricks” of sod houses.
Some coral fungi come to a blunt, rather than pointed end and are called club shaped corals. I thought these might be Clavariadelphus truncatus but that mushroom has wrinkles down its length and these are smooth, so I’m not sure what they are. More often than not I find these growing in the hard packed earth near trails and they have usually been stepped on. The broken one in the photo shows that these are hollow. They were no more than an inch tall.
The seeds of curly dock (Rumex crispus,) when the sun is shining just right, look like tiny stained glass windows.
The berries of silky dogwood (Cornus amomum) start out porcelain white and slowly change to dark blue. The birds love these berries so they don’t decorate the shrubs for long. This is a large shrub that grows in part shade near rivers and ponds. It gets its common name from the soft, silky hairs that cover the branches. Native Americans smoked the bark like tobacco. They also twisted the bark into rope and made fish traps from the branches. I wonder if the idea for blue and white porcelain dishes first made in ancient China came from berries like these.
Red pouch galls on stag horn sumac (Rhus typhina) are caused by the sumac gall aphid (Melaphis rhois.) These galls look like some kind of fruit but they are actually hollow inside and teeming with thousands of aphids. They average about golf ball size and change from light yellow to pinkish red as they age. Scientists have paleobotanical evidence that this aphid has had a relationship with its sumac hosts for at least 48 million years. The galls can also be found on smooth sumac (Rhus glabra.) They remind me of potatoes.
At a glance wolf’s milk slime mold (Lycogala epidendrum) might fool you into thinking it was just another brownish puffball but, if you try to make it “puff,” you’ll be in for a surprise. The diameter of the one in the photo is about the same as a pea.
This is the surprise you get when you try to make wolf’s milk slime mold’s “puff ball” puff-you find that it is a fruiting body full of plasmodial orange slime. This is also called toothpaste slime mold but on this day the liquid inside the sphere was nowhere near that consistency. It was more like chocolate syrup. This slime mold is found on rotting hardwood logs and is one of the fastest moving slime molds, clocked at 1.35 millimeters per second.
John Tyler Bonner, a slime mold expert, says slime molds are a “bag of amoebae encased in a thin slime sheath, yet they manage to have various behaviors that are equal to those of animals who possess muscles and nerves with ganglia–that is, simple brains.”
Here is a real puffball-at the size of an egg many hundreds, if not thousands of times bigger than the wolf’s milk slime mold. I think this example might be a pigskin puffball (Scleroderma,) which is poisonous.
The honeycombed domes of the Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa variety porioides slime mold make it one of the most beautiful, in my opinion. Unfortunately it’s also one of the smallest, which makes getting a good photo of it almost impossible. After many attempts, this was the best I could do. The little black bug on one of the fruiting bodies is so very small that I didn’t see it until I saw this photo.
Here in New Hampshire white and brown mushrooms can be found at almost any time, but the really colorful mushrooms usually start in about mid-July with yellows and oranges. There can also be occasional red ones but orange dominates the forest until the purples appear. Once the purple ones appear there are fewer and fewer orange ones seen. I’ve watched this for 2 years now and it shows that mushrooms have “bloom times” just like flowers do. In the case of mushrooms, it’s actually fruiting time. I think this one is a purple cort (Cortinarius iodeoides.)
The berries have formed on false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum ) so the leaves aren’t needed anymore. Fall begins at the forest floor.
The rounded, five lobed, purple calyx on the back of a pokeweed berry (Phytolacca americana) reveals what the flower once looked like. The berries and all parts of this plant are toxic, but many birds and animals eat the berries. Native Americans used their red juice to decorate their horses and early colonial settlers dyed cloth with it.
One rainy afternoon I drove by these plants that were loaded with white berries and had to turn around to see what they were. They turned out to be white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) but I’ve never seen that plant have as many berries as these did. These black and white berries are highly toxic but fortunately they also reportedly taste terrible and are said to be very acrid.
Another name for this plant is ‘doll’s eyes” and it’s easy to see why. The black dot is what is left of the flower’s stigma. The black and white berries with pink stems are very appealing to children and it is thought that only their terrible taste prevents more poisonings than there are.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. ~Lao Tzu
Thanks for stopping in.
I like the silky dogwood and white baneberry fruit. I have grey dogwood but the berries are not as ornamental.
The flowers of the gray dogwood are probably showier than those on the silky dogwood though, so it’s a bit of a trade off. white baneberry is sold commercially because of it’s unusual fruit.
Great collection of the unusual! Very enjoyable!
Thanks Montucky!
Hi Allen. Discovered your blog through Laura at TouringNH. Love your photos and descriptions. I now pay more attention to what I am seeing around my property, in the woods and kayaking. Thanks for all the info and a really nice blog.
Hi Martha, and welcome. I’ll have tp remember to thank Laura for sending you my way. I’m glad you’re enjoying what you see here.
Very interesting stuff. I was intrigued by the baneberry — why it so toxic. Some birds can tolerate the cardiac glycoside content, though, and I suppose that keeps random mammalian consumers (like humans) from consuming the fruit and then not following through to disseminate the seeds within.
I can’t find any information on why baneberry is so toxic Sue, but it has been known as such for a long time. Native Americans dipped arrow points in its concentrated juice, but they also used it medicinally. It is said that the juice from the berries leaves a burning sensation in the mouth and throat and just 6 berries will kill a child. It seems to be right up there with aconite and poison hemlock.
It is hard not to gush over your posts…they just keep getting better and better. Love the photos and the information is superb.
Thank you Charlie. I can’t ask for a better opinion of this blog than that.
Great job as always. I always enjoy the colors and shapes of polk but don’t remember noticing the bloom pattern on the back. Will check it out on my walk tomorrow.
Thanks Grampy. I never noticed the pokeweed “flowers” either until this year. You’ll need your macro lens-they’re pretty small.
Very nice macros. I love when you post these because they are so close that you can’t tell what it is at first. I usually look for a few seconds, take a guess at what they are, and then read to find out if I was right. Sometimes I am.
Thanks-I wonder if I’m getting too close. I like macro photography because it reveals so much that goes unseen, but sometimes I have to get away from it for a bit and stand up to take a few shots.
Amazing, amazing, amazing; I always love your posts, they are so informative. Loved the photos.
Thank you Charlie, i’m glad that you enjoy them.
Once again your capacity for seeing things of great interest is unsurpassed. Thank you.
You’re welcome. I’m glad that you found it interesting.
The silky dogwood berries and the purple mushroom (it looks blue to me) are lovely. Another very interesting post. Thanks 🙂
You’re welcome! That’s funny that you see blue instead of purple-that’s been happening to me my whole life. The strange thing is, those mushrooms really do look purple to me. Are you color blind too?
I didn’t think I was but maybe I should get checked out! Actually the mushroom is a bluefish purple, there’s a very fine line between blue and purple and I’d call that one almost cobalt
You could be right. There can be a lot of color variation even between the same mushrooms growing side by side. My color finding software sees medium purple, orchid, slate bue and light steel blue.
[…] luck would have it, in his weekly Saturday post, Allen who does the New Hampshire Garden Solutions blog, had a small blurb about these galls, which is where I learned what they […]
Fascinating images. I love the purple mushroom. The close up of the back of the pokeberry weed is excellent. I’ve never heard of Doll’s eyes before. Very interesting!
Thanks Melanie. If you see white baneberry it would be a good chance to teach any children who might be around about poisonous plants. That’s a good one to stay away from!
What a variety of things you see! I love the colour of that purple mushroom.
Those purple mushrooms have an intense color when they’re small and lighten to sometimes almost white as they age.
Gorgeous colors and textures in your posting today. I have never seen a purple mushroom and now will be on the lookout for one. I never really thought about mushrooms having seasons–I thought that it was only a factor of light and moisture. I really like the shots of the puffball and the beautiful silky dogwood berries. I can’t say if the silky dogwood was the inspiration for the Chinese porcelain, but I have noticed it’s a popular color combination worldwide (the Dutch Delft pottery and the Russian Gzhel pottery immediately come to mind).
Thanks Mike. I never thought much about mushrooms having seasons either until i started watching them a little closer. There aren’t a lot of purple ones, but there are a few out there.
Every idea has to come from somewhere, and it’s fascinating to think that the idea for blue and white porcelain might have come from a berry. As you note, it’s wildly popular all over the world and has been for centuries.
It’s an amazing world that we live in, and you do an excellent job of showing us that with every one of your posts. I have to thank you once again for an ID, the red pouch gall. I found some this past week, but a quick search of the Internet was no help to me in learning what they were.
Thanks! I know what you mean about those galls. I had quite a time finding out anything about them even after i knew their names. Glad I could make life a little easier!
Hi Allen, I see that your photo from the Swanzey Bridge sold at the historical society show. Congrats! Lori
Wow-I’m surprised. I thought the shot of the rapids would be the only one that sold. Thanks for letting me know. I hope you sold yours as well!
Great post Allen. I never thought much about grasses flowering but that blue stem grass is beautiful. Love the purple mushroom! Glad that white baneberry caught you attention, really neat looking.
Thanks Laura. There are some beautiful things out there!