Things I’ve Seen

We’re still very dry here and I haven’t seen hardly any of the mushrooms I’d expect to see but here was a dead birch tree full of golden pholiota mushrooms (Pholiota limonella) just like it was last year. I thought that’s what they were until I smelled them but these examples had no citrus scent, so I’d say they must be Pholiota aurivella which, except for its smaller spores and the lack of a lemon scent, appears identical.

The frustrating thing about mushroom identification is how for most of them you can never be sure without a microscope, and that’s why I never eat them. There are some that don’t have many lookalikes and though I’m usually fairly confident of a good identification for them I still don’t eat them. It’s just too risky.

One of my favorite fungal finds 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 sometimes 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 found it this hen of the woods fungus (Grifola frondosa,) growing at the base of an old oak tree. This edible polypore often grows in the same spot year after year and that makes it quite easy to find. They are said to look like the back of a brown hen’s ruffled feathers, and that’s how they come by their common name. Though they’re said to be brown I see green.

I saw a young fly agaric (Amanita muscaria v. formosa) in a lawn recently. I love the metallic yellow color of these mushrooms when they’re young. They’re common where pine trees grow and this one was under a pine. The name fly agaric comes from the practice of putting pieces of the mushroom in a dish of milk. The story says that when flies drank the milk they died, but it’s something I’ve never tried. Fly agaric is said to have the ability to “turn off” fear in humans and is considered toxic. Vikings are said to have used it for that very reason.

I don’t see many stinkhorn fungi but I hit the stinkhorn jackpot this year; there must have been 20 or more of them growing out of some well rotted wood chips. I think they’re the common stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus) and I have to say that for the first time I smelled odor like rotting meat coming from them because these example were passing on.  

Here was a fresher example. The green conical cap is also said to be slimy but it didn’t look it. This mushroom uses its carrion like odor to attracts insects, which are said to disperse its sticky spores. I saw quite a few small gnat like insects around the dying ones.

At this time of year I always roll logs over hoping to find the beautiful but rare cobalt crust fungus (Terana caerulea,) but usually I find this lighter shade of blue instead. I think it is Byssocorticium atrovirens. Apparently its common name is simply blue crust fungus. Crust fungi are called resupinate fungi and have flat, crust like fruiting bodies which usually appear on the undersides of fallen branches and logs. Resupinate means upside down, and that’s what many crust fungi appear to be. Their spore bearing surface can be wrinkled, smooth, warty, toothed, or porous and though they appear on the undersides of logs the main body of the fungus is in the wood, slowly decomposing it. They seem to be the least understood of all the fungi.

Some slime molds can be very small and others quite large. This one in its plasmodium stage was wasn’t very big at all, probably due to the dryness. When slime molds are in this state they are usually moving-very slowly. Slime molds are very sensitive to drying out so they usually move at night, but they can be found on cloudy, humid days as well. I think this one might be spreading yellow tooth slime (Phanerochaete chrysorhiza.) Slime molds, even though sometimes covering a large area, are actually made up of hundreds or thousands of single entities. These entities move through the forest looking for food or a suitable place to fruit and eventually come together in a mass.

Jack in the pulpit berries (Arisaema triphyllum) are ripe and red, waiting for a deer to come along and eat them. Deer must love them because they usually disappear almost as soon as they turn red. All parts of the Jack in the pulpit plant contain calcium oxalate crystals that cause painful irritation of the mouth and throat if eaten, but Native Americans knew how to cook the fleshy roots to remove any danger. They used them as a vegetable, and that’s why another name for the plant is “Indian turnip.”

False Solomon’s seal (Smilacina racemosa) berries are fully ripe and are now bright red instead of speckled. Native American’s used all parts of this plant including its roots, which contain lye and must be boiled and rinsed several times before they can be used. Birds, mice, grouse, and other forest critters eat the ripe berries that grow at the end of the drooping stem. They are said to taste like molasses and another common name for the plant is treacle berry.

American mountain ash (Sorbus americana) is a native tree but you’re more likely to find them growing naturally north of this part of the state. I do see them in the wild, but rarely. Their red orange fruit in fall and white flowers in spring have made them a gardener’s favorite and that’s where you’ll see most of them here though they prefer cool, humid air like that found in the 3000 foot elevation range. The berries are said to be low in fat and very acidic, so birds leave them for last. For some reason early settlers thought the tree would keep witches away so they called it witch wood. Native Americans used both the bark and berries medicinally. The Ojibwe tribe made both bows and arrows from its wood, which is unusual. Usually they used wood from different species, or wood from both shrubs and trees.

Kousa dogwood fruit looks a little different but it’s the edible part of a Kousa Dogwood (Cornus kousa.) This dogwood is on the small side and is native to Asia. I don’t see it too often. It is also called Japanese or Korean Dogwood. Kousa Dogwood fruit is made up of 20-40 fleshy carpels. In botany one definition of a carpel is a dry fruit that splits open, into seed-bearing sections. Kousa dogwood fruits are said by some to taste like papaya.  

In my own experience I find it best to leave plants with white berries alone because they are usually poisonous, and no native plant illustrates this better than poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans.) Though many birds can eat its berries without suffering, when most humans so much as brush against the plant they can itch for weeks afterward, and those who are particularly sensitive could end up in the hospital. I had a friend who had to be hospitalized when his eyes became swollen shut because of it. Eating any part of the plant or even breathing the smoke when it is burned can be very dangerous.

All parts of the yew tree (Taxus) are poisonous except (it is said) the red flesh of the berry, which is actually a modified seed cone. The seed within the seed cone is the most toxic part of the plant and eating as few as 3 of them can cause death in just a few hours. In February of 2014 a man named Ben Hines died in Brockdish, Norfolk, England after ingesting parts of yew trees. Nobody has ever been able to figure out why he did such a thing but the incident illustrated how extremely toxic yews are.

Beavers are trying to make a pond in a river and they had dammed it up from bank to bank. It wasn’t the biggest beaver dam I’ve seen but it was quite big. The largest beaver dam ever found is in Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park and spans about 2,800 feet. It has taken several generations of beavers since 1970 to build and it can be seen from space. Imagine how much water it is holding back!

Eastern or Virginia carpenter bees (Xylocopa virginica) are huge; at least as big as half my thumb. They also look very different than the bumblebees that I’m used to. These bees nest in wood and eat pollen and nectar. They don’t eat wood but they will excavate tunnels through rotten wood. The adults nest through winter and emerge in spring. Though it is said to be common in the eastern part of the country I I see very few. I’ve read that they can be up to an inch long and this one was all of that. Females can sting but they do so only when bothered. Males don’t have a stinger.

Folklore says that the wider the orangey brown band on a wooly bear caterpillar is, the milder the winter will be. If we’re to believe it then this winter will not be very mild because this wooly bear has more black than brown on it. In any event this caterpillar won’t care, because it produces its own antifreeze and can freeze solid in winter. Once the temperatures rise into the 40s F in spring it thaws out and begins feeding on dandelion and other early spring greens. Eventually it will spin a cocoon and emerge as a beautiful tiger moth. From that point on it has only two weeks to live.

The upper surface of a painted lady’s wings look very different than the stained glass look of the undersides but unfortunately I can’t show that to you because the photos didn’t come out. This painted lady was kind enough to land just in front of me on a zinnia. It’s the only one I’ve seen this year.

There is little that is more appropriate than a bee sleeping on a flower, in my opinion. Here in southwestern New Hampshire we don’t see many wildflowers in October, but every now and then you can find a stray something or other still hanging on. The bumblebee I saw on this aster early one morning was moving but very slowly, and looked more like it was hanging on to the flower head rather than harvesting pollen. Bumblebees I’ve heard, sleep on flowers, so maybe it was just napping. I suppose if it has to die in winter like bumblebees do, a flower is the perfect place to do that as well. Only queen bumblebees hibernate through winter; the rest of the colony dies. In spring the queen will make a new nest and actually sit on the eggs she lays to keep them warm, just like birds do.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau

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Things I’ve Seen

The above photo makes me feel that I should say good morning, so please consider it done. I saw this scene on my way to work one morning but since I don’t bring the camera that I use for landscape photos to work with me, I had to use my cellphone. It was a cold morning but the pastel sky was plenty beautiful enough to stop and gaze at. My color finding software tells me it was colored  peach puff, papaya whip, and Alice blue. How bare the trees are becoming.

The swamp dewberries (Rubus hispidus) are certainly colorful this year. In June this trailing vine blooms with white flowers that look a lot like strawberry flowers. The fruit looks more like a black raspberry than anything else and is said to be very sour. Native Americans had many medicinal uses for this plant, including treating coughs, fever and consumption. Swamp dewberry, as its name implies, is a good indicator of a wetland or moist soil that doesn’t dry out.

Some of the smaller oaks are hanging on to their leaves but they’re dropping quickly from the larger trees now.

Jack frost has come knocking. These crystals grew on my windshield overnight and though I wasn’t happy about the cold that made them I was happy to see them, because I love looking at the many  shapes that frost crystals form in.

Frost had found these mushrooms and turned them to purple jelly. I’m not sure what they started life as.

Frost rimmed the edges of these wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) leaves too. There is a lot of beauty to be found in the colder months.

At this time of year I always start rolling logs over, hoping to find the beautiful but rare cobalt crust fungus (Terana caerulea,) but usually I find this lighter shade of blue instead. After several years of trying to identify this fungus I’ve finally found a name for it: Byssocorticium atrovirens. Apparently its common name is simply blue crust fungus, which is good because that’s what I’ve been calling it. Crust fungi are called resupinate fungi and have flat, crust like fruiting bodies which usually appear on the undersides of fallen branches and logs. Resupinate means upside down, and that’s what many crust fungi appear to be. Their spore bearing surface can be wrinkled, smooth, warty, toothed, or porous and though they appear on the undersides of logs the main body of the fungus is in the wood, slowly decomposing it. They seem to be the least understood of all the fungi.

While rolling logs over to look for blue crust fungi I found these mosses that had been blanched almost white from having no sunlight reach them. They reminded me of something I’d see on a coral reef under the sea. I’m guessing that they originally grew on the tree in sunlight before it fell, and when it fell they ended up on the underside of the log. The odd part is how they continued to grow even with no sun light. That urge inside of plants that makes them reach for light must be very strong indeed.

We seem to be having weekly rainy days now and the drought’s grip on the land is slowly easing. One showery day at about 1:00 pm a sun beam peeked through the clouds just long enough and in just the right spot to light up Mount Skatutakee in Hancock. I always trust that sunbeams falling in a concentrated area like this will show me something interesting because they always have, so now I’m going to have to climb Mount Skatutakee. From what I’ve heard it takes 4 hours but at my pace it will most likely take 6 or more; I’m sure there will be lots of wonders to see. The name Skatutakee is pronounced  Skuh – TOO -tuh – kee and is said to come from two Native American Abenaki words that mean “land” and “fire,” so there might have once been a forest fire there. It certainly looked like it was burning on this day.

We can’t see the wind but we can often see what it has done. In this case it blew a dead plant stalk around in a complete circle and the stalk marked the river sand as it twirled around and around. It’s one of the more unusual things I’ve seen lately.

I don’t see many stinkhorn fungi and I’ve wondered if that was because I wasn’t looking in the right place. This example was sticking out of a very old and very rotted yellow birch log. It is the common stinkhorn (Phallus impudicus) and I have to say that, even though stinkhorns are said to have an odor like rotting meat, I didn’t smell a thing when I was taking its photo. The green conical cap is also said to be slimy but it didn’t look it. This mushroom uses its carrion like odor to attracts insects, which are said to disperse its sticky spores.

It’s friend took a turn. Whether it was for the better or worse I don’t know. The old birch log it was on must have had 8-10 different kinds of mushrooms growing on it.

False turkey tail fungus (Stereum ostrea) looks a lot like true turkey tail fungus (Trametes versicolor) but it doesn’t have pores on its underside and I find that it often comes in shades of orange. It always helps to look at the underside of fungi when trying to identify them.

Eastern larch trees, also called tamarack larch or just tamarack, (Larix laricina) turn brilliant orange yellow in the fall and are one of the few conifers that shed their needles in winter. They like to grow in wet, swampy places and seeds that fall on dry ground usually won’t germinate. Tamarack was an important tree to Native Americans; some used branches and bark to make snow shoes and others used the bark from the roots to sew canoes. The Ojibwe people called the tree “muckigwatig,” meaning “swamp tree” and used parts of it to make medicine.

Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) is a native evergreen with small, heart shaped leaves on creeping stems which grow at ground level. In spring it has white trumpet shaped flowers that grow in pairs and share a single ovary. In the fall it has bright red berries which are edible but close to tasteless. I leave them for the turkeys, which seem to love them. Bobwhites, grouse, red foxes, skunks, and white-footed mice are also said to eat them.

The unusual fused ovary on the partridgeberry’s twin blossoms form one berry, and you can always see where the two flowers were by looking for the dimples on the berry.

Poison ivy berries are ripening to white but until I saw this photo I didn’t know how it happened. It looks as if there is a brown shell around each white berry, and it looks as if the shell falls away to reveal it. Many songbirds eat the white berries, and deer eat the plant’s leaves. In fact there doesn’t seem to be an animal or bird that the plant bothers, but it sure bothers most humans by causing an always itchy, sometimes painful, and rarely dangerous rash. I get the rash every year but I’m lucky that it stays on the part of my body that touched the plant and doesn’t spread. That usually means a hand, knee, or ankle will itch for a week.

An oak leaf had fallen with an apple gall still attached. Apple galls are caused by a wasp (Amphibolips confluenta) called the oak apple gall wasp. In May, the female wasp emerges from underground and injects one or more eggs into the mid-vein of an oak leaf. As it grows the wasp larva causes the leaf to form a round gall. Galls that form on leaves are less harmful to the tree than those that form on twigs, but neither causes any real damage.

Both the leaf and gall together weighed next to nothing and the hole in the gall told me that the resident wasp had most likely flown the coop.

I don’t know its name but the hill on the other side of half-moon pond in Hancock still shows a little color. Even so, fall is nearly over now. We’ve had frosts, freezes and were lucky enough to have Indian summer twice and though we rarely talk about it we all know what comes next in the natural progression of the 4 seasons. But it’s only for 3 months, and the weather people now tell us that it will be “normal.”

Every corny thing that’s said about living with nature – being in harmony with the earth, feeling the cycle of the seasons – happens to be true. ~Susan Orlean

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Fall Fungi

After a cold October the first week of November has seen temperatures near 70 degrees each day and this has encouraged the crop of fall mushrooms. The oyster mushrooms in the above photo grew on the underside of a fallen tree. Though they often appear to have no stem oyster mushrooms have off center stems that usually grow out of the side of the log and are hidden by the cap.

Mushrooms are often eaten by tiny worms called nematodes that live on plant and fungal tissue, but not oyster mushrooms. Scientists discovered in 1986 that oyster mushrooms “exude extracellular toxins that stun {nematode] worms, whereupon the mycelium invades its body through its orifices.” What this means is that oyster mushrooms are carnivorous. They also consume bacteria (Pseudomonas and Agrobacterium) in order to get nitrogen and protein.

One of the things that attracts me to mushrooms is the wide variety of beautiful colors and shapes they come in. I think these pink and red ones that I saw growing out of the side of a log might be clustered collybia (Gymnopus acervatus,) but I’m not certain of that. My mushroom books say that clustered collybia is a common fall mushroom but I’m not sure that I’ve seen it.

Mushroom spores are carried by the wind so it is unusual to see them dropping to the forest floor like they have in the above photo. I’ve only seen this happen twice and each time it was on a still, humid day.

Jelly fungi like the witch’s butter (Tremella mesenterica) in the above photo seem to start appearing when it gets colder in the fall and many can be found right through winter, even though they sometimes freeze solid. I almost always find them on stumps and logs; often on oak. After a rain is the best time to find them.

If you roll logs over like I do you’ll see some astoundingly colorful examples of crust fungi, like the blue example in this photo. I find this one a lot on oak logs, especially. Though I’ve tried for a year now I haven’t been able to identify it, so if you know what its name is I’d love to hear from you.

Velvet shank mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes) are a common sight in winter because they fruit very late in the season and sometimes even during a warm spell in winter. I’ve seen them a few times when there was snow on the ground and it’s always a surprise. The orange caps of these mushrooms often shade to brown in the center. The stem is covered in fine downy hairs and that’s where this mushroom’s common name comes from.

These older examples of velvet shank mushrooms on the same tree looked as if they had been dusted with confectioner’s sugar but it turned out to be mold. Nothing is wasted in nature; everything gets eaten in one way or another.

Puffballs and little brown mushrooms vie for space on a log. The mushrooms reminded me of vanilla wafer cookies.

Milk white toothed polypore (Irpex lacteus) is a crust fungus common on fallen branches and rotting logs. The teeth start life as tubes or pores in the spore bearing surface, which breaks apart with age to become tooth like as the above photo shows. As they age these “teeth” will turn brown and that’s how I usually see them. This example was very fresh.

Lemon drops (Bisporella citrina) look like tiny beads of sunshine that have been sprinkled over logs, but they are really sac fungi with stalked fruit bodies. The term “sac fungi” comes from microscopic sexual structures which resemble wineskins. There are over 64,000 different sac fungi, including cup and “ear” fungi, jelly babies, and morel mushrooms. Lemon drops start life as a tiny yellow disc and look as if they lie flat on the log, but each disc hovers just above the surface on a short stalk. As they age each disc will become cup shaped. The “citrina” part of the scientific name comes from the Latin citrin, and means “lemon yellow.” The smaller ones in the above photo are barely as large as a period made by a pencil on paper.

At first I thought this was some kind of strange crust fungus but as I looked closer I realized that it had to be a slime mold, which I don’t usually find this late in the year. After some digging I found that it is called the yellow-fuzz cone slime mold (Hemitrichia clavata.) The fruiting bodies of this slime mold open into goblet shaped cups filled with yellowish fuzzy threads which makes the mass look like felt fabric. Though it appears very orange to me my color finding software tells me that it is indeed yellow. Other examples I’ve seen in the past have been bright, lemon yellow.

I don’t know the name of this tiny mushroom I saw growing on a twig but its shape reminded me of the beautiful dome on the Taj Mahal in India. Wouldn’t it be something if the idea for that type of architecture originally came from a mushroom? I’m convinced that the idea for the beautiful and ancient Chinese blue and white porcelain came from silky dogwood berries (Cornus amomum,) pleasingly dressed in the same blue and white for a short time in summer.

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 aboveground part that we see. The mycelium in the above photo grew on the underside of an oak log that was in contact with the soil. Most of the mycelium that I see are white but they are occasionally yellow like those pictured.

I think that the crust fungus in the above photo might be an example of an orange crust fungus (Stereum complicatum.) This small fungus has a smooth whitish underside with no pores. The complicatum part of the scientific name means “folded back on itself” and the above photo shows this example just starting that folding. It likes to grow on the logs of deciduous trees.

Wrinkled crust fungi (Phlebia radiata) lies flat on the wood that it grows on, much like a crustose lichen would, and radiate out from a central point. They have no stem, gills or pores and they don’t seem to mind cool weather; the two I’ve seen have been growing at this time of year. I think they’re a very beautiful mushroom and I’d like to see more of them.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. ~Jose Ortega Y Gasset

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Wood Eaters

As soon as I mentioned wood eaters this tree spirit started looking worried. Actually this carving doesn’t have anything to do with this post other than to show a tree’s remarkable ability to heal itself. This was carved into a tree on his property a few years ago by a local resident and it shows how quickly the bark is coming together to heal the wound. In a few more years if the tree stays healthy you won’t be able to see any sign of this carving.

On the other hand if you see a tree with turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) like these on it, the chance of it healing itself is slim to none. Turkey tails are sabprobic fungi, meaning they decompose dead or decaying organic material. Though they do occasionally grow on live trees, if you find them on a standing tree it is most likely dead. Turkey tails cause white rot of the sapwood. They also show great promise in cancer research.

Crust fungi are called resupinate fungi and have flat, crust like fruiting bodies which usually appear on the undersides of fallen branches and logs. Resupinate means upside down, and that’s what many crust fungi seem to be. Their spore bearing surface can be wrinkled, smooth, warty, toothed, or porous and though they appear on the undersides of logs, the main body of the fungus is in the wood, slowly decomposing it. Some, like the white rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysorhizon pictured above have been found to be useful in degrading of various pesticides, PCBs, and other poisons.  Some will even “eat” plastics. Because some crust fungi break down lignin, which is the brown in wood, and leave the white cellulose behind they are also being studied for use in the paper industry for “biopulping.”

It’s too bad that many crust fungi grow in hidden places like the undersides of logs because many are quite beautiful. I’ve spent quite a while trying to identify this blue-gray one but haven’t had much luck. I think it must be a variation of the cobalt crust fungus (Terana caerulea.)

The forest would be a very different place without fungi breaking down all of the twigs, branches and logs. It would probably be more like an impenetrable brush pile, just waiting for a fire to come and clean it out.

Here is a cobalt crust fungus (Terana caerulea) that I showed in another post recently. I’m showing it again here to illustrate the difference between it and the example in the previous photo, and also the one that follows.

Though this appears to be close to the same color as the cobalt crust fungus I think that it might be bluestain, which is also called sapstain because of the way it stains the sapwood of logs. If this log were sawn into planks the blue color could show on the surface of one or more of the planks. Both deep and surface bluestain can be caused by fungi called Ophiostoma minus and others, which all seem to be collectively called bluestain fungi and which can eventually kill the tree. It is thought that bark beetles and mites help it spread.

Some crust fungi have teeth, like the toothed crust (Basidioradulum radula) in the photo above. This crust fungus starts life as round, brownish yellow patches with creamy white margins. These round patches eventually grow together to form large irregular colonies like that in the above photo. It is very tough and has a waxy coating that protects it and allows it to revive after drying out. It’s another crust fungus that feeds on dead and decaying limbs and logs.

This milk white, toothed polypore (Irpex lacteus) is another upside down (Resupinate) fungus with a tooth shaped pore surface. As the photo shows, it will sometimes try to grow a cap which is white and hairy, and grows curled up around the edges. This fungus feeds on the dead sapwood and occasionally the heartwood of fallen hardwood logs and causes white rot.

Bootstrap fungus is caused by honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea), which are parasitic on live wood and send out long root like structures called rhizomorphs between the wood of a tree and its bark. When fresh these rhizomorphs are cream colored but darken to brown or black as they age. The fungus is also called armillaria root rot or shoestring root rot. It causes a white pulpy rot in the wood and kills many species of both soft and hardwood trees.

 

These are the honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea) that cause the bootstrap fungus seen in the previous photo. If you see them growing on a live tree, it’s all over for that tree. These examples were well past their prime when I found them.

Fungal rhizomorphs are threadlike or cordlike structures made up of branched tubular filaments called hyphae. They absorb nutrients and moisture and I think of them as a mushroom’s roots, even though that isn’t entirely accurate. They are worth looking for in leaf litter and on the undersides of logs because they can be very beautiful.

Trees and logs can be stained various colors, including black, white, brown, blue, green, yellow, red, and even pink. Discolorations can be caused by fungi, molds, bacteria, yeasts, minerals in soil, inorganic deposits, metals, enzymes, and even stress brought on by tension or compression. It takes a microscope and a trained eye to uncover what causes discolorations and since I have neither I can’t say what caused this pink stain on the bark of the tree in the photo. It looked good and healthy otherwise and I didn’t see any fungi growing on it.

Nor can I say what caused the pink stain on the wood of this cut limb. It isn’t a color that you see often in nature, though.

Sometimes woods affected by fungi can become very desirable to woodworkers. Spalting is essentially any form of wood coloration caused by fungi but there are 3 major types; pigmentation, white rot and zone lines. Sometimes all 3 can be present as they are on the end grain of the elm log in the above photo. Pigmentation is the blue gray color, which is probably caused by bluestain or sapstain. The white rot can be seen in the areas that look soft or pulpy, and the zone lines are the dark, narrow lines found radiating randomly throughout the log. Zone lines often form where 2 or more types of fungi meet.

A few woodworkers have learned how to recreate the natural spalting process artificially, and the worth of a log can jump from $30.00 to $3,000.00 after a few weeks of spalting. Why would a log attacked by fungi be worth so much money? Because of the beautiful things that can be made from it, like the spalted maple covered box made by Michael at Michael’s Wood craft blog. Michael knows wood and he makes some beautiful objects from it, including cutting boards, ice cream scoops, honey sticks, and just about anything else you can think of. If you haven’t seen his blog you’re missing a real treat. You can visit it by clicking here. You’ll see some of the most beautiful woods that you’ve ever laid eyes on.

I’ve found by studying wood specific fungi that I have a greater understanding of how the forest works, and a greater appreciation of the beauty of the fungi themselves. I’ve also had a lot of fun and have learned a lot by searching for various fungi and learning how they affect certain types of wood. It’s a fascinating subject!

If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks. ~Richard Feynman

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving.  Thanks for coming by.

 

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