Posts Tagged ‘Chanterelle Waxcap Mushrooms’
Searching For Fall Color
Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Things I've Seen, tagged Ashuelot River, Boston and Maine Railroad, Box Culverts, Chanterelle Waxcap Mushrooms, Cheshire Rail Trails, Fall Colors, Fall Hiking, jack o lantern Mushrooms, Lavender Turtlehead Flowers, Maple Dust Lichen, Native Asters, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Pink Lady's Slipper, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire on September 29, 2018| 29 Comments »
There is a rail trail in Swanzey that runs between the main road and the river and the trees along it often change into their fall colors slightly earlier than others, so last weekend I decided to go and see if fall had paid a visit yet.
It was a beautiful day, with full sunshine, temps in the 60s, and very low humidity. Asters in blue, purple and white lining the trail helped beautify the hike.
These blue ones were small; about the size of a regular aspirin, but beautiful.
I saw what I thought might be Jack O’ Lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus olearius) growing from a log. These mushrooms usually grow in large clumps and get their name from their bright orange color. They are toxic and unfortunately are sometimes confused with chanterelle mushrooms. Jack o’ lanterns probably won’t kill but they can put you in the hospital for a time so mushroom foragers would be wise to know them well. This mushroom is also bioluminescent, and the gills are said to glow with a faint blue-green light in the dark.
There are a few nice old box culverts out here but the railbed is about 50 feet above the streams that run under them so they’re hard to get photos of. To see this one I only had to scramble down a 10 foot embankment so it was relatively easy. It still works just as the railroad engineers designed it 150 years ago. There are massive amounts of soil over it but the thick granite slabs haven’t moved an inch. These are called box culverts because they have 4 sides like an open ended box.
There’s a good chance that the granite for the box culverts came from this ledge that the railbed was cut through. Railroad stone masons often used stone that was as close to the project being built as possible. They didn’t want to haul it very far.
Long, straight drill holes still show in the face of the ledge. This one was probably drilled with a steam drill. Once you had a hole you filled it with black powder, lit the fuse and ran as fast as you could go.
I was happy to see a lot of pink lady’s slipper orchids (Cypripedium acaule) with seed pods out here. I’ve got to remember to come back in June to see if I can find others blooming.
Lady’s slipper seeds are very small and each seed pod can contain as many as 20,000 seeds. The seeds have no stored starch for food so they have to rely on certain fungi in the soil to grow, and without the fungi the plant won’t make it. That’s why digging them up to plant in gardens never works; the symbiotic connection between orchid and fungus is lost. It can take 10-15 years for a lady’s slipper grown from seed to flower. Setting seed like this example has done weakens the plant enough so it probably won’t blossom again for a year or more, so each plant only sets seed about 5 times in its lifetime.
The most unusual thing I saw on this outing was a native turtlehead plant (Chelone) with bicolor blossoms in lavender and white. I’ve seen pink turtleheads and white turtleheads but I’ve never seen this one. I’m guessing that it must be a natural hybrid, created by the bees. It was pretty and I would be happy to have it growing in my own garden.
The turtlehead’s blossoms had just started to open.
Chanterelle wax cap mushrooms (Hygrocybe cantharellus) grew on a moss covered stump. These mushrooms are quite small; I don’t think I’ve ever seen one much bigger than a penny, so you have to look closely and carefully to find them. Every time I see them they are growing in groups either on a stump or a log. They’re fairly common at this time of year.
One of the people who live along the rail trail built a bridge over the drainage ditch so they could get to the trail. They’re lucky; I’d love to be able to reach a rail trail from my back yard.
This trail is popular with bike riders. I didn’t count how many passed me but it was quite a few. I was the only one walking.
I saw a lot of fallen trees out here too. The top of this big poplar was hanging by just a few branches onto a white pine it had fallen against. It didn’t look like it would take much of a breeze to bring it all the way down and I hope nobody is under it when it happens.
Even without much in the way of fall colors there was still plenty to see out here, like this maple dust lichen (Lecanora thysanophora.) Lichens and mosses start calling to me at this time of year because once the leaves fall they become more visible. As the name implies the maple dust lichen grows on the bark of maples but I’ve also seen it on beech, oak, basswood and poplar, so don’t be afraid to look for this one on just about any tree. They can be large and easy to see at about 3/4 of an inch and the white fringe around their perimeter makes them easy to identify. They’re pretty little things that are worth searching for.
Before I knew it I was at the old trestle over the Ashuelot River, which was my turn around spot. The wooden deck and side rails have been added to many trestles by snowmobiler clubs for safety. The decks make these old trestles much easier to cross.
Trestles give you views of the river way out in the middle of nowhere that you’d most likely never see if the trestles weren’t there and that’s one of the things I like most about rail trails. I didn’t see much fall color on this side of the trestle, just some trees on the yellow side of green.
But on the other side of the trestle some trees were very yellow. Maples, I think. It’s odd how colors can vary so much in just a few yards.
On the way back there was another yellowish tree up ahead on the left but all in all I can’t say that fall has come to this section of trail just yet. Before too long though, there will be reds and oranges along with the yellows. I have to say that I’m in no hurry. I love to see the fall colors but I’m not too crazy about what follows. I hope you’ll have a gloriously colorful fall season wherever you may be.
Summer is leaving silently. Much like a traveler approaching the end of an amazing journey. ~Darnell Lamont Walker
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Things I’ve Seen
Posted in Fungi, Nature, Things I've Seen, tagged bumblebee, Chanterelle Waxcap Mushrooms, Coral Fungi, False Solomon's Seal, Great Black Wasp, Honeybee, Keene, Meadow Wildflowers, Mushrooms, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Painted Trillium, Pinesap, Pinwheel Mushrooms on August 14, 2013| 36 Comments »
There is a little bit of everything in this post.
Tiny pinwheel mushrooms (Marasmius capillaris) fruit only on oak leaves and that’s exactly what those pictured were doing. A sunbeam just happened to be lighting them up when I walked by. Most mushrooms like places with dim light but if I had time to spend watching them I think I’d find that all of them got at least some sunshine each day.
Clusters of what I think are tiny orange chanterelle wax cap mushrooms (Hygrocybe cantharallus ) grew all over a log. These little mushrooms have caps with scalloped rims and gills that are slightly paler than the cap. The flash I had to use made the gills appear just a little lighter than they really were but otherwise the colors are true.
Coral fungi grow in places where there isn’t much light and since a flash can sometimes change the color of the subject, at the suggestion of Laura over at the Touring New Hampshire blog I bought an LED light. I haven’t used it enough to say much about it, but this is the first photo I took with it. A couple of things I noticed were, it did not change the color of these mushrooms and lit the scene enough so the camera wasn’t calling for a flash. In fact, at 100 lumens it is so bright that I might need a diffuser.
These are the tiniest mushrooms I’ve ever tried to photograph. They were so small that this entire group could have been hidden behind a single pea. I never knew that fully formed mushrooms grew so small and I have no idea what they are. Natural light was plentiful (for a change) when I took this photo.
The last time I showed pinesap plants (Monotropa hypopitys) you could see the flower buds. In this photo you can see the individual flowers and that is important to note when trying to tell it from its close relative Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), which has a single flower. These were also under LED lighting and the colors seem true to what they should be.
I decided to get out of the woods and visit a local meadow again before things started going to seed. It’s hard to stay away from such a beautiful place for very long.
There were many bumblebees in the meadow and most were visiting the goldenrod.
I was happy to also see plenty of honey bees in the meadow. I didn’t notice that this one had shredded wings until I saw the photo. I’ve read this is common among honey bees and comes from them simply over using their wings.
Luckily this great black wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus) was too busy with goldenrod flowers to pay much attention to me. This is a digger wasp and he (or she) is big and jet black all over. Solitary females live in holes that they dig in soft ground. They prey on katydids, which are several times larger than they are, so they need plenty of flower nectar to keep that kind of power up. Their sting is said to be very painful, but I didn’t know that when I was taking these photos.
Their legs are quite long and hang down when they fly. This is a good way to identify them because most wasps keep their legs close to their bodies when they fly. I like the purple highlights on the wings, which look embossed.
The shiny red berries of painted trillium (Trillium undulatum) seem to be everywhere this year, so apparently the high temperatures and heavy rainfall were to their liking. There should be plenty of seedlings in the spring.
On their way to becoming brilliant red, the berries of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) are speckled for a short time. This plant is also called treacle berry because the berries are supposed to taste like treacle or molasses.
More often than not when I get down on the ground to take a photo of something I look around carefully before I get back up to see if there is anything else worthy of a photo, and that’s how I ended up with a shot of a fern shadow.
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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