Things I’ve Seen

Something I like to do every now and then is watch the waves on the Ashuelot River, but we’ve been in a drought most of the summer so there haven’t been any to watch. Finally last week 4 1/2 inches of rain fell in a day and there were some serious waves after that. The river has a rhythm and its waves form at fairly regularly spaced intervals and I find it challenging to see if I can get shots of the waves as they form. It’s not as easy as it sounds but it can be done if you can tune out everything but yourself and the river.

Of course since I saw the Ashuelot River at bank full I thought waterfalls would be roaring but as 40 foot falls in this photo shows, I was wrong. The beaver pond that feeds this stream must have been low enough to absorb all the rainfall without having much effect on the outflow.

I find a lot of blasting holes drilled through boulders. There is nothing unusual about drilling and blasting stone here in the granite state but I often find these boulders out in the woods where you wouldn’t expect a steam or air powered drill would be able to go, and that’s odd. This example was out in the middle of nowhere but was too perfect to have been drilled by hand with a sledge hammer and star drill, so it had to have been machine made. If I’d had a golf ball in my pocket I could have rolled it right through this hole.

I interrupted this chipmunk as he ran about busily looking for seeds to stuff his cheeks with and he was clearly not happy about that, so I took a quick couple of photos and let him get on with his work. Chipmunks will watch you pretty closely in the woods and will often follow along beside you, making a chipping or chucking sound to tell the other animals and birds that you’re in the neighborhood. Chickadees do the same thing.

I found a single example of a concentric boulder lichen (Porpidia crustulata) a few years ago and hadn’t seen one since until recently. Though it’s very hard to find it’s easy to identify; the body (thallus) of the lichen is always ashy gray and its black spore bearing bodies (Apothecia) grow in concentric rings around the lichen’s center. It’s not one of the prettiest lichens but it is one of the rarest in this area and I was happy to see it.

Dog lichens aren’t rare but they are unusually big for a lichen; I’ve seen hand size examples. Lichens like water and can often be found growing beside or even among water retaining mosses as this one has. Because it’s been so dry it’s been a rough summer for water loving mosses and lichens but they are very patient and simply sit and wait for rain. The 4 1/2 inches of rain we had last week has perked them right up and this dog lichen was pliable once again instead of crisp. If you want to know what one feels like just pinch your earlobe. The lichen is thinner but it feels much the same.

Some trees have beautiful ancient runes scribbled on their bark in the form of script lichens. The light colored part is the body of the lichen and the darker “script” is where it releases its spores. There are 39 species of script lichens in North America and many more throughout the world, and their most important identification characteristic is their squiggly apothecia. I’ve seen examples that have apothecia that all run horizontally or vertically, but most seem random like those in the photo. I think it would take the better part of a lifetime just to identify the 39 species in North America. This photo has been enlarged so everything seen here would fit behind a dime with room to spare.

Mosses appreciated the rain. This beautiful rose moss (Rhodobryum roseum) was very dry and brown the last time I saw it. It grows on a limestone boulder so it must get the heat that the stone absorbs from the sun as well as from the sun itself. I know of only one place to find this moss.

Rose moss gets its common name from the way that each plant looks like a tiny rose blossom. At this magnification some of the leaves look as if they’ve been sprinkled with gold dust. Spore production takes place in the center of each small “blossom.”

Another moss that I can find in only one place is stair step moss (Hylocomium splendens.) In the right kind of light its leaves are somewhat shiny and that leads to another common name: glittering wood moss. It is also called splendid feather moss and I’m sure I don’t have to explain how it came by that name. This is a tough moss that grows in boreal forests into the Arctic. It is considered an indicator of undisturbed, stable soil though I find it growing in soil that has built up on the top of a stone.

You can see a bit of the glitter in stair step moss leaves in this photo. The name stair step moss comes from the way each new branch steps up from the middle of the older branch. It is said that this moss grows a new branch each year and its age can be revealed by counting the branches. If true that would mean that this example was at least 4 years old.

Polypody ferns (Polypodium virginanum) are producing spores and each of its spore producing sporangia looks like a tiny basket full of flowers. This is the time of year to be looking at the undersides of ferns fronds. How and where the sporangia grow are important parts of an accurate identification for some.

I think this puffball is an example of the common earth ball (Scleroderma citrinum,) but I’m not certain of that. It’s one that I’ve never seen before and I can’t come up with an exact match for it, either in my mushroom books or online. It was bigger than many puffballs I see; maybe 5 inches long by 3 wide.

Whatever its name is this puffball was a beautiful thing, and studying it took me out of myself for a time. As I look at it now it reminds me of an aerial view of a village.  With yellow roads.

But when is a puffball not a puffball?

Answer: When it is a slime mold. Wolf’s milk slime mold is also called toothpaste slime because of the consistency of its inner plasmodial material. It’s usually pink but this example was orange. I’ve only found one example where the plasmodium was pasty like toothpaste. It’s usually more liquid like the above example. As it ages it will turn into grayish powdery spores.

There are other slime molds to be seen at this time of year as well, like this beautiful orange example which I believe is Hemitrichia calyculata. It has gone from its moving plasmodial feeding stage to the production of fruiting bodies called sporangium, which are seen in this photo. Each tiny sphere sits atop a whitish stalk and there it will stay, possibly changing color as it ages and begins spore production. These examples grew on an old fallen hemlock.

I thought I’d have a nice shot of Canada geese flying south in a V formation for you but by the time I was done fumbling around with my camera they had turned and all I saw was a line.

These two didn’t seem to want any part of flying south, or anywhere else for that matter. After all it was 72 degrees and the colors were mesmerizing.

No, you didn’t accidentally flip over to the NASA website. This 260 ton, 82 foot diameter dish antenna lives here in the woods of New Hampshire. It is one of the antennas that make up the Very Long Baseline Array, which is made up of 10 antennas that stretch across the country from New Hampshire west to Hawaii and south to the Virgin Islands. All 10 antennas function as a single giant antenna some 5000 miles wide and produce high resolution images of galaxies and quasars billions of light years away. The array is so sensitive it can measure details equivalent to being able to see a football on the surface of the moon.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. ~Marcus Aurelius

Thanks for coming by.