Posts Tagged ‘Jelly Fungi’
Edgewood Forest
Posted in Mosses & Liverworts, Nature, Things I've Seen, tagged American Beech, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Edgewood Forest, Fan Clubmoss, Flat Leaved Scalewort, Indian Pipe, Jelly Fungi, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Pipsissewa, Roseshell Azalea, Shinleaf, Skunk Cabbage, Striped Wintergreen, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tinder Fungus, Turkey Tail Fungi, Wild Mushrooms, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods on January 4, 2020| 18 Comments »
Time for a Climb
Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, tagged Blueberry, Canon SX40 HS, Goldenrod, Jelly Fungi, Keene, Lichens, Mount Caesar, Mount Monadnock, Mushrooms, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Reindeer Lichen, Swanzey New Hampshire, Target Canker, The Rocking Stone, Tippin Rock, Turkey Tail Fungus, White Pine, Wild Mushrooms, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods on December 7, 2016| 36 Comments »
Ever since a friend of mine and I tipped Tippin Rock back in August something has been nagging at me. I’ve lived long enough to know that ignoring something that is nagging at you isn’t going to make it go away, so I decided to confront it head on. To do that I had to climb Mount Caesar in Swanzey, which is a huge mound of granite with a thin covering of soil. The above photo shows the start of the trail, which is bedrock. I’m not sure if shoe soles or the weather has removed what little soil there was there.
Mount Caesar has the biggest drifts of reindeer lichens (Cladonia rangiferina) of anyplace I’ve seen. I’ve read that they grow very slowly, so the colonies here are most likely hundreds of years old. It is said that Mount Caesar was used as a lookout by Native Americans when settlers began moving in, and both settlers and natives probably saw these very same lichens. If damaged they can take decades to restore themselves, so I hope they’ll be treated kindly.
A young white pine (Pinus strobus) grew itself into a corkscrew. Trees often grow into strange shapes when another tree falls on them and makes them lean or pins them to the ground. That would explain this tree’s strange shape, but where is the tree that fell on it? There wasn’t a fallen tree anywhere near it.
The trail goes steadily uphill and is bordered by stone walls for most of its length.
I’m seeing a lot of jelly fungi this year. This fallen tree was covered with them.
I’ve seen a lot of target canker on red maples but this tree was covered almost top to bottom with it, and it was very pronounced. Target canker doesn’t usually harm the tree but in this case I had to wonder if maybe the maple wasn’t losing the battle. Target canker is caused by a fungus which kills the healthy bark and the patterns of platy bark seen here are the tree’s response to the fungus; it grows new bark each year.
I’ve been waiting all summer to find some turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) that had some colors other than shades of brown, and here they were the whole time. Hundreds of them crowded a fallen log.
These turkey tails grew on a nearby stump. I also saw many bracket fungi that looked like turkey tails but their gills gave them away as impostors. Turkey tails always have tiny round holes called pores on their undersides, never gills. If I find bracket fungi with gills I start looking up gilled polypores to try to identify them.
Though you walk on soil for much of its length the trail ends just as it began; on solid granite.
The views were what I would expect on a cloudy day, but at least the clouds were high enough to be able to see the surrounding hills.
And the miles and miles of forest; 4.8 million acres in New Hampshire alone. It is why many of us still carry maps and compasses.
To the east the clouds parted long enough for a good look at Mount Monadnock, which is the highest point in these parts; 2,203 feet higher than where I was standing on top of Mount Caesar.
It must have been very cold up there but I could still see people on the summit. Unfortunately none of the shots showing them up close came out good enough to show. When he climbed it in 1860 Henry David Thoreau complained about the number of people on the summit of Monadnock. Nothing has changed since, and that’s one reason that I don’t climb it. Thoreau also said ”Those who climb to the peak of Monadnock have seen but little of the mountain. I came not to look off from it, but to look at it.” I feel the same way he did. It’s very beautiful when seen from a distance.
The glacial erratic called “the rocking stone” in a photo from 1895 was the object of this climb. I wanted to see if it rocked like Tippin Rock over on Hewe’s Hill did. I pushed on it from every side and watched the stone carefully to see any movement but I couldn’t get it to budge. You always have to wonder about these old stories, but the one about Tippin Rock proved true so this one probably is too. Maybe the next time my friend Dave flies in from California I’ll have him take a crack at it since he was able to rock Tippin Rock.
An old weathered stump is all that remains of a tree that once grew on the summit. I’m guessing it was an eastern hemlock since they’re the only tree that I know of with stumps that decay from the inside out.
Can you see the face? I’ll have to remember this when I do the next Halloween post.
The blueberry bushes were beautifully colored. Since we’ve had several freezes I was surprised to see leaves still on them, but the temperature in the valleys is not always the same as it is on the hilltops. Cold air will flow down hillsides and pool in the valleys, just like water.
Even more of a surprise than the blueberry leaves was this blooming goldenrod. It was only about as big as my thumb but any flowers blooming at the end of November are special and I was happy to see them.
Going down a mountain always seems harder than going up but this time it was tough. Oak leaves are slippery anyway, but this time they had thousands of acorns under them, so I had to pick my way down the steepest parts very carefully. My calf muscles reminded me of the climb for a few days after.
It is always the same with mountains. Once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape. ~Ruskin Bond
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Things I’ve Seen
Posted in Nature, Things I've Seen, tagged Alder t, Alder Tongue Gall, Amber Jelly Fungi, American Beech, Black Jelly Fungus, Canon SX40 HS, Jelly Fungi, Maleberry Seed Capsules, Mushrooms, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Orange Jelly Fungus, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Split Gill Mushroom, White Cheese Polypore, Wild Mushrooms, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods, Witch Hazel, Witch's Butter on January 4, 2014| 44 Comments »
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 21st, 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
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Jelly Fungi
Posted in Nature, tagged Jelly Fungi, Mushrooms, Native Plants, Nature, Winter Plants, Witch's Butter on January 28, 2012| 10 Comments »
I’ve been walking these New Hampshire woods for a long time now-close to fifty years-without ever seeing a black fungus. This year it seems like I’m suddenly seeing them everywhere. The latest I found- growing on a dead limb-are in the photo below. This was before the recent snowfalls of an inch or two.
These look brown in the picture, but when I found them they looked black. I think the color shift must be because of the way the sunlight is hitting them. Now that I see them in the photo, they look like a fungus known as Jew’s Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae), so named, as the story goes, because Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an elder tree. “Judas’s ear” was later shortened to “Jew’s ear.” These were growing on oak, not elder, and I prefer brown jelly ear to Jew’s ear. It could also be brown witch’s butter (Tremella foliacea). Not being able to positively identify it is frustrating.
A further source of frustration is in the photo below-another jelly fungus that I’ve not been able to identify.
I wrote about these in December when I found them but still haven’t been able to positively identify them. As I said then, I think these might be Black Bulgar (Bulgaria inquinans.) Common names for Black Bulgar include gum mushrooms, jelly drops, rubber buttons, or pope’s buttons. They could also be black witch’s butter ( Exidia glandulosa.)
Not being able to identify bits of nature gets me frustrated because it usually isn’t that difficult; I’ve been doing it since grade school. But, as anyone who studies nature knows, now and then a wild thing appears that can be almost impossible to identify. A good field guide helps, so I bought a better one than the one I already had for mushrooms.
This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn more about mushroom identification, but the section on jelly fungus wasn’t much help in my quest.
To be fair to the book though, the jelly fungi are one of the most complicated groups and often can’t be completely identified without a microscope. To make things even more complicated, many slime molds go through a jelly like phase.
So, to lessen my frustration over not being able to identify these unusual forest dwellers, I’ve decided that from now on I’ll just enjoy seeing and getting pictures of them and leave the identification to the experts.