Here are a few more of those things I’ve seen on the trail that didn’t make it into other posts.
This chipmunk saw me but just sat on his rock, not making a sound. After I got home and saw the photo I wondered if maybe he was too chubby to be able to run away.
It’s been a good year for all kinds of fruits and nuts, including acorns. Maybe that’s why the chipmunk is so chubby.
This caterpillar was happily eating all the leaves from my lilac. The helpful folks over at bugguide.net tell me that it is a laurel sphinx caterpillar (Sphinx kalmiae). It was as big as my index finger and had a wild looking horn. In this stage the caterpillar is nearly ready to stop feeding and start looking for soil to pupate in. The laurel sphinx moth is gray brown with brownish yellow wings-not nearly as colorful as the caterpillar.
I’m seeing many more turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) this year than I did last. They are very colorful this year. Polysaccharide-K, a compound found in these fungi, has shown to be beneficial in the treatment of gastric, esophageal, colorectal, breast and lung cancers.
Lion’s mane, bear’s head, monkey head, icicle mushroom-call it what you will, Hericium americanum is a toothed fungus that is always fun to find in the woods. This mushroom is edible but unless you can be 100% sure of your identification you should never eat a wild mushroom. Bruce Ruck, director of drug information and professional education for New Jersey Poison Control at Rutgers, says it better than I: “Eating even a few bites of certain mushrooms can cause severe illness. Unless you are a mycologist, it is difficult to tell the difference between a toxic and non-toxic mushroom”
Speaking of toxic mushrooms, here’s one now. This is the toxic pigskin puffball (Scleroderma citrinum), which isn’t really a puffball at all but an earth ball. Earth balls are always hard to the touch and never “squishy” like puffballs. If you eat them they won’t kill you, but they can make you quite sick. In the book A Northwoods Companion author John Bates says that “a single large puffball contains so many spores that if every spore germinated to an adult for two generations, the resultant mass would be 800 times the volume of the earth.” But what is considered large? The largest puffball ever found was nearly 5 feet across.
Forked bluecurl seeds (Trichostema dichotomum) are so small that the only way I can see them is in a photo. This plant has beautiful blue flowers with long, curving, blue stamens. It is an annual, so it has to grow new from seed each year. Two or three seeds nestle in a basket shaped, open pod and sometimes I take a few seed pods home, hoping that I can get the plant to grow in my yard. So far I have had limited success, even though I’ve provided the same growing conditions.
Many of the woodland ferns have lost their chlorophyll and have gone pale now. I recently turned one of these pale fronds over and found all these tiny sori. These are clusters of even tinier sporangia which are the spore masses where the fern’s spores are produced. I think this one might be a New York fern (Thelypteris noveboracensis), but to be honest I didn’t pay close enough attention to its identifying characteristics to be certain.
Even poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) has to get in on the fall show. Poison ivy can grow in the form of a shrub or a vine and in this case it had twined its way up a birch tree. Beautiful to look at but you don’t want to touch it. The oils in the plant form a complex with skin proteins and interrupt the chemical signals that the skin sends to the rest of the body. The area of exposed skin is then viewed as foreign and the body attacks it, which results in a very itchy rash that can becomes sore and bleed. And if that isn’t bad enough it is also systemic, meaning you can touch the plant with your hand and end up with a rash on your leg or any other part of your body. Some internal cases of poison ivy- that can come from eating the leaves –have been fatal.
I found another poison ivy on another tree that had lost all its leaves and had just its berries showing. Over sixty species of birds have been documented as eating these berries. Apparently birds are immune to its toxic effects.
The native cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) have ripened, but you’ll sure get your feet wet harvesting them. I find them growing in a bog in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. The pilgrims named this fruit “crane berry” because they thought the flowers looked like sandhill cranes. They were taught how to use the berries by Native Americans, who used them as a food, as a medicine, and as a dye.
One cool day I found this bumblebee curled into a ball in an aster blossom and I thought it had died there but, as I watched I could see it moving very slowly. I’ve read that bumblebee queens hibernate in winter, but I can’t find out what happens to the rest of the hive.
In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. ~Aristotle
Thanks for coming by.
Great post! I can’t imagine a 5′ puffball!
I know, I was thinking the same thing when I read that.
The pictures are great…love the chipmunk and bumble bee! Our male cat brought a chipmunk inside the house a few months ago. It took me nearly an hour to trap and catch him. They are fast and he didn’t want to be caught.
Michael
Acorns, Hickory Nuts and Walnuts
You’re lucky you caught it at all. I hope you weren’t bare handed when you did!
We don’t have chipmunks here but yours sure does look well fed. That green caterpillar is quite a wonderful sight too. We found a dead bee a while ago, still clinging to a flower. When I Googled it I found that bees often cling to flowers when they are close to death, maybe that was what was happening to yours. They also get paler as they get older. 🙂
It seems fitting that bees would die in a flower, where they spend the better part of their lives. It seems like an awful short life though.
Nice post, Allen. I’ve found a few very slow moving and docile bumble bees too recently. Certainly a good time to get up close and personal. Dave
Thans Dave. Yes, this cool weather really slows them and other insects down.
Nice post, Allen. After I read your posts, I always want to go outside to see what I can find. Thanks.
Thanks Chris. Any excuse to get outside is a good one!
Love your stroll
Thanks!
🙂
All the photos are absolutely great except that the ones of the Fungi stand out as exceptional. As you wander around, which you obviously do, how do you decide what to shoot?
Shakti
Thank you Shakti. That’s a very interesting question and the answer is-I really don’t think about it. I usually spend at least two hours each day outside and when I see something that interests me I take a photo of it. Sometimes I go looking for a specific thing but usually I just let nature show me what it chooses to. The hard part comes when it is time to choose which photos will go into a blog post, because I usually have far more than what readers see here.
Thank you for stopping by, and for your excellent question that made me think about what I do.
As usual I am fascinated by the assortment of things you encounter, and especially the ones with which I am not familiar.
That’s a cute Chipmunk and a beautiful caterpillar!
I’m beginning to wonder if two lifetimes would be enough time to see all of the amazing things there are to see out there!
Fascinating treasures of Nature, for sure. Very nice, Allen.
Thanks Scott.
You really find the most fascinating stuff on your walks in the woods.That lions mane fungus is very cool. But you can keep the poison ivy – I’m so sensitive to it I could probably get a rash just looking at the pictures.
I think we probably all have more or less the same abitity when it comes to finding things in the woods.
I had a friend who was like that with poison ivy, so I don’t envy you any. I’m lucky enough so if I get it on my hand it stays there and doesn’t spread.
Fantastic photos and it’s always an education to read your blog posts!
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
Another visual feast. Thank you.
You’re welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.
Your bumble bee looks lovely. It is a different colour from ours. Only the new queen bumble bees survive the winter. The old queen, workers and males all die and the nest is deserted. The queens will spend winter perhaps in a hole underground in a sort of hibernation. Sometimes they wake up during warm spells and I see them in my garden on the winter flowering jasmine taking the nectar. But it is not until the spring that they will start a nest of their own.
Thanks for the interesting information. I don’t know why I had such a hard time finding it online or in an insect book.
I’ve got this feeling not so many people are really interested in solitary bees and yet I find them all so fascinating. I am trying to learn more and I am finding it a slow process. Bumble bees have books written about them but the others not.
I’m very interested in the health of bees because I know that if they were to suddenly disappear it wouldn’t be long before all of us followed.
I don’t really know much about solitary bees, probably because as you say, there is such limited information to be found. That might not be a bad idea for a book project, actually.
I have sure missed your blogs! For some reason, the blogs I follow are now coming to me in email. And I’m not able to click “Like” on any of them.
I’m not sure what could be causing the like button to not work, but I think when you click on follow a notification of a new post is supposed to be emailed. I have all the ones that I read in a favorites folder and go to each one.
That was one chunky chipmunk! They do store fat for the long winter, this one went above and beyond.
I also really liked the sphinx moth caterpillar and the puffball in particular, but the entire post was excellent!
Thanks! That chipmunk got more than his share, I think.
We don’t see chipmunks around where I live – this little guy is cute.
That’s interesting. I thought chipmunks lived just about everywhere. They are cute!
You really caught my attention with the initial photo of the chubby chipmunk. I remember chasing chipmunks years ago in an effort to get a photo as part of the requirements for a Boy Scout merit badge. I really like your photo and information on the sphinx moth caterpillar. I took a photo of a similar one earlier this year and was shocked at its size and the fact that it pupates in the soil–I was looking for a cocoon on the tree.I enjoyed the fungi photos too, especially the one that looks like icicles on a rock cliff
Thanks Mike. Chasing them for a photo is fine, but I wouldn’t want to catch one in my hands. A freind of mine almost lost a couple of fingers to a chipmunk he caught back when we were in high school. They have VERY sharp teeth.
I was surprised to find that the sphinx caterpillar pupated in soil too. This one is probably right at the base of my lilac.