More Summer Fungi

First come the yellow, red and orange mushrooms and then come the purples, and I’m seeing a lot of purple cort mushrooms (Cortinarius iodeoides) this year. I’ve noticed that this mushroom and virtually all of the orange ones are left untouched while white and other colors seem to be eaten almost as soon as they appear. Eaten by what I don’t know, but I assume it’s probably squirrels and chipmunks. Purple cort fungi have a rather bitter slime on their caps and that most likely accounts for their not being eaten.

A purple cort mushroom’s color lightens a bit as it ages, and it will often develop white or yellow streaks and spots as it ages. This is a good way to identify them.

The underside of a purple cort is very beautiful, in my opinion.

This butter waxcap (Hygrocybe ceracea) seemed to glow brightly in the dark of the forest. In this area I will now be seeing fewer and fewer orange and yellow fungi from this point on. Mushrooms have a “bloom time” just like flowers and the appearance of the purples tells me that the time for yellow and orange mushrooms is nearing an end.

Witch’s hat (Hygrocybe-conica) fungi have been everywhere this year. They’re quite small and easy to miss, or maybe I’ve just ignored them in the past. They’re also called conical wax caps.  According to Mushroom expert.com they bruise to black quite easily. They start out bright red to bright orange, fading to orangish or yellowish and finally black. Though this one was dry they can sometimes look wet or slimy.

Yellow nolanea (Entoloma murrayi) is also known as the yellow unicorn mushroom because it sometimes has a knob, called an umbo, on the top of its conical cap. Mushroom books say that they are common in the woods, but they aren’t that common in this immediate area. I think this is the first one I’ve seen.

American slippery jack (Suillus americanus) mushrooms are also called sticky buns or chicken fat fungi. They are known for their yellow, slimy caps with reddish brown scales, and how they usually appear in great numbers under eastern white pine trees. There must have been a dozen or more in this spot when I took this photo; enough so it was hard to get a shot of a single example.

The stem of the American slippery Jack is narrow with reddish spots and large yellow, angular pores are found on the underside of the cap. It’s a very stiff, tough feeling stem. Science has found that this mushroom has anti inflammatory properties.

The lilac fiber cap mushroom (Inocybe geophylla var. lilacina) is the lilac color seen here but it has a white cousin. Even Mushroom Expert.com says this genus is “filled with confoundingly similar species,” and is impossible to be sure of without a microscopic look at its spores, so I could be wrong about its name. It’s a pretty mushroom that people like to find for just that reason. What I noticed beside its pretty color was how the cap did indeed look fibrous. It starts out purple and fades to brown.

Here is the underside of the lilac fiber cap. The gills start off white and slowly turn brown, but you can also see a hint of purple in these examples. This is a poisonous mushroom.

According to Wikipedia scaly rustgill fungi (Gymnopilus sapineus) grow in dense clusters on conifer logs. The yellowish caps are darker at the center with a dry, sometimes scaly surface which can be fibrillose.  According to Mushroom Expert.com some guide books will say that the cap is scaly and others will say that it is smooth. I wanted to test Google lens on it to see how it did with mushrooms. It was close but it had the species wrong and the description it gave didn’t match what I’ve read elsewhere. DNA testing has shown that it is very similar to Gymnopilus penetrans, which is called the common rustgill. This common mushroom is often a bright spot in dark forests.

Clavaria ornatipes is described as a spatula or club shaped fungus, colored greyish to pinkish gray. These fungi shrivel when they dry out and revive after a rain. They grow directly out of the ground and there are often hundreds of them. I haven’t seen many coral type fungi this year so I was happy to see these.

In my last mushroom post I showed a Berkley’s polypore (Bondarzewia berkeleyi) that I had been watching grow for weeks. Now, more than a month later here it is, fully grown. I put a pocket knife up in the left corner so you could see how big it was. You can also see standing water in its center. Now this giant will begin to slowly decompose, and the odor will be easily detected from several yards away.

The scaly vase chanterelle (Turbinellus floccosus) is also called the wooly chanterelle. Sometimes it can have an orange cap like that seen in the above photo and sometimes it can be vase shaped. It likes to grow near conifers, and that’s where I found this one and several others. Though they might have chanterelle in their common name they can make you sick. They are said to be more closely related to stinkhorns than chanterelles.

Here’s a look at the outside of a younger scaly chanterelle, completely vase shaped. It is described as “shriveled looking but stout” and this one felt solid and heavy, like a club. The outside is creamy when young and then turns brownish.

There are many boletes that stain blue and they are easily misidentified, so I’ll just say that this is a bolete that stains blue. Many blue staining boletes are also poisonous.

Though there are gilled boletes most have pores or tubes on the undersurface as this one did. Sometimes the underside of the cap is a different color but the color of this one was fairly uniform all over.

Uniformly colored that is until it was cut, and then the flesh turned blue. I’ve seen boletes stain a beautiful, indigo blue instantly when damaged but this was a lighter blue that took a minute or two to show. If you happen to know its name, I’d love to hear from you.

Seeing big mushrooms is easy, but to see small ones you need to re-train your eyes. (And your mind, somewhat.) Jelly babies (Leotia lubrica) taught me that one day when I accidentally saw them; they helped me see that forests are full of things just as small and sometimes many times smaller. Once you train your eyes to see small things before long, you’ll be able to see them everywhere and a whole new chapter in the book of nature will open for you. Despite their name jelly babies are sac fungi rather than jelly fungi.

I thought I’d never see a mushroom smaller than jelly babies but I was wrong. These fuzzy foot mushrooms (Xeromphalina campanella) were the smallest I’ve seen. Many of the mushrooms seen in this photo were barely as big as a pea and some were even smaller. The Xeromphalina part of the common name means “little dry navel” and points to the dimple that forms in the cap as it grows and expands. This mushroom grows on wood and this particular species prefers conifers. There is another that prefers hardwoods called Xeromphalina kauffmanii. Both are known for their ability to fruit in large numbers. I think there was an eastern hemlock stump under all that moss.

Everything in nature gets eaten, but something that is rare to see is a mushroom with another fungus feeding on it, like this one with a mycoparasite called Syzygites megalocarpus growing on its cap. A mycoparasite is essentially a fungus (pin mold) that feeds on other fungi. This one has been found on over 65 species of mushroom and it was the first fungus found to be capable of sexual reproduction. It can appear overnight if heat and humidity levels are just right. You can’t plan to see something like this. You have to be there when it happens, and that’s a good reason to spend as much time as possible in nature.

On older vermillion waxcaps (Hygrocybe miniata) the penny size cap can become a bit scaly and fade to orange a bit, as this one had. The margin also becomes scalloped with age as this one showed but even with all of that Mushroom Expert.com says that this pretty little mushroom can be confused with several others. In fact the web site says that miniata should mean “many look-alikes.” Actually it means red or vermillion.

The gills on a vermillion waxcap are pale yellow but fade a bit with age. The underside of this mushroom is very pretty, in my opinion. It looks like a very tiny spider might have been living among the gills.

I put this photo of a yellow fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria var. formosa) here in this post to remind me to tell you that we’ve never seen as many of this mushroom as we’ve seen this year. They’re just about everywhere you look and some of the caps have flattened out and grown as large as dinner plates. This tells me that they like lots of rain and they do better when they get it. The white spots (called warts) are what are left of the universal veil that covered the mushroom when it was in the immature “egg” stage.

Another mushroom that is having a great year is the tiger’s eye mushroom (Coltricia perennis.) Something that makes it unusual is how it is 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 find them in August through October. This year they have a lot of red in them.

I hope you enjoyed this second look at the summer fungi that have been popping up in this area. You don’t need to be a mycologist to enjoy their many interesting shapes and beautiful colors, so I hope you’ll look out for them.

Go out, go out I beg of you  
And taste the beauty of the wild.   
Behold the miracle of the earth 
With all the wonder of a child. 
~Edna Jaques

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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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Summer Fungi

With all the rain we’ve had mushrooms are sprouting up everywhere now and, though we usually have an orange  / yellow phase followed by a purple phase, this year they all seem to be coming at the same time. I’m not sure if the orange / yellows are late or if the purples are early. Anyhow, butter wax caps (Hygrocybe ceracea) are one of the most photogenic of all mushrooms, in my opinion. They are a pretty, yellow, medium sized mushroom that almost always grows in groups.

In time the cap on butter wax cap mushrooms loses its conical shape and flattens out as if to show off its pretty yellow gills.

Hemlock varnish shelf mushrooms (Ganoderma tsugae) not surprisingly, grow on hemlock trees. This mushroom’s common name comes from its shiny red cap, which looks like it has been varnished. It is considered the most important of all the herbs and substances used in Chinese Herbal Medicine, including ginseng. In China it is called the Reishi mushroom and scientists around the world are researching its anti-cancer potential.

I love the colors in this bolete mushroom, which I think is the two colored bolete (Boletus bicolor.) As you can see by the photo, slugs (and maybe a squirrel or two) like it too. From what I’ve read there are several reddish colored boletes but most are small with flesh that stains blue after it has been cut or damaged. There is only one with flesh that stays yellow when damaged and that is the two colored bolete. This example was large, with the diameter of a cantaloupe.

Another pretty mushroom is the purple cort (Cortinarius iodeoides.) The caps always look wet but they aren’t-they are slimy, and that’s why they often have leaves, pine needles, and other forest debris stuck to them. This one was surprisingly clean.

Purple corts often lose their sliminess and develop white or yellow streaks as they age and this is a good way to identify them. They always look psychedelic to me at this stage and remind me of the 60s, but I’d never eat one. The taste is said to be very bitter.

Common earth ball (Scleroderma citrinum) is a type of puffball that I can’t say is real common here. I see maybe one or two each year. Another name for it is the pigskin poison puffball because it is toxic. It likes to grow on compacted soil like that found on forest trails. They often have a yellow color on their surface and are also called citrine earth balls because of it. I found one last year that was a beautiful lemon yellow.

Black jelly drops (Bulgaria inquinans) grew on an oak log. Though these fungi are also called poor man’s licorice they aren’t edible and depending on what you read, might be poisonous. I’ve read that in parts of China they are considered a delicacy but it sounds to me like they’re best left alone.

Though they look and feel like gumdrops in a velvet cup black jelly drops are not jelly fungi; they are sac fungi. Their fertile surface is shiny, and the dark brown outsides of the cup look like felt. This mushroom is sometimes used for dying fabric in mostly blacks and browns, purples and grays. It is thought that the Bulgaria part of the scientific name might refer to a leathery skin, like a wine skin.

This is what black jelly fungi look like when they’re young. They’re very small and hard to see because they blend into the color of the surrounding bark so well. They are usually found on oak trees that have been felled and cut up for firewood, and that is exactly where I found these examples. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this fungus.

Dead man’s fingers (Xylaria polymorphaare) are a type of fungi that often look like a human finger. As they age dead man’s finger fungi begin to darken. The lighter areas on them are covered with spores that are produced in early stages of their development. These fungi cause soft rot in the wood they grow on. In the final stages of their life dead man’s finger fungi darken until they turn black, and then they simply fall over and decompose. These examples grew out of the soil but there was probably an unseen log or tree roots that they were actually growing on.

I’m not positive but I think this crust fungus is a young example of the netted crust fungus. Netted crust fungi (Byssomerulius corium) are common and grow on the undersides of branches. The corium part of the scientific name means skin or hide, and refers to the skin-like growth of this fungus. Quite often bracket or shelf like growths will form along its edges. This fungus has tiny net-like ridges in its surface, and that’s how the netted crust comes by its common name.

It’s hard to do a post on fungi without including mycelium. 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 part that we see. The mycelium in the above photo grew just under last year’s leaves. Mycelium growths can be among 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 as the world’s largest known organism. It is thought to be between 2,400 and 8,650 years old.

Berkeley’s polypore (Bondarzewia berkeleyi) grew at the base of a tree. These are some of the biggest mushrooms that I’ve seen and I put a quarter on this one so you could see just how big it was. A quarter is about an inch across.  This large bracket fungus often reaches two feet across. It grows on the roots of hardwood trees and causes butt rot in the tree’s heartwood. The wood turns white before rotting away and leaving a standing hollow tree.

Pine dye polypore (Phaeolus schweinitzii) is also called the velvet topped fungus because of its velvety feel. These large bracket fungi are parasitic on the roots and heartwood of living white pines in the eastern U.S. and cause root and heart rot. I usually find them on logs or roots but I found these examples on the trunk of a live tree, and that means its death sentence. This fungus changes color as it ages and can be any one of several different colors. A lot of those I see are a deep, beautiful red/ maroon color. If found when young they can be used to dye wool a soft yellow or orange color, and older examples will dye wool brown. This mushroom has the odd habit of sprouting “baby mushrooms” from its cap.

Shaggy parasol mushroom (Chlorophyllum rhacodes) has shaggy brown scales on a white background on its cap, but this example is shaggier than any photo I’ve seen of one so this identification has to be taken with a grain of salt. I found this example growing in deep shade by an old stump.

And that reminds me of something that I should say in every mushroom post: It is never a good idea to eat any mushroom you aren’t 100 percent sure of because there are mushrooms that can kill, and people still do die and / or get very sick from eating them each year despite all the warnings. In June of last year 14 people in San Francisco were poisoned by eating death cap mushrooms (amanita phalloides,) one of the deadliest mushrooms known. Three of them needed liver transplants, including an 18-month-old girl. It seems unbelievable to me that there are still people out there who don’t know the dangers of mushroom poisoning but every year I read stories just like this one.

Coral mushrooms come in many colors, sizes, and shapes. This one was as big as a baseball. I think it might be a golden coral (Ramaria aurea) but as my mushroom books say, there are so many similar coral mushrooms that it’s hard to tell them apart without a microscope. I just enjoy seeing them.

Since this coral fungus has sprouted on a stump and not from the ground I think it might be crown coral (Clavicorona pyxidata.) Crown coral branches end in a tiny little crown, just like what is seen here.

Yellow finger coral fungi (Clavulinopsis fusiformis) look like tiny yellow flames licking up out of the forest floor. Each finger might reach an inch high and grow in tight clusters, while look alikes do not. They are also called spindle corals and like to grow in the hard packed earth along forest trails. It is for that reason that I often find them stepped on and broken, but these examples were in good condition. They are said to have flesh that is very bitter.

Jelly babies (Leotia lubrica) look like a mushroom with a stem and a cap but if you look under the cap you won’t see any gills or pores. Despite their name jelly babies are sac fungi rather than jelly fungi and their spores are produced on the upper surface of the cap rather than on gill or pore surfaces. The caps might feel smooth, clammy or slimy and can be green, tan, orange or yellow. Stems also vary in color.

Jelly Babies grow on the soil or on well-rotted wood in both hardwood and conifer forests and are very small. This entire group would easily fit on a quarter, which is about an inch in diameter. On a good day a jelly baby might reach 2.5 inches tall, but they’re usually about an inch tall in my experience, with a cap that might grow as large as a pea. Jelly babies are both friend and teacher to me because they showed me an entire Lilliputian world that I never knew existed. One day I sat on a stone and looked down and there they were, the cutest little bunch of fungi I had ever seen, and they made me wonder what other tiny things I’d been missing. Since that day I’ve been paying attention and looking closer, and I’ve seen things that I couldn’t have ever imagined.

I usually come away from mushroom hunting with a few unknowns, and this one fits perfectly into that slot for this post. It’s a pretty little thing that must have won first prize; it looks like the forest elves have given it a blue ribbon.

The sudden appearance of mushrooms after a summer rain is one of the more impressive spectacles of the plant world. ~John Tyler Bonner

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Things I’ve Seen

It’s time again for many ferns to start their reproductive cycles and in this photo the tiny spore cases (sorus) of polypody fern (Polypodium virginianum) shine like beacons.  Henry David Thoreau liked polypody ferns and said that “Fresh and cheerful communities of the polypody form a lustrous mantle over rocky surfaces in the early spring.” Of course they do exactly that and that’s how they come by the name rock cap fern. They’re an evergreen fern that loves to grow on boulders.

The tiny sori are made up of clusters of sporangia and are naked, meaning they lack the protective cap (indusium) that is found on many ferns. Each will turn a reddish brown color when ripe and ready to release its spores. The spores are as fine as dust and are borne on the wind. Sorus (plural of sori) is from the Greek word sōrós, and means stack, pile, or heap, and each sori is indeed a round pile of sporangia. As they begin to release spores the sorus are very pretty and look like tiny baskets of flowers. As of this photo it hadn’t happened yet.

We’re still having thunderstorms roll through and after each one passes I find a few more fungi, but nothing like the numbers I should be seeing. I thought this one might be the American Caesar’s mushroom (Amanita jacksonii) but it should be redder in color and the cap should have lined margins. Colors can vary but I wouldn’t think that the lined cap margin would, so in the end I don’t really know what it is. If you do I’d love to hear from you.

I put this tiny cluster of orange jelly baby fungi (Leotia lubrica) in an acorn cap so you could see how small they are. Once you train your eyes to see small things before long you’ll be able to see them everywhere and a whole new chapter in the book of nature will open for you. I have to retrain my eyes to see small things again each spring and I do that by visiting places where I know small flowers like spring beauty, red maple, and wild ginger grow. Your eyes adjust quite easily, I’ve found.  Despite their name jelly babies are sac fungi rather than jelly fungi.

These spiny puffballs (Lycoperdon echinatum) were young when I found them and I know that because they were pure white and still had their spines. As they age the spines will fall off, leaving a brownish powdery coating on the surface. Eventually a small hole will appear at the top of the puffball and brownish purple spores will puff out through it whenever it is touched or stepped on.

There are young people out there who seem to think that inhaling certain puffball spores will get them high, but it is never a good thing to do. People who inhale the spores often end up in the hospital due to developing a respiratory disease called Lycoperdonosis. In one severe instance a teenager spent 18 days in a coma, had portions of his lung removed, and suffered severe liver damage.

These oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) were pure white and seemed to shine against the dark wood of the log. They’re usually found on logs in large clusters. These examples were young and no bigger than a quarter.  Oyster mushrooms have off center stems that usually grow out of the side of the log and are hidden by the cap. They cause a white rot in living trees.

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 actually carnivorous. They also consume bacteria (Pseudomonas and Agrobacterium) in order to get nitrogen and protein.

I’m seeing a lot more great blue herons this year than I did last year. The one in the above photo was happy to stand like a statue, up to his knees in the Ashuelot river. I hoped it would do something interesting but in the end its patience outlasted mine.

I’m sure the heron would have loved to have met this spring peeper, but luckily the little frog was off in the forest near a pond.  The dark colored X shaped marking on its back and the dark bar on its head from eyes to eye make this frog easy to identify. Spring peepers are tiny things that are usually less than an inch and a half long and experts at camouflage, so I don’t see them often. I love them because they are the heralds of spring; few things are more pleasing to these ears than hearing their song on the first warm March evening.

I’m happy to be seeing quite a lot of bees this year. This bumblebee foraged on a Joe Pye weed flower head one day.

I was kneeling, trying to get that perfect shot of a flower when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. I watched for a while, fascinated as an orb weaver spider wove its web, before remembering that I had a camera.  It was quite big as spiders go and easily seen but the camera had trouble with the details, so I had to move in closer. When I did it retreated to its home under a fern frond, so this was the only useable shot I got. It had very furry legs and a bright red body.

There is an insect called the oak leaf skeletonizer but it eats only the soft tissue on the upper side of an oak leaf, leaving it translucent The damage to the oak leaf in the above photo was most likely caused by a caterpillar. It ate the soft tissue on both sides of the leaf, leaving only the veins behind. I’m guessing that the beautiful white hickory tussock moth caterpillar was the culprit. It feeds on nut trees, including oaks.

Speaking of oaks, they’re shedding their leaves regularly now due to the drought. They and other trees like apples and hickory nuts are shedding their fruit as well, trying to conserve energy. Wild blueberries, raspberries and blackberries have also been in distress and many are small and deformed. Some animals might have a hard time of it, but it’s too early to tell.

The leaves of tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) often change color early on. These became a beautiful purple; as beautiful as any flower. In spring before it blossoms meadow rue is often mistaken for columbine because its leaves look similar. It is also called king of the meadow due to its great height. I’ve seen plants reach more than 8 feet tall in optimal conditions.

In some places bracken ferns (Pteridium aquilinum) have already dried out and gone to orange. Bracken is one of the oldest ferns; fossils date it to over 55 million years old. The plant releases chemicals which inhibit the growth of other plants and that is why large colonies of nothing but bracken fern are found. Some Native American tribes cooked and peeled the roots of bracken fern to use as food but modern science has found that all parts of the plant contain carcinogens.

Invasive Tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) berries can be red or orange but I seldom see the orange ones and I wonder if that might be because they ripen from green to orange to red. This shrub is native to Siberia and is very tough; our drought doesn’t seem to have affected any of the plants I’ve seen. Birds love its berries and that’s why it has been so successful. In this area there are very few places where it doesn’t grow.  Tatarian honeysuckle was introduced as an ornamental shrub in the 1750s. It has deep pink, very fragrant flowers in spring. Though it is invasive it has been here so long that it’s hard to imagine life without it.

Hobblebush berries (drupes) turn dark purple when they’re fully ripe but I like seeing them when they’re in the red stage as they are here. Anyhow, I rarely see them in the purple, ripe stage because birds and animals eat them up so fast. Among the birds cardinals, turkeys, cedar waxwings and even pileated woodpeckers are known to eat the fruit. Bears, foxes, skunks and squirrels are among the animals that eat them, so there is a lot of competition. It’s no wonder I rarely see them ripe. The fruit is edible and is said to taste like clove spiced raisins or dates but the seeds are large and the flesh thin. They can be eaten raw or cooked and are said to taste better after a frost. Native Americans had several medicinal uses for hobblebush, from curing headaches to chest and breathing problems, and they also ate the berries.

Why pay attention to the little things? If the beauty of this smoky eye boulder lichen (Porpidia albocaerulescens) doesn’t answer that question, then nothing ever will.

There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it. ~Charlotte Eriksson

Thanks for coming by.

 

 

 

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