Industrial Heritage Trail, Keene

As this photo shows, winter has made a comeback. Not only did we get a few inches of snow about a week ago but it turned cold again and has stayed cold, so that means the ice on the wooded trails is still there. They say tomorrow it might reach 55 degrees, so maybe I’ll have some flowers to show you next time. Meanwhile, I chose to walk the Industrial Heritage Trail in Keene. Not only is it paved and regularly plowed, there are some interesting things to see along the way.

This was once a rail bed used by the Cheshire Railroad and then the Boston and Maine Railroad and there are informative signs along the way that tell you the history of the place and what went on here. I’ll leave it up to you whether to read them or not.

This bench made from bicycles was probably the strangest thing I saw on this day. It doesn’t look very comfortable.

The city maintains this segment of trail and the have planted shrubs, including lilacs. Slowly, the buds are growing bigger.

They’ve also planted hydrangeas here and there. Panicled hydrangeas I believe, but there are so many different varieties these days I can’t keep up with them. I grew up with my grandmother’s “snowball” hydrangeas and that was good enough, even though I’ve never felt a need to have them in my own yard.

What I enjoy about hydrangeas is how, when their petals hang on through winter, they sometimes look like stained glass before they fall. These weren’t quite there yet.

This trail is one of those that the railroad had to build up quite high above the surrounding landscape so they could have a nice level grade throughout the run, and down below I spotted two concrete structures that I can only imagine must have been tank supports for a huge round tank. What was in the tank I’ll never know but it seemed too far away to be of use to the railroad. With so much industry in the area it could have held just about anything.

But the land owners didn’t want anyone exploring and I can’t blame them. You have to always remember when you are on a rail trail that you’re walking through the back yards of the people who live along it. I lived very close to a working rail line so I know what it is like to have some random person just wandering around through the yard after coming down from the tracks. It’s a bit disconcerting, so all of us who walk rail trails should stay on the trail and respect the privacy of those who live along them.

I found a poplar branch covered with black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa). They were a bit dry and had lost some of their volume but they hadn’t shriveled down too much. When they dry out they lose about 90% of their volume and shrink down to small black flakes, and it looks like someone has smeared paint or tar on the limb that they grow on. You can see that over in the upper right, how paper thin one of them has become. When it rains, they will all swell up like black pillows. Their reaction shows that jelly fungi are mostly water.

There were lots of self-seeded wild crabapples out here and the birds had been slow about it but they were eating them. A flock of robins can strip a crabapple of every bit of fruit in no time at all, so I doubt it was robins eating them.

There are lots of old repurposed factory buildings in this section of town is what this sign is saying.

And there is one of the old factory buildings that has not been repurposed. It’s easy to tell Kingsbury Corporation by its huge smoke stack.

It has lightning rods and steel bands, and many, many cracks. It even looks like it bulges a bit.

Some of the steel bands have and are falling off, which is just a bit alarming.

Kingsbury started out over a hundred years ago making toys, but evolved into a world leader in the design and manufacture of machine tools. Now the company has gone out of business and the building is all but abandoned. I worked there as an engineer for years until the bottom fell out of the engineering market pretty much all-over New England. When all the car companies went into a slump so did many other businesses.

The windows in the engineering department have been bricked up. Mechanical engineering was a job that I truly loved and I have many fond memories of my time spent here.

I used to have to cross a bridge different from the one this sign speaks of to get into the building. Beaver Brook actually flowed under the Kingsbury building I worked in and one year when it flooded all the wood blocks in a big wood block floor floated into a pile. It was a bit of a nightmare because it meant that area couldn’t be used to assemble machines.

This bridge over the brook is much different than the original railroad trestle but it serves today’s purpose. I was out here mid-day on a week day and I met a few people out using the trail. It was just after my retirement and I found myself feeling like I had skipped out of work and was slacking off. It has been a long time since I’ve been out walking on a week day so I’m sure it will take some getting used to.

Beaver Brook was staying where it belonged and looked good and clean. This brook, along with the Ashuelot River, is responsible for the town having grown up where it did. Between them they powered a lot of industry. The first sawmill and grist mill in Keene were powered by Beaver Brook. It winds its way through the heart of the city and it’s a fine thing unless and until it floods.

Another shrub the city has planted along the trail is the highbush cranberry, which isn’t a cranberry at all. It is a native viburnum named Viburnum trilobum with fruit (drupes) that resemble cranberries in color and shape. They are also said to taste like cranberries but I’ve never tried them. They’ll grow to 15 feet tall under the right conditions and these examples were quite tall. Birds are said to love the fruit and I was happy to see that most of them had been eaten.

White poplar (Populus alba) catkins were just starting to come out of the bud. They’re gray and fuzzy much like willow catkins and when they flower, they’ll grow to 3 or 4 inches long and fall from the trees in great numbers. This tree was imported from Europe in 1748 and liked it here enough to now grow in almost every state. It won’t be too long before their fluffy seeds will be floating on the wind.

There is a beech tree out here that shows what can happen when Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) twines itself around a tree. Luckily someone cut the vines away from the beech but it will now be deformed for life.

The tree looked healthy but it’s hard to say if it will live a full life with such a twisted shape.

This shot that I took previously shows what Oriental bittersweet was doing to a young elm. Elm is one of the toughest of our native trees but no tree can withstand the steel cable like strength of bittersweet. Once it wraps around a tree trunk the tree’s only hope of survival is to grow out around it and absorb it.

The trail goes on into downtown Keene and from there south into Swanzey, Winchester, and Hinsdale if you feel like a good long walk, but since I grew up walking these railbeds I’ve walked it all at one time or another, so I turned around here. Though it isn’t as nature filled as my usual walks I do like this part of the trail, especially in winter when everything is so icy.

It’s hard to leave the only place you’ve known.
~Lois Lowry

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By a Stream

All week long the weather people said last Saturday, January 5^th would be rainy and Sunday the 6^th would be sunny. It did indeed rain Saturday and even dusted the landscape with snow overnight but there was very little sunshine on Sunday. The sun did break out eventually and I decided to follow a small stream that meanders through my neighborhood. It weaves its way through a small slice of true wilderness where nobody ever goes; just the kind of place you would have found me when I was a boy.

A deer had come this way not too long ago.

I could see where they crossed the stream.

There is a small tributary on the far side and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had walked right down it.

The stream bed is gravel and the water is very clean.

But this stream can fool you and I remember having to carry my son across it once as it came up and over the road in a flood. Since then it has flooded a few times and is scary enough for me to know that I don’t want to be anywhere near it when it does. The Christmas fern with its fronds all pointing in the same direction told of recent high water.

There is a beautiful burl here that I’ve been watching for years. It isn’t very big; about the size of a baseball, and if it’s growing it’s doing so very slowly. If it was bigger it would make a beautiful bowl.

There on the bank of the stream was a clump of something I wanted to see.

I like to visit my friends the tree mosses (Climacium dendroides) every now and then but I think it has been a year or more since I saw them last. They are cheery mosses that look like little palm trees, and they always glow with a beautiful inner light. This is the only spot I’ve ever found them so they aren’t common in this area, but I was happy to see that they’re spreading here along the little stream. They must not mind being under water for a time because it’s getting so the stream floods once or twice a year now. When I moved here it flooded once each decade.

It was dark in the forest because the sun had gone.

And it had started to rain again.

The oddest thing I saw was a free standing river grape vine (Vitis riparia.) This is odd because the top of the vine was in the trees and grapes need something to climb on. The stems are too weak to support themselves and without something to climb they’ll sprawl on the ground. I’m guessing that the tree it originally grew on had died a long time ago; so long ago that all traces of it had disappeared.

I’ve seen some magical things in grape tendrils. This one reminded me of someone sitting cross legged. Maybe it was the beautiful Hindu dancer I saw in another tendril a few years ago.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) is a good wetland indicator and they grow all alongside the stream in the almost always wet soil. Their shin high, spore bearing fronds full of round black spore cases make them very easy to see in winter. Early colonists noticed that this fern was very sensitive to frost and they gave it its common name. It has toxic properties and animals rarely eat it, but some Native American tribes used its root medicinally.

Delicate fern moss (Thuidium delicatulum) grew at the base of a tree. Whoever named this moss couldn’t have known it well, because it is far from delicate. This example has been under the water of a fast moving stream many times but you’d never know it. Orchid growers use this moss in commercial orchid cultivation.

Papery beech leaves whispered in the breeze. I hadn’t thought about beech trees having such a strong presence in the forest until recently. All year long they are there, from the time of their beautiful buds breaking in May until the pale white leaves fall from their branches the following spring, a continual woodland companion, always welcome.

I’ve been seeing turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) in various shades of brown and orange but I haven’t seen many in blues and purples, which are my favorites. The scientific names of this fungus mean thin (Trametes) and many colored (versicolor) and that’s exactly what they are. Someday I hope to learn what determines their color.

This large fungus looked like it was trying to form brackets or shelves but it wasn’t having much luck and looked more like a misshapen blob than anything else and I couldn’t identify it. I don’t feel too bad about not being able to identify mushrooms though, because there are an estimated 3.8 million different fungi on earth and about 90% of them haven’t been identified. Science has found that mushrooms are closer to animals than plants because they contain chemicals that are also found in lobsters and crabs.

Black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa) have become rarer than other jelly fungi over the years and that’s why I don’t show them here very often. I saw some good examples this day though, and they were nice and plumped up because of the rain. When this fungus dries out it loses about 90% of its volume and shrinks down to tiny black specks of the bark of what it grows on. These pillow shaped, shiny black fungi grow mostly on alders in this area.

I thought I might see some witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) in bloom but all I saw were the little cup like bracts that the strap shaped yellow petals come out of.

The most beautiful things I saw on this day were the witch hazel’s orange brown leaves. It’s a pretty color that warms you even on a winter day, and I was happy to see them.

To sit in solitude, to think in solitude with only the music of the stream and the cedar to break the flow of silence, there lies the value of wilderness. ~ John Muir

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More Summer Fungi

I keep doing these mushroom posts for two reasons: First, we’ve had so much rain and warm weather they’re everywhere right now, including many I’ve never seen before. Second, I hope to convince you that mushrooms can be every bit as beautiful as flowers. You just have to look a little closer to see them, that’s all. Who could not see beauty in this little group of butter wax caps (Hygrocybe ceracea)?

More and more coral mushrooms are beginning to appear. Many coral mushrooms get their common name from the way they resemble the corals found under the sea, as this one did. I think it is an ashy coral (Clavulina cinerea.) Not the prettiest perhaps, but it’s the first time I’ve seen one.

This one was very pretty. I think it might be a golden coral (Ramaria aurea.) I don’t see many yellow coral mushrooms of this kind so I was happy to find it.

Yellow spindle corals (Clavulinopsis fusiformis) are much easier to find and this year they’re everywhere. Each tiny cylinder is about the same diameter as a piece of cooked spaghetti. The tips are usually pointed but on this example they were rounded. This species usually grows in tight clusters, often in the hard packed soil on the side of the trail, but lately I’ve found them on the forest floor as well.

Another fungus I’ve never seen is called worm coral or fairy fingers, though it is said to be common. It’s a white spindle mushroom named Clavaria vermicularis. There were several clusters of it growing in a large group in a mossy lawn. They are said to be so fragile that just a touch will break them.

Some of the white coral cylinders had begun to curl around the others in this group and others had broken. This fungus grows straight up out of the soil and usually doesn’t branch. The tips sometime become pointed and turn brown like some of these did.

I finally saw a yellow patches mushroom (Amanita flavoconia) with its patches still on. The patches are small pieces of the universal veil that covers the mushroom when it is young. The veil is made of very thin tissue and as the mushroom grows it tears through it, and bits are left on the cap. Apparently the rain can wash them off because I’ve seen many with no patches showing. This mushroom is in the Amanita family, which contains some of the most toxic mushrooms known. I’ll say it again: never eat a mushroom that you’re not 110% sure is safe. They don’t call some of them death caps and destroying angels for nothing.

Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora) are not mushrooms but they like dark forests and plenty of moisture just like mushrooms, so when I go mushroom hunting I usually find them as well. These plants slowly turn their single bell shaped flower from looking at the ground to looking straight up to the sky, and that is the sign that they’ve been pollinated. They are also called ghost plants. Fresh stems contain a gel that Native Americans used to treat eye problems. The common name comes from the plant’s shape, which is said to resemble the pipes that the Natives smoked.

Jelly babies (Leotia lubrica) are everywhere this year. These tiny mushroom almost always grow in clumps like that seen here. This is a gelatinous mushroom that often feels slippery and another name for it is slippery cap. It is also called green slime fungus and the gumdrop fungus. The lubrica part of its scientific name means slimy. They are very small; usually a clump this size could sit on a penny with room to spare, so you have to train your eyes to see small.

How do mushrooms that have just come out of the soil stay so clean? These had just pushed their way up through the wet leaves and had hardly a speck of soil on them. You’d think they’d be at least a little muddy. I think they were orange mycena mushrooms (Mycena leaiana,) but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Mushrooms don’t always have to have a cap and a stem to be beautiful. I love this orange crust fungus (Stereum complicatum) and look for it every year at this time. It’s color is so bright it’s like a beacon in the woods and it can be seen from quite far away on fallen branches. The complicatum part of its scientific name means “folded back on itself” and that is often just what it does.

I found this reddening lepiota (Leucoagaricus americanus) growing in a sunny meadow that had been logged recently. It was big; the cap must have been 4 inches across, and it was a beautiful thing. It is called reddening lepiota because it is said to turn red wherever it is touched, but since I didn’t touch it I can’t confirm that.

I saw one of the largest black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa) I’ve ever seen on a beech log. This is just one part of a mass that must have had a total length of a foot or more. Some of it was shiny and some had a matte finish like that pictured. When it comes to jelly fungi, spores are produced on the shiny surface. They can absorb up to 60 times their weight in water and when dry shrink down to little flakes. This fungus is also called black witch’s butter and black jelly roll.

There are three bolete mushrooms that I know of that have webbed stalks that look similar to this one, so the caps have to tell the story. Russell’s bolete (Boletus russellii) shown here has a yellow-brown velvety cap that gets scaly and cracked on top as it ages. The shaggy stalked bolete (Boletus betula) has a small cap that looks far out of proportion to the stem; like it was stunted somehow. Frost’s bolete (Boletus frostii) has dark red sticky caps with red undersides and is also called the apple bolete. Sometimes amber colored drops appear on the surface of that one’s cap. Boletes have pores on the cap underside instead of gills.

Nothing in nature is done on a whim; everything is done for a reason, so how does a deeply grooved stalk like this one benefit a mushroom?  Does it keep slugs from crawling up it? These are the kinds of questions that come to me when I’m in the woods and I don’t really expect anyone to try and answer them. Unless you happen to know the answers, that is.

I’m seeing a lot of puffballs this year. These examples were common earth balls (Scleroderma citrinum,) which are also called the poison pigskin puffballs.  Though these grew on a well-rotted log they normally like to grow on compacted earth and are not common in this area. They often have a yellow tint on their surface and are called citrine earth balls because of it.

One of my favorite fungal finds for this post is called the tiger’s eye mushroom (Coltricia perennis.) One reason it’s unusual is because it’s one of the only polypores with a central stem. Most polypores are bracket or shelf fungi. The concentric rings of color are also unusual and make it look like a turkey tail fungus with a stem. The cap is very thin and flat like a table, and another name for it is the fairy stool. They are very tough and leathery and can persist for quite a long time.

I showed a young and very dark purple cort mushroom (Cortinarius iodeoides) in my last post so this time I thought I’d show one further along to illustrate how they lighten with age. The handy acorn helps show the scale of this pretty mushroom.

One of the prettiest mushrooms in the woods right now are black chanterelles (Craterellus cornucopioides.) I met a mushroom forager once who told me that this mushroom was considered a choice delicacy and at that time restaurants were paying him $50.00 per pound for them, and they’d buy all he could find. But the trouble was finding them; mushroom hunters say they are very hard to find because looking for them is like looking for black holes in the ground. Some say they can look right at them and not see them but for me they seem very easy to find, and I think that’s due to my colorblindness. I’ve read that armies keep colorblind soldiers because they can “see through” many types of camouflage, and I think that must be why I can see these mushrooms so clearly when others can’t.

Black chanterelles are really deep purple. They are also called the deep purple horn of plenty. They seem to like growing on hillsides; that’s the only place I’ve ever found them.

Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a mass of branching, thread like hyphae. When mushroom spores grow they produce mycelium, which eventually produces fruit, which is the above ground portion that we see. The beautiful mycelium in this photo grew on the underside of a log and I never would have seen it if I hadn’t rolled the log over. Mycelium growths are thought to be the largest living things on earth. A huge honey mushroom (Armillarea ostoyae) mycelium in Oregon’s Blue Mountains covers 2,384 acres and holds the record for the world’s largest known organism. It is thought to be between 2,400 and 8,650 years old.

I met a  twenty something girl and her dog on a wooded trail recently. I had a camera around my neck as usual and she must have thought I was birding because she stopped and told me where to find some ducks and a heron. I thanked and told her that actually I was looking for mushrooms, and that’s when she lit up. “Oh,” she said, “I just saw one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It was a red mushroom with what looked like white mold on it, and the mold sparkled like crystals. Who would ever believe that a moldy mushroom could be so beautiful?” I had to laugh, and I told her that I had a photo at home that almost matched what she had just described. “So I’d believe it,” I told her, and then we both laughed. It was nice to meet someone so full of the love and beauty of nature. She smiled from ear to ear and her eyes sparkled when she spoke and she was just bubbling over with joy at what she had seen. Well my fungal friends, I thought as I walked on, it seems we have a new convert.

All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child. ~Marie Curie

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By A Pond

I was going to walk a rail trail in Swanzey one day but as I pulled off the road to park I saw a small pond. Though I’ve seen it many times before it wasn’t until this day that it caught my interest. I started to explore its shores and before I knew it I had a camera full of photos and never did walk the rail trail. Normally this wouldn’t be anything remarkable but the pond is one step above a puddle, so if you put a canoe in it you’d be lucky if you had one stroke of the paddle before you had crossed it.

The unexplored rail trail will still be there for another day; maybe a sunnier one.

Barbed wire was used in this area in place of the heavy gauge stock fencing that the railroad usually used to keep cows and other animals off the tracks. You have to watch where you’re going in these New Hampshire woods because there are still miles of barbed wire out there and it’s easy to get hung up on.

A culvert lets the small stream that feeds the pond flow under the road.

An outflow stream runs into the drainage ditches along the rail bed, ensuring that the pond is always balanced and never floods.

This 3 part seed pod told me that I can come here in the spring to find the sessile leaved bellwort plant (Uvularia sessilifolia.) The flowers are pale yellow, more or less tubular, and nodding, and often grow in large colonies. The plant is also called wild oats or merry bells. In botany sessile means “resting on the surface” so in the case of sessile leaved bellwort the leave are stalkless and appear to be resting on the surface of the stem.  Since the plant is so good at spreading by underground stems (stolons) it doesn’t often set seed.

Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) likes to grow in places that are on the wet side and seeing its clusters of spore bearing sori is a good indication of a wetland.  It is also called bead fern, for obvious reasons. The name sensitive fern comes from its sensitivity to frost, which was first noticed by the early colonials.

Another wetland indicator appeared in the form of winterberries (Ilex verticillata.) I often see this native holly growing in standing water but I’ve heard that it will grow in drier soil. Birds love its bright red berries. These shrubs are dioecious, meaning they need both a male and female plant present to produce seed. If you have a yard with wet spots winterberry is a great, easy to grow native plant that won’t mind wet feet.

Black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa) grew on a fallen oak limb. They were a bit dry and had lost some of their volume but they hadn’t shriveled down to the black flakes they could have been. I like their shiny surfaces; sometimes it’s almost as if they had been faceted and polished like a beautiful black gem.

I think that this is what was left of a thin maze flat polypore (Daedaleopsis confragosa) but it was hard to tell because its entire upper surface was missing so I could see its gills from above. I’m assuming that it was slowly decomposing from age but I can’t be sure because I’ve never seen another bracket fungus do this. Normally the upper surface of a thin maze flat polypore would be zoned like a turkey tail, but the zones would tend to be tan to brown to cream, rather than brightly colored like a turkey tail.

The lower pore bearing surface of the thin maze flat polypore is maze like, as its name suggests. Michael Kuo of Mushroom Expert. com says that this mushroom’s appearance is highly variable, with pores sometimes appearing elongated and sometimes more round. I put my camera against the tree’s trunk under the fungus and snapped this photo without seeing what I was taking a photo of, so it isn’t one of the best I’ve ever done. It does show you the maze-like structure of this fungus though, and that’s the point.

From a photographic perspective the example above is terrible, but it shows just what I want you to see. These foliose lichens were growing in the white pine branches just over my head, and all I had to do to find them was look up and see their silhouette. If you’d like to find them all you need to do is look up the next time you’re under a tree.

If you see a foliose lichen on a branch and pull it down for a look like I did you might see something similar to the northern camouflage lichen seen (Melanelia septentrionalis) above. Foliose means leaf or foliage like, and this lichen is a beautiful example of that.

The shiny reddish brown discs are apothecia or fruiting bodies, and they help identify this lichen. The stringy black parts are the lichen’s root like structures called rhizines, and they also help identify the lichen. The body (thallus) was very dry and its color had faded from brown to the off whitish gray color seen here. I usually find these on pine or birch limbs.

Note: Canadian Botanist Arold Lavoie tells me that this lichen is in the Tuckermannopsis ciliata group. I’m sorry if my misidentification has caused any confusion. Arold has helped me here before and I’m very grateful. If you’d like to pay him a visit his website can be found at http:www.aroldlavoie.com

Just to the right of center in the above photo is a maple dust lichen (Lecanora thysanophora) on the bark of a maple. It was about the size of a dime, or .70 inches (17.9 mm.)

It was a few years ago now that I stumbled onto my first maple dust lichen and though I kept it in the front of my mind I never saw another example until just recently. Now I’m suddenly seeing them everywhere. It’s hard for me to believe but I must have been looking right at them and not seeing them for years. From a distance they resemble script lichens, so maybe that’s why. They’re a beautiful lichen and definitely worth looking for. They can be identified in part by the tiny fringe around their perimeter.

Of all the things I saw near the pond this moss on a log was my favorite because of its beautiful green color and because it was so full of life. It seemed as if it was sparkling from the light of creation coursing through its trailing arms and I could have sat there with it all day. When the log was a tree a woodpecker might have made the hole that the moss explored. I could see part of an acorn in there, so maybe the woodpecker that made the hole hid the acorn in it for a future meal. I think this moss might be beaked comb moss (Rhynchostegium serrulatum) but I’m not certain. I see it quite often on logs but never quite so full of life as this one was. Even in a photo it glows.

American hazelnut (Corylus americana) catkins told me that I could come here in April and see the tiny crimson female flowers. The catkins are the male flowers and once they begin to open and shed yellowish green pollen that will be the signal that it’s time to watch for the opening of the female flowers. They are among the smallest flowers that I know of and are hard to get a good photo of, but I try each spring because they’re also among the most beautiful.

Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take. ~Angela N. Blount

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Winter (ish)

Winter can’t seem to make up its mind this year. We’ll get one or two cold days and then two or three warm ones and the snowstorms have left little more than powdered sugar dustings. After the record breaking warmth of December, January is now 6 degrees above average and after last winter I’m not complaining about any of it. The photo above was taken right after a small ice storm as the sun was melting all the ice off the trees and shrubs.

This is what happens when it isn’t light enough for the camera to see. I took this with my cell phone at Half Moon Pond in Hancock at dawn one morning. I was going to delete it but then it started to remind me of a watercolor painting so I kept it. It shows how misty some of our mornings have been lately.

This also shows how misty it has been but this was taken at sunset after a dusting of snow fell that morning.

Our smaller ponds have started to freeze up but the ice is thin and ice fishermen are getting frustrated.

The river has hardly frozen at all but one day it was full of these curious white pancakes.

The pancakes turned out to be river foam that had collected into discs and then had frozen overnight.

There was a tiny bit of ice on the Ashuelot River and some mallards swam by it just as I was preparing to take its photo. Two males and a female, with the female leading the way.

This is what happens when a pond freezes and then it rains and the rain freezes; glare ice. If it hadn’t been so thin it would have been an ice skater’s dream come true. Thin ice causes problems every year and this year is no different. I’ve already heard of two boys and a snowmobiler having to be rescued, and a deer was rescued one night as well. They’re all lucky to be alive.

I wonder how the deer get through a winter like this. They can’t stand on the ice very well and sometimes all 4 feet splay out from under them. In some places the woods are full of ice as the above photo shows, so I think the deer are might be having a rough time of it.

I saw a huge old maple tree that was hollowed out enough for me to have comfortably had a sit down in it if I had been so inclined. There are more hollow trees living in the forest than one would guess.

Can you see the setting sun in this old pine tree? I took its photo because the setting sun lit up the lichens covering almost every bit of exposed branch. The branches themselves have grown into a witches’ broom, which I rarely see on trees, especially conifers. According to the Arnold Arboretum the English term witches’-broom translates directly from the German word Hexenbesen. Both parts of the German compound word are found in English as hex, meaning to bewitch, and besom, a bundle of twigs, meaning witches’ broom is a bewitched bundle of twigs. Even though that might be what it looks like it is actually a deformity caused by any number of things such as disease, fungi, insects or viruses. Many dwarf conifers have been propagated from witches’ brooms and collecting and growing new specimens is big business.

Winter is when jelly fungi appear and one of easiest to find is black jelly fungus (Exidia glandulosa.) This pillow shaped, shiny black fungus is common on alders here. When it dries out it loses about 90%  of its volume and shrinks down to small black flakes, and it looks like someone has smeared paint or tar on the limb that it grows on. This one shows well that jelly fungi are mostly water.

Amber jelly fungus (Exidia recisa) is also common and I find it on oak or poplar limbs. You can’t tell from this photo but it has a shiny side and a matte finish side. The spores are produced on the shiny side and if I understand what I’ve read correctly, this is true of most jelly fungi. This one has the color of jellied cranberry sauce.

This is one of the biggest orange jelly fungi (Dacrymyces palmatus) that I’ve seen. Orange and yellow jelly fungi seem to appear earlier in the season than black or amber jellies do, so I see more of them.  Jelly fungi are fun to see because they add beauty to the winter landscape, but people seem to have a hard time finding them. I think that they probably miss seeing them and many other things because they’re thinking more about where they’re going than where they are, and they walk too fast. To find the small beautiful things in nature I have to walk slowly and focus completely on right here, right now; just the immediate surroundings. If you’re in the woods thinking about what you’ll do when you get home you probably won’t see much, and you’ll remember less.

I’ve seen a lot of puddle ice this year that has grown long, sharp looking ice crystals.

As you’ve seen so far this winter is more about ice than snow, but even that hasn’t approached anything near severe. Winter can’t seem to make up its mind and everyone wonders if it will be as severe as it has been for the last two years. Last year it all happened in February so it’s still a possibility, but I try to think about how each passing day means the sun stays out a little longer and brings us another day closer to March. From that point it’ll be doubtful that we’ll see any severe weather, but anything is possible.

Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things. ~Edward Steichen

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First Snowfall

Last Saturday, December 19th, we woke to snow covered ground. It was the first snow of the season but it didn’t come from a normal snowstorm. This was lake effect snow that came all the way from Buffalo, New York. Buffalo sits on the shores of Lake Erie and is famous for getting unbelievable amounts of lake effect snow. Luckily this storm gave them and parts of New Hampshire just a dusting this time.

Turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) are tough and don’t mind a little snow or cold. These examples were nice and colorful.

It would take a lot more snow than this to flatten an evergreen Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) but eventually they will flatten. This year’s fronds will turn brown and wither in the spring when the new ones begin growing.

From my favorite river watching perch on the old Thompson covered bridge, the Ashuelot River looked moody and had just a little snow on its right hand bank.

This view is of the sharp snow melt line between where the sunshine was and the bridge’s shadow. By the time I got there the sun was quickly disappearing.

From Perkin’s Pond in Troy Mount Monadnock had a dusting of snow that only showed when the sun was full on the summit, which wasn’t often on this day. The strong wind made the pond surface choppy.

Here you can see the snow on Mount Monadnock a little better. You can also see a solitary climber, standing in almost the same spot as the lone climber I saw the last time I was here. It must have been very, very cold up there.

Back in the forest the snow was staying put where the sun didn’t shine.

A large clump of Indian pipe seed pods (Monotropa uniflora) stood beside the trail. Each one looked as if it had been carved from a wooden block.

Some evergreen ferns still had a good coating of snow, but the sun was just reaching them.

Black jelly fungus (Exidia glandulosa) grew on an alder limb, but was frozen solid. I’ve never been able to find out how fruiting in winter benefits jelly fungi but it must, because that’s when most of them appear.

Ice had covered dead grass stems and made sharply pointed patterns.

A large puddle in the woods reflected the promise of better weather to come. Meteorologists say we’ll see sixty plus degrees again on Christmas Eve day, and I can’t think of a better gift after our last two extreme winters.

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?  ~Bob Hope

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone has a safe, joyous and blessed Christmas.

 

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Time for a Climb

As of last weekend we hadn’t seen any snow but it was cold enough to make it on the ski slopes. I was curious to see if they had been making any so I decided to hike up high blue trail in Walpole and take a peek over into Vermont.

It was a cool but beautiful sunny day.

Now that the leaves have fallen you can really see the hardscape that makes up the forest floor-what I call the bones of the forest. This is a great place to look at mosses and lichens.

The larger boulders in these woods are festooned with rock tripe lichen (Umbilicaria mammulata.) Some of the biggest examples I’ve seen-as big as a hand-grow here. Though I imagine they must taste like old rubber, these lichens were a source of emergency food for Native Americans and saved the lives of many an early settler. Even George Washington’s troops are said to have eaten rock tripe to survive the brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777.

 

Polypody fern, also known as rock cap fern, grows on the tops of many ledges and stones in these woods. This fern likes places with little wind and high humidity, so it will tell you something of your surroundings. The round sori where spores are produced can be found on the undersides of the leaves and are orange brown and look fuzzy when they are mature like those in the above photo. Many fern sori are covered by thin membranes called indusial, but those of the polypody fern are naked.

Something odd that I saw was two reflectors on a tree. They were about three quarters of an inch in diameter and looked to have been hammered into the tree much like a big thumbtack. I can’t even guess who would be coming up here at night, or why. My idea of a good time doesn’t include dancing around on cliff edges in the dark.

The beech trees along the trail still showed a little color.

When they are moist black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa) puff up like little black pillows, but when they dry out they shrink down to little more than black specks. Since this example didn’t look like either I think it was frozen solid.

These orange jellies (Dacrymyces palmatus) looked frozen too. I see a lot of these at this time of year and almost all of them grow on eastern hemlock logs.

Seeing this old stonework always gets me thinking about the people who once lived on top of this hill.

What a job clearing this land must have been for a man with nothing but an axe. Just as daunting would have been having to get rid of all the stumps and stones before he could plow. It must have been near back breaking labor from sunup to sundown. I’ve cut trees with an axe and built stone walls, so it’s no wonder to me that they died so young. I think they must have simply worn their bodies out.

The pond had ice on it, so it had been quite cold up here the night before. I wonder if this small pond was originally a hand dug stock pond. It’s very close to the old foundation. Someday I’m going to have to research the history of this place.

The sign lets you know that you have arrived.

As always the view was very blue and as I suspected there was snow on Stratton Mountain over in Vermont. They like to be open on Thanksgiving Day, which is November 27th, so most of the snow is probably man made.

Man-made or not, if it’s cold enough on these mountain peaks to keep snow and ice from melting during the day then it won’t be too long before those of us down in the valleys get a taste of winter too. This view looks to the west so the wind is almost always blowing through here. I was dressed for fall but up here it was winter and the wind was biting, so I didn’t stay out in the open long.

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. ~Washington Irving.

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Things I’ve Seen

All of the sudden we’re seeing more sunny days but it’s still cold enough to keep the snow from melting very fast. The word is we’re going to see warmer days next week. A few days above freezing will get the sap flowing in these maples.

 

In spite of the snow the poplar sunburst lichens (Xanthoria hasseana) are looking good. This one has grown quite a bit since the last time I visited it and is now about an inch in diameter. The round fruiting cups, called apothecia, are where this lichen’s spores are produced. This lichen never seems to be affected by the weather.

 

These photos are of the same lichen but the photo on the left was taken when it was moist from rain and snow and the photo on the right was taken after it had dried out. This is a good example of why serious lichen hunters look for them after it rains. The color change due to weather conditions can be dramatic.

 

I thought this white shield lichen was very beautiful, but is it really white or has it changed color because it has dried out? That is the dilemma facing people who enjoy finding lichens. The only example of a white shield lichen I can find is called pleated white lichen (Diploicia canescens), which can be white, bluish white, or grayish white. I don’t know whether or not the one in the photo is that lichen.

 

Jelly fungi also go through drastic changes due to weather conditions. On the left side of the photo are black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa) when very dry and on the right side are the same fungi after a good rain. The difference is pretty amazing. When dry they look like black crust fungi and when wet like small black pillows. I find them mostly on alder bark.

  

The berries on this smooth carrion flower (Smilax herbacea) vine haven’t been touched by either bird or animal.  This plant gets its common name from the way the flowers smell like decaying meat but even so, it is said that song and game birds, along with raccoons and black bears, eat the berries. Native Americans and early colonists ate the roots, spring shoots and berries-all said to be odorless- but after smelling its flowers I think I’d have a hard time eating any part of this plant.

 

I drove by a spot that had several crab apple trees planted in a row and each tree was full of cedar waxwings. This soft, not quite sharp photo was the best I could do out of the window. I thought I probably didn’t have much time and sure enough, just after I came to a stop and took a couple of quick shots they all flew off.

 

The cedar waxwings reminded me of last year when I visited this waterfall and inadvertently got between a cedar waxwing and the silky dogwood berries he wanted. He kept flying directly at my face, pulling up at only the last minute.  Some readers suggested that he might have gotten drunk on the fermented berries. There is a lot more ice built up on the rocks at the base of the fall now than there was then!

This is a tire print from a large front end loader that was used to move snow. I liked the tread pattern.

The buds of the horse chestnut are some that can fool you into thinking that they’re swelling from sap flow, but they stay this way all winter. This tree lives in a local park so I don’t know its name but it has beautiful pink flowers each June.

 

Across from the horse chestnut is a native yellow, or tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera). This photo shows what is left of the seed head once most of the seeds have fallen.

 

Finding sawdust (bill dust?) like this on the snow can only mean one thing-a woodpecker was here.

 

This hole is small and round rather than large and rectangular, and the sawdust on the snow is made up of fine particles rather than large, torn shreds, so I know this wasn’t a pileated woodpecker. One of the smaller ones made this hole and even excavated a chamber that leads down into the heart of this dead tree. Woodpeckers mate from March through May, so this might be an important bit of wood work.

 

This milk white, toothed polypore (Irpex lacteus) looked fresh in spite of the snow and below zero temperatures. According to Mushroom Expert.com this is a resupinate mushroom. Resupinate means upside down, but in the case of mushrooms, according to The Journal of Wild Mushrooming, it means it is a “fertile surface with its back attached to or intergrown with the substrate.”  In other words it looks like a crust fungus with teeth.

 

This is a closer view of the teeth on the milk white, toothed polypore.  I think they were frozen solid. The Irpex part of the scientific name means “a large rake with iron teeth” and lacteus means “milky.”

Commonly we stride through the out-of-doors too swiftly to see more than the most obvious and prominent things. For observing nature, the best pace is a snail’s pace. ~Edward Way Teale

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Things I’ve Seen

This is another one of those posts full of unusual things that I see in the woods that don’t seem to fit in other posts.

These amber jelly fungi (Exidia recisa) were frozen solid and looked like lollipops, or maybe half lollipops. This fungus is called willow brain because it is often found growing on willows. It produces spores on its upper surface, which is smooth and shiny, and the underside has more of a matte finish. Winter is a great time to find jelly fungi of many kinds, but you have to look closely. Those in the photo were no bigger than a dime-roughly 18mm.

 

Split gill fungi (Schizophyllum commune) are probably the easiest winter fungi to identify because of their wooly winter coats. These mushrooms grow year round on dead limbs but for some reason, I only notice them in winter. That could be because they are very small-no larger than a penny at best-roughly 19mm. They’re also very tough and leathery. They grow on every continent except Antarctica and because of that are said to be the most studied mushroom on earth. Scientists have recently isolated a compound from them that has been shown to inhibit the HIV-1 virus.

The “gills” on the split gill fungus are actually folds on its under surface that split lengthwise when it dries out. This example was very dry. The splits close over the fertile surfaces as the mushroom shrivels in dry weather. When rehydrated by rain the splits reopen, the spore-producing surfaces are exposed to the air, and spores are released.

Beech trees have their long, pointed buds all ready for spring. When these begin to break and unfurl they are one of the most beautiful sights in the forest, in my opinion. The fuzzy, silvery new leaf looks like an angel wing, but just for a very short time.

 

I can’t even guess what caused this zig-zag pattern in this tree bark. My first thought was lightning, but that would run from the top down. This scar comes out of the soil and runs about 3 feet up the trunk.

White cheese polypore (Tyromyces chioneus) is, according to the website Mushroom Expert.com, just about the most boring mushroom going. But it is a “winter mushroom” and that, in my opinion, makes it at least a little interesting. It grows on hardwood logs and causes white rot, and gets its common name from its scientific one. Tyromyces means “with a cheesy consistency,” and chioneus means “snow white.” These mushrooms are big enough to be seen from a distance and when they are fresh they have a pleasing fragrance that some think is like cheesecake.

This mushroom was frozen solid but had still held on to its colors, which reminded me of fall.

Instead of being caused by an insect like many galls, alder (Alnus glutinosa) tongue gall is caused by a fungus (Taphrina alni). The fungus chemically deforms parts of the ovarian tissue of the female cone-like catkins (strobiles) and causes long, tongue shaped galls known as languets to grow from them. These galls seem to like high humidity so are usually found on alders that grow near ponds and streams.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many orange jelly fungi (Dacrymyces palmatus) growing in one place before. They were on a hemlock stump no bigger than the average doughnut. Most of the orange ones that I see are growing on hemlock.

 

These orange jelly fungi (Dacrymyces palmatus) grew inside a hollow log. Walking slowly and looking into hollow logs is a great way to find unexpected things but I only stick my hands in them after I’ve had a look first, because I’ve also seen sharp toothed chipmunks in them.

 

Black jelly fungi (Exidia glandulosa) often decorate alder bark in this area. These were a bit shriveled because of the cold and the lack of rain, but once we see some rain they will swell up and look like puffed up pillows. It’s amazing how much jelly fungi can swell up after a rain.

 

Last year the witch hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) along the river were still blooming on January 21^st, but not this year. All that is left are the cup shaped bracts which the strap shaped yellow petals unfurl from. I think 10 below zero in early December was too cold too soon and “switched them off” for this winter. Normally they won’t bloom much past Thanksgiving, so the last two or three years of seeing them bloom later and later have been unusual.

 

If you glanced at a maleberry (Lyonia ligustrina) shrub in spring or early summer you might think it was a blueberry, because its flowers resemble blueberry flowers. Both shrubs are in the blueberry family and maleberry is sometimes called male blueberry. You would be waiting a long time to find anything blue on this bush though-its fruit is a hard capsule full of seeds. The 5 part capsules make this an easy shrub to identify in winter. I just look for the star on the end of the capsules. I find them on the banks of ponds, growing next to alders.

Commonly we stride through the out-of-doors too swiftly to see more than the most obvious and prominent things. For observing nature, the best pace is a snail’s pace.  ~Edward Way Teale

Thanks for coming by.

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