Things I’ve Seen

Certain mushrooms seem to appear at the same time each year, and yellow fly agarics (Amanita muscaria var, guessowii) are right on schedule. This one was about as big as my index finger, but was strong enough to push up through a mat of wet leaves.

I’ve never seen as many Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora) as I have this year.  Not only have their numbers increased but they appeared earlier than usual. Since they don’t make their own food and live as parasites, stealing nutrients from the mycelia of certain fungi, they don’t need chlorophyll. The lack of chlorophyll leads to another common name: ghost plant.

If you’re a gardener a fungal disease like leaf spot is the last thing you want to see in the garden but if you can get past the feelings of disappointment and frustration and see it for what it is, it can be quite pretty. Many fungal infections of plants are caused by high humidity, poor air circulation, and / or lack of direct sunlight. Increasing air circulation and the amount of sunlight reaching the plant by cutting back surrounding growth or moving the plant will often solve the problem.

I visited a web site that said the seed pod of a starflower (Trientalis borealis) was 6 to 8 millimeters in diameter, but I think they forgot a decimal point. .6 to .8 millimeters (.024-.031 in) would be more like it, and even that is stretching it. If the seed pods are that small, just think how small the seeds must be. Seeds of starflowers don’t germinate until the fall of their second year, which gives birds and insects plenty of time to move them around.

 

The dark eye mask makes this wood frog easy to identify. Wood frogs are the only frogs to live north of the Arctic Circle and they manage that by being able to freeze in winter. They produce a kind of antifreeze that prevents their cells from freezing. When it gets cold they just crawl under the leaf litter. Their heart stops beating and they stop breathing until the weather warms again in spring, when they mate and lay their eggs in vernal pools. This one was 2-3 inches long, which is big compared to a thumbnail sized spring peeper.

This caterpillar was just hanging around one day on a silken thread so fine that I couldn’t even see it. Much to my surprise the camera couldn’t either, so it looks like he is defying gravity. I think he’s an inchworm. I wonder what they get out of doing this.

 

I saw a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye and turned to find that this large, blue-black wasp (Ichneumon centrator) had landed next to me. He didn’t stay long though, and only gave me time for a couple of shots. This wasp is about 3/4 of an inch long and adult females hibernate under the loose bark of fallen trees in winter. This one pictured is an adult male. Thanks to the good folks at Bugguide.net for the help with identification.

Over the years I’ve noticed that the first mushrooms to appear are mostly white or brown, then come the red, yellow, and orange ones and after them the purples. Right now we’re in our red, yellow, orange phase. I think these might be one of the wax cap mushrooms, possibly the butter wax cap (Hygrocybe ceracea).

These small pinwheel mushrooms, (Marasmius rotula) none bigger than a pea, grew on a piece of tree bark. These mushrooms are fairly easy to see after a rain but when they dry out the whitish cap shrivels down to a dot at the end of a hair-like stalk and they become almost invisible-at least to my eyes.

 

I thought that this black and white spider on a hazelnut leaf had the longest legs of any spider that I’ve seen, and a tiny body that seemed out of proportion to its legs. Thanks to the folks at Buggide.net I learned that this is not a spider but a harvestman (Opiliones). The difference is that spiders have a two part body and harvestmen have a one part body. And this is indeed a daddy longlegs. What I thought were daddy longlegs all these years are actually spiders called cellar spiders (Pholcus phalangioides). Who knew?

As I’ve said before on this blog, fall starts on the forest floor and, even though none of us want to hear it, this false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) is a perfect example of how it begins.

Other signs that fall is on the way include the turning leaves on wild sarsaparilla plants (Aralia nudicaulis). Almost as soon as its berries ripen the leaves start to change to yellow, the deep rosy brown seen here, or a mixture of both colors.

Another sign of fall is of course, ripening berries. These are the unusual twin berries of American fly honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis).

 

With all this talk of fall you might think that this is a dusting of snow in the woods but no, it’s just a drift of reindeer lichens (Cladonia arbuscula). I’m hoping that they don’t get covered by a snow blanket for a good long time.

Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from. ~Terry Tempest Williams

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Things I’ve Seen

 

I’m forever finding feathers in strange places out there in the woods. In the past I’ve stumbled through the undergrowth to see what I thought was a beautiful solitary flower, only to find that it was instead a colorful feather. This one landed on a fern frond.

I stopped in to visit one of my favorite lichens recently. This poplar sunburst lichen (Xanthoria hasseana) always seems to be producing spores. The little round cups are its fruiting bodies (apothecia) and they have been there since the day I found this lichen-probably 3 years ago now. It’s a beautiful thing.

Dragonflies start life as an egg in the water. Once they hatch they live for a time as a water nymph until climbing out to shed their exoskeleton and begin life as a winged adult. The photo shows the shed dragon-hunter dragonfly nymph exoskeleton (exuvia) that clung to a rope while it was being shed. The rope it clung to was about half to three quarters of an inch in diameter, I’d guess. I can’t explain the blue “eyes” but they could just be a trick of the light. Dragon hunters are large dragonflies that live up to their name by hunting and eating other dragonflies. They also eat butterflies and other large insects.

I went to a place where hundreds of knapweeds grow to see if they were blooming. They were and they were covered with bees of all kinds. I think this must be a honeybee because of its bead like pollen baskets, but I could be wrong because I’m not a bee expert. In any event we can see the color of knapweed pollen.

 

I think this metallic green grasshopper thought that he was invisible because he let me take as many photos as I wanted. He was right out in the open so it’s a good thing for him that I wasn’t a hungry bird. I never knew that they were so pretty until I saw them in a photograph, even though I caught many as a boy. Photography has taught me a good lesson in how seeing with different eyes can sometimes change our viewpoint about things we once thought that we knew well.

I saw a nest of hundreds of tiny spider hatchlings in a curled leaf one day. I don’t know what variety of spider they will grow up to be, but watching them was fascinating. They seemed very busy but I couldn’t see that they were actually accomplishing anything.

One of these Japanese beetles wore a white dot. Such dots are the eggs of a tachinid fly, and once they hatch the larva will burrow into the beetle and eat it. The beetle will of course die and the fly larva will become adult flies and lay eggs on even more Japanese beetles. Nature finding a balance.

Our blueberries and black raspberries are starting to ripen. Many berry bushes grow in the sunshine along the edges of trails, and their ripening increases the chances of meeting up with a black bear.  Heightened senses are required in the woods at this time of year.

Though it didn’t seem any bigger the “super moon” was certainly colorful on the night of July 12th.

A Native American myth says that the sun and moon are a chieftain and his wife and that the stars are their children. The sun loves to catch and eat his children, so they flee from the sky whenever he appears. The moon plays happily with the stars while the sun is sleeping but each month, she turns her face to one side and darkens it (as the moon wanes) to mourn the children that the sun succeeded in catching.

These hook shaped mushrooms seem to be defying all of the mushroom guides that I have. I’ve never seen any others like them and haven’t been able to identify them.

In every stand of cattails there seems to be at least one leaf that dares to be different.

 

This skelotinized oak leaf taught me that there is a caterpillar called the oak-ribbed skeletonizer (Bucculatrix albertiella). It lives on the undersides of leaves and eats the soft tissue, leaving just the veins behind. The tiny blue insect in the photo isn’t the culprit but it’s so small that, even by zooming in on the photo, I can’t tell what it is.

 

When the seeds of curly dock are forming they look like tiny tear drop shaped pearls that shine in the sun. They are beautiful little things that always deserve a second look.

Was does a tendril do when it can’t find anything to curl around? It curls anyway. This might not seem earth shaking unless you know that a tendril curls in response to touch. Through a process called Thigmotropism, the side away from the point of contact grows faster than the side that makes contact, and that is why it coils around any object that it touches. So why and how does it curl when it hasn’t made contact with anything?

Timothy grass (Phleum pretense) gets its common name by way of Timothy Hanson, a farmer who began to cultivate it in 1720, a few years after its introduction into colonial America in 1711. It’s an important hay crop and is also quite beautiful when it blossoms.

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; be not discouraged – keep on – there are divine things, well envelop’d; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.  ~Walt Whitman

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Beauty in the Dark

We’re really getting a taste of high summer now with frequent thunderstorms, 90 degree temperatures, and high humidly. As soon as that happens I start thinking about fungi and slime molds because those are the conditions that many of them prefer. Unfortunately slime molds can be difficult to identify and, even after hours of looking through books and online, I still can’t identify the tiny transparent slime mold in the above photo. Some slime molds start life transparent and then change both their shape and color, which doesn’t help. They also often grow in very dark places, so some of these photos were taken under LED light.

 

The reason slime molds interest me is because they are very beautiful, and also fascinating. Nobody really seems to know exactly how they move, but they do. When the microorganisms that they feed on become scarce, many of these single celled organisms meld together and move toward food as a single entity. The white finger slime (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa var. fruticulosa) in the above photo reminded me of a bed of kelp under the sea, all swaying in unison to the pull of a tide only they can feel.

 

I’ve never seen this slime mold before and I was surprised to see the tiny gray starbursts, which must have been 1/16 of an inch or less, when I looked at the photo. I couldn’t see them in person because they were too small. I haven’t been able to identify them but I think that they are beautiful things. This photo was taken with the aid of an LED light.

As slime molds go, this many headed slime (Physarum polycephalum) is usually large and easy to see. This one covered the base of a tree. It was in its plasmodial stage and on the move. This photo was also taken with the aid of an LED light.

According to Wikipedia “a plasmodial slime mold is enclosed within a single membrane without walls and is one large cell. This super cell (a syncytium) is essentially a bag of cytoplasm containing thousands of individual nuclei.” Slime molds aren’t plants and they aren’t fungi. They come closer to being amoebas than anything else and are believed by some to have simple brains. My question is, how do they know what the others are “thinking?” They seem to have the same “group think” abilities as a school of fish or a flock of birds, and that is quite amazing.

No need for LED with this scrambled egg (Fuligo septica) slime mold. It is one of a handful that can be found in full sun. The example in the photo is in its spore bearing phase and has formed a mass called an aethalium. Once it has released its spores and completed its life cycle it begins to darken and degrade into a dark red liquid that resembles blood, which can also be seen in the photo. This slime mold feeds on wood and is often found in mulch beds. This one was on a white pine stump.

One of my favorite shapes in the slime mold world is found in these honeycombed, dome shaped fruiting bodies of coral slime (Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa var. porioides). They are so small and delicate that one swipe of a finger could wipe out hundreds of them. To find them I look at logs after a rain; to the naked eye they look like white powder on the side of the log. Luckily a shaft of sunlight lit this area enough so I didn’t have to use artificial lighting for this photo.

In this photo, also in natural light, it looked like individual coral slime plasmodia were moving together to form a single mass. Slime molds can reach speeds of up to 1.35 mm per second, which is the fastest rate recorded for any micro-organism.

Slime molds aren’t the only tiny things that like to grow in dark places. I had to use a flash to get a shot of these yellow coral fungi (Ramariopsis laeticolor.) Each one was no bigger in diameter than a piece of cooked spaghetti, and they stood all of a quarter inch high.

I should say that, though slime molds and fungi like growing in dark places everything needs at least some light, and as I wandered the forest getting some of these photos one morning, I noticed that shafts of cool morning sunlight fell directly on or very near where they grew. Just because we may find them growing “in the dark,” and even though they don’t photosynthesize, that doesn’t mean that they don’t get an hour or two of sunlight each day. Sunlight also brings warmth and as I’ve studied fungi and slime molds over the years I’ve wondered if the reason they grow in a shaft of sunlight is because the soil is warmer there.

Dead man’s fingers (Xylaria polymorphaare) are a type of fungi that often look like a human finger. This one growing out of a crack in a beech log didn’t, but that was because it was a young example. They change their appearance as they age. This one had water droplets on it.

As they age dead man’s finger fungi begin to darken. The lighter areas are covered with spores that are produced in early stages of their development. These fungi cause soft rot in the wood they grow on. Insects or slugs seem to love them, judging by the damage on these examples.

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 at the base of a maple stump. It doesn’t take a very vivid imagination to see what almost look like fingernails on a couple of them. Maybe I should have saved these photos for Halloween.

 

Even on its lowest setting the LED light I use to photograph mushrooms and slime molds casts a shadow, so I use tissue paper as a diffuser to make the light softer. This photo of these little pinwheel mushrooms (Marasmius rotula) shows what happens when I forget the tissue paper. I’ve been trying to think of a way to eliminate the tissue paper altogether but so far haven’t had any brilliant ideas.

Witches butter (Tremella mesenterica) comes to life when it rains and can swell up dramatically from the hard, dark orange flake form that it takes in dry weather. I find this jelly fungus on tree limbs but it can also be a parasite on other types of fungi. The tremella part of its scientific name comes from the Latin tremere which means “to tremble,” and it does tremble just like gelatin. The mesenterica part of the scientific name is a combination of the Greek mesos, meaning “middle” and the prefix entero meaning “intestine.” Though the example in the photo doesn’t show it, the shape of this fungus often looks quite intestinal.

This is an excellent example of why we should pay attention to scientific names. The description provided by the scientific name of this fungus describes it perfectly in every detail, whereas “witches butter” tells us absolutely nothing, except maybe that the folks who roamed medieval forests were highly superstitious.

These are the largest split gill fungi (Schizophyllum commune) that I’ve ever seen; easily 3/4 of an inch across. The “gills” on the split gill fungus are actually folds on its underside that split lengthwise when it dries out. The splits close over the fertile surfaces as the mushroom shrivels in dry weather. When rehydrated by rain the splits reopen, exposing the spore-producing surfaces to the air, and spores are released. Split gills grow on every continent except Antarctica and are said to be the most studied mushrooms on earth.

This hot humid weather brings out other creatures too. I’ve seen pink slugs eating fungi many times, but this one leaned more towards yellow-orange and must have been 2 inches long. It was quite dark where it was so I had to use the flash. Slug identification seems close to impossible, at least for me, so I can’t tell you its name.

Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls. ~Plato

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Things I’ve Seen

English plantain (Plantago lanceolata) pollen has been found in sites in Norway that date to the early Neolithic period, so it has been around for a very long time. It was introduced into North America from Europe and loves it here. It is a favorite of many butterflies, songbirds, and animals, and is pretty when it flowers like the one in the photo.

Last year I was walking through a forest clearing and almost stepped on a turtle. This year I did the same thing in almost the same spot and wondered if it was the same turtle. Last year it was spotless and looked as if it had come from the local Buff ‘N Shine and, as you can see in the photo, this one looked the same.

This snapping turtle was also very clean and I almost stepped on it as well. Luckily I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. It was as big as a soccer ball.

 

I went to visit my favorite lone tree one day but the girls were heading to their favorite stream for a drink. For some reason my being there was spooking them away from the stream, so I left. The white around their noses is really striking.

My favorite lone tree was still there the next time I paid a visit. Since it’s in a fenced in pasture and I can’t get near it I’ve been wondering what it was for years. Finally, after scanning the leaves with binoculars, I can see that it is some type of hickory tree. There are a lot of shagbark hickories in this area so it might be one of those. Unfortunately I can’t see the bark well enough to know for sure.

Pendulous sedge (Carex pendula) is living up to its name. It is also called weeping sedge and grows along stream and pond banks. The slightest breeze gets the dangling flower heads swaying, so getting a decent photo of it can be a challenge. It took several tries to get one that didn’t show movement.

There is an unusual evergreen tree with deep green, very long needles growing in a local park and this photo is of some new needles emerging. They look like a bundle of optical fibers. I’ve tried to identify this tree several times with no luck.

The largest of these mushrooms was barely the size of a pea. The crisscrossing “sticks” are pine needles. I think they are Mycena osmundicola. I can’t seem to find a common name for them.

This small funnel shaped mushroom grew at the very end of a twig no bigger than a pencil. I think it is one of the Clitocybe group ofmushrooms.

I thought this was a spotted tussock moth but the helpful folks at Bugguide.net tell me that it’s a hickory tussock moth (Lophocampa caryae.) Its beautiful wings reminded me of stained glass.

This viceroy butterfly seemed very hairy and I’ve never noticed that before. It wouldn’t let me get closer to see a little better and flew off after one step. I’m also seeing a lot of swallow tails this year but I don’t think I’ve seen a monarch in 2 years now.

Just imagine something so small it can crawl between the upper and lower surfaces of a leaf and eat the tissues. That’s what made this path in this sarsaparilla leaf; a leaf mining insect called Phytomyza aralivora, according to Bugguide.net. By reading about these leaf trails I’ve learned that leaf miners are very specific about the leaf they chew, so a sarsaparilla leaf miner probably won’t mine an oak leaf. I’ve also learned that their trails start out thin but then become wider as the insect grows, and that can be seen in the above photo.

Our recent spate of heat and high humidity has brought on many coral fungi. I think this orangey pink one is crown coral (Clavicorona pyxidata.)This is the first one I’ve seen growing on a birch log.

 

I found this white growth on a native azalea recently. It was about the size of a golf ball, and hard and heavy. Azalea Exobasidium gall is a leaf and flower gall that is caused by a fungus instead of an insect. It can cause swollen shoots, stem galls, witches’ brooms and red leaf spots, but more often than not it causes white galls like that seen in the above photo. The white color comes from the spores of the fungus, which are spread by wind and rain.

This dragonfly decided to take a break from hunting and pose for a picture. I think it’s an immature male 12 spotted skimmer (Libellula pulchella,) but apparently immature males look much like females, so it could be a she. Since it doesn’t really matter to me I didn’t pursue the identification any further. Sometimes just enjoying something for what it is-for its beauty- can be more rewarding than finding out what makes it tick.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? ~Annie Dillard

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Things I’ve Seen

This photo isn’t really about Mount Monadnock; it’s about the incredible shades of spring green that the surrounding forests are clothed in right now. I’ve tried several times to capture these colors on “film” and have failed. Even this photo doesn’t do them justice, but it’s the closest I’ve been able to come.

 

The long antennas on this insect tell me it isn’t a hoverfly, but what look like little knobs at the ends of the antennae have me wondering if it’s a bee or not because I can’t seem to find an example of a bee with those knobs. A carpenter bee maybe? Whatever it is, it seemed to want its picture taken. I was shooting over this branch focused on something else when it walked down the branch and stopped right in front of the lens.  And then it sat there letting me snap as many photos as I wanted. Usually the minute I point the camera at them they’re off and gone. Maybe it was the sunny spot on the branch that attracted it.

 

Some friends had a robin’s nest in their holly bush so I snuck my camera in and took a quick couple of shots after momma flew off.  They look green to me but my color finding software sees blue and turquoise.

 

The same friends that have the robin’s nest deal in antiques and found this stuffed and mounted juvenile black bear at a tag sale recently. If it was standing on its hind legs those front paws would fit comfortably right on your shoulders as if you were about to waltz. Being surprised by a cousin of this guy on a trail wouldn’t be good at all, so you have to be aware of what’s going on around you. The black bear population is on the rise in New Hampshire and I’ve even seen them in my own yard.

Someone once thought that the fertile fronds of cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) looked like cinnamon sticks and that’s how it got its common name. The reddish brown, fertile fronds appear after the green, infertile ones. Once the fern grows its fertile fronds it stops growing and puts all of its energy into producing spores.

Many ferns have their spore bearing sporangia on the undersides of their leaves but cinnamon and other ferns in the Osmunda family grow them clustered on small leaflets on fertile fronds. The sporangia are tiny round growths that will dry as they mature until finally splitting open to release the spores.

The lighter green color in this photo means that great scented liverworts (Conocephalum conicum) are showing plenty of new growth, but I still haven’t seen any of their umbrella-like fruiting structures.

I don’t have any idea what is going on here except maybe that the fungus that looks like bread dough has a fungus on it. The larger of the two was as big as a marble and was growing on a pine tree.

Splash cups on juniper haircap moss (Polytrichum juniperinum) are as rare as hen’s teeth in this area. Mosses in the polytrichum genus have male and female reproductive organs on separate plants, so when you see these little cups you know you’ve found a male plant that is ready to reproduce.

 

The male moss produces sperm in these splash cups and when a raindrop falls into the cup the sperm is splashed out. If there is enough water to swim in, the sperm will then swim to the female plant and fertilize the eggs. Each cup, about half the diameter of a pencil eraser, looks like a tiny flower with its rosettes of tiny orange leaves surrounding the reproductive parts.

 

This spider magically appeared in the photo I took of a small leaved rhododendron blossom. It’s a tiny little thing and I didn’t even see it while I was taking the photo. I’m not sure about its name. I know it isn’t a crab spider but that’s about as far as I was able to get.

I think this creature is the caterpillar of a viceroy butterfly. It tries to look like a bird dropping so it doesn’t get eaten. It looks to me like it was successful.

Giant swallowtail butterfly caterpillars also resemble bird droppings but they don’t have the horns that this one does. It is said that viceroy caterpillars feed at night and stay still during the day when birds are out and about, but this one was crawling along a twig in daylight. It couldn’t have been much more than an inch long.

For over three years now I’ve been practicing photographing cresting waves on the Ashuelot River and I’ve learned a little by doing so. Like a great blue heron I stand at the ready and wait for the perfect time to strike, because just a fraction of a second either way can make a big difference in how advanced the curl of the wave is. Click the shutter too soon and you have a strange lump of green water, too late and you have only white foam and spray. In this spot the best colors and sharpest detail are found in the morning when the sun is over my shoulder and the river is before me. Noon or later means washed out color and less detail, and on cloudy days trying for stop action isn’t worth the effort.

If you take the time to sit and watch for a while, and then close your eyes and just listen to the crash of the waves, a river will speak to you in its own way. After a time you’ll come to feel as well as see and hear its rhythm, and the rejects will become fewer as a result.

Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence. ~Alfred Bernhard Nobel

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Simple Beauty

I thought I saw a beautiful Hindu dancer in this grape tendril.

I see a lot of feathers in the woods. This white one had landed on a hemlock twig.

 

Red wing blackbirds have returned and there are buds on the daffodils but after the third coldest March in 140 years, there is still a lot of ice left to melt in the woods.

Where the river sees sunshine the ice is melting at a faster pace.

This orange crust fungus (Stereum complicatum) was so bright on a rainy day that I could see it from quite far away, like a beacon guiding me into the forest.

 

Gray rosette lichens are common enough so we often pass them by without a nod but some, like this slender rosette lichen (Physcia subtilis), are worth stopping to admire.

I don’t know what it is with smokey eye boulder lichens (Porpidia albocaerulescens) this year but the wax coatings on their fruiting discs are bluer than I’ve ever seen them. It’s like someone sprinkled candy over the stones.

Beard lichens (Usnea sp.) always remind me of ancient, sun bleached bones. This one grew on a gray birch limb.

 

Soon these alder (Alnus) catkins will to turn yellow-green and start to release pollen. If you look closely at the catkin on the far right you can see it just beginning to happen.

 

I’ve been looking for stair step moss (Hylocomium splendens) and I think I might have found it. This moss gets its common name from the way the new branches step up from the backs of the old.

Stair step moss is feathery and delicate and quite beautiful.

At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough. ~ Toni Morrison

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Another Trip to Beaver Brook Falls

 

Another warm sunny day last weekend prompted me to follow this old abandoned road up to Beaver Brook falls once more. I thought that, the way things were warming up so fast, it might be my last chance to see them in their frozen state.

  

The blue ice on the ledges reminded me of the aquamarine crystals I used to find while mineral hunting. I can’t say that blue ice is rare but I’ve only seen it in two places. As I learned from reading Sue’s Back Yard Biology blog, blue ice happens when the oxygen-hydrogen bonds in water absorb the red parts of the spectrum and reflect blue light back. Further reading tells me that it is also very dense. These ledges are about 15-20 feet high and the ice formations are bigger than tree trunks.

 

Beaver brook also had some interesting ice formations growing in it.

 

It was warm enough to thaw the amber jelly fungi (Exidia recisa). I like holding it up to the light so I can see through it because it looks like stained glass, but I’ve never noticed the yellowish spots in it before. Amber jellies are true “winter fungi” and that is when I usually find them.

 

There are still plenty of seeds on the New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae). In fact I’m still seeing an abundance of seeds, nuts and berries everywhere I go. That strikes me as odd but it could be that I’ve just never noticed how much is left in the spring before.

 

This boulder sits in the woods on the far side of the brook so I can’t get to it to see if it is a true glacial erratic, but it’s easy to see from where I stand that it’s as big as a house.  There is quite a steep hill on that side of the brook and I wonder what stopped its rolling further down the hill and into the brook.

  

There are some interesting lichens here, like this smokey eye boulder lichen (Porpidia albocaerulescens). One thing that makes it so interesting to me is how the whitish coating on the black fruiting disks (Apothecia) changes color when the light comes from different anglers.  They can appear light gray, dark gray, light blue or dark blue.  They change color because of the whitish waxy coating that reflects ultra violet rays and is very similar to the bloom on plums, blueberries, and black raspberry canes.

 

Every time I come here I see something that I’ve never seen here before and this time was no different. In the case of the greater whip wort (Bazzania trilobata) in the above photo I’m sure that I missed it because you have to look closely to see that it is a liverwort and not a moss.  Bazzania trilobata is a leafy liverwort that likes high humidity. It always reminds me of centipedes.

 

I’m not sure why it is called greater whipwort, because each leaf is only about an eighth of an inch wide and the group of plants in the previous photo isn’t 6 inches across. The trilobata part of the scientific name refers to the way that each leaf ends in 3 triangular notches.  The root-like growths are branches.

  

Ice must be a great insulator because the 40-50 foot tall falls, like the brook itself, was silent. It seems so strange for this place to be silent after hearing the very load roar of the falls in summer.

To get a really good view of the falls you have to climb down quite a steep embankment, which I’ve decided would be foolish to do in winter, so that’s why there are trees in the way in this shot.

 

This is part of the reason I don’t climb down the embankment to the falls. If you tipped a Volkswagen Beetle on its side it would fit right into this hole with room to spare.  The depth from the top of the snow layer down to the water surface was about 7 feet, and I stood there thinking that if I accidently stumbled into a hole like this, I would most likely never get out of it. It reminded me once again why you have to have your wits about you when you’re in the woods.

 

This is probably the strangest thing I saw this day. I’m assuming it is a spider’s egg sac, but I’m not sure. It was hanging from some moss by a thread of silk like a tiny Christmas ornament.

 

This is a closer look at the whatever-it-is. It had a little stocking cap like growth on top that was opened, but I couldn’t see any of this until I cropped the photo because it was so small. The “orb” itself was no bigger than a sixteenth of an inch across. If you’re reading this and know what it is I’d like to hear from you.

Note: If you’d like to read more about this place just type “Beaver Brook” in the search box in the upper right corner.

The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes.  ~George Sand

Thanks for stopping in.

 

 

 

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Back to College

 

Recently a little birdie told me that some of the students in a certain biology class at a certain college were saying that it was “too cold” and that they “couldn’t walk in the snow.” And how were they supposed to find anything anyway when there’s “snow everywhere?”

Just for fun I decided to return to college myself just to see how valid these complaints were.

 

This was my chosen starting point on the campus of Keene State College. The great thing about nature study is it doesn’t matter which path you take. Nature will have something interesting to show you no matter where you go. With a willingness to participate and a little extra attentiveness you will learn things that you’ve never even imagined.

Oh-you will notice that the snow isn’t “everywhere.”

 

My first stop was the ivy covered walls of Parker Hall shown in the above photo. This photo is of Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata), which lends its name to the “ivy league” schools. The odd thing about Boston ivy is its name, because it isn’t from Boston and it isn’t an ivy; it’s a member of the grape family and comes from China and Japan. This vine attaches to just about any vertical surface with tiny circular pads that form at the ends of its tendrils.  It secretes calcium carbonate and uses it to “glue” the pads to the surface it wants to climb. The glue can to hold up to 260 times its own weight.

If you are a biology student reading this blog then this photo should have you asking questions like why haven’t the birds eaten these crabapples?  You can see the hundreds of them in the background on the snow even though many birds, including robins and cedar waxwings, love crabapples. In a winter as harsh as this one you would think they would be gobbling them as fast as they could, so why aren’t they? Science has shown that birds will leave fruits that are lower in fat for last but are crabapples low in fat? The answers are simple; many crab apples are ornamental cultivars that birds just don’t like. Some other cultivars have fruit that birds will eat only after it has frozen and thawed several times.  If you want to attract fruit eating birds with crab apples (Malus) the choice of cultivar requires some research.

  

One of the ways to identify trees and shrubs in winter is by their buds. The size and placement of buds as well as the number of bud scales can all help with identification. Bud scales are modified leaves that cover and protect the bud through winter. Some buds can have several, some have two, some just one scale called a cap, and some buds have none at all. Buds that have several scales are called imbricate and have scales that overlap like shingles. The lilac buds in the above photo are good examples of imbricate buds.

 

Buds with just two (sometimes three) scales are called valvate. The scales meet but do not overlap. This Cornelian cherry bud is a great example of a valvate bud. In the spring when the plant begins to take up water through its roots the buds swell and the scales part to let the bud grow. Some bud scales are hairy and some covered with sticky resin that further protects the bud.

Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) is an ornamental flowering shrub related to dogwoods. It blooms in early spring (in March) with clusters of blossoms that have small, bright yellow bracts.

  

Powdery goldspeck lichens ( Candelariella efflorescens) grow on tree bark of all kinds. The round, flattened, yellow patches are very small but grow in large colonies that make them easier to see.  Winter is the perfect time to look for lichens because they aren’t hidden by foliage. I saw plenty on this campus.

Lichens are great indicators of air quality because they refuse to grow where the air is polluted. There was a famous study done by schoolchildren in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. They produced a “mucky air map” that showed the absence of lichens from areas polluted by coal burning. Such a study (on a much smaller scale) done on a college campus might be a real eye opener. The lichens wouldn’t even have to be identified; simply recording their presence is enough. The absence of lichens is not a good thing.

 

The Tibetan cherry (Prunus serrula Tibetica) is also called the paper bark cherry because of the way its bark peels as it ages, much like a birch. It is used as an ornamental tree as much for its bark as for its flowers. The mahogany bark has very long, closely spaced lenticels that give it an unusual appearance. Lenticels are corky pores that allow gases like oxygen to reach the living cells of the bark. Without enough oxygen, bark can die.

I was surprised when I finally realized that these were sweet gum seed pods, because Massachusetts is the northernmost point that sweet gum grows naturally in the U.S. and, though it is native to the east coast, it is considered a “southern tree.” But, there is an old (often risky) trick that landscape designers will sometimes use if a client is determined to have a certain plant that isn’t hardy-they use masonry. If a plant that isn’t reliably hardy is planted near masonry it will often survive lower temperatures than it would otherwise because the masonry absorbs heat from the sun during the day and releases it slowly at night, keeping the plant warm enough to survive. There were several of these sweet gum trees near a massive wall of brick, and they were protected from wind by other buildings.

I’ve never heard of a dwarf sycamore tree but this is an empty sycamore seed head that I plucked from a tree with very mottled sycamore bark that stood no more than 7 feet tall. There are a large number of ornamental trees on this campus and I’m not sure how I would identify them all without occasionally asking the head gardener.

 

White rot fungus (Fomitiporia punctata) covered this fallen oak limb. There are many species of white rot fungi and they play a major part in wood decomposition. Scientists have discovered that they will also biodegrade environmental pollutants and certain chemical wastes. Researching that might be very interesting.

 

Amber jelly fungi (Exidia recisa) were on the same fallen oak limb, but frozen solid by the looks. This is the first time I’ve seen these growing on oak. I usually find them on alder. Some jelly fungi are also good at helping wood rot. This one fruits in late fall and winter and is a true winter fungus. I’ve always wondered why certain fungi only fruit in winter.

I was surprised to see this very invasive Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii ) growing as a hedge but as I think about it I shouldn’t have been. I’ve planted barberry hedges myself back when we didn’t realize how invasive it was.  I also saw burning bushes used in a hedge. Also called winged euonymus (Euonymus alatus), they are also very invasive and until recently were widely used. The final invasive that I found was oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus). These were growing near a chain like fence-right where a bird might sit for a while after eating its berries.

Exploring their campus for invasive species would be a good project for a biology class and could be done at any time of year. The results might be surprising for those in charge of such things since, in this instance, this is a state college and the state has banned selling or importing these invasives.

  

The most satisfying thing I found on this campus was the little taste of spring provided by these inch high daffodil shoots. I was surprised since we had just seen a temperature of 7 below zero the night before.

So, if anyone reading this happens to be a student attending a certain biology class in a certain college, this post is for you. All of these photos and at least twice as many more were taken in less than an hour while meandering around the Keene State College campus and I didn’t once have to step in snow deeper than the soles of my hiking boots. It was cold but I dressed for it. That’s what we have to do to keep warm in a New England winter.  I hope this post has shown how easy it is to find things in nature with very little effort.

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.  ~Henri Poincaré

Thanks for coming by.

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Things I’ve Seen

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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Black and White

This post is about firsts as much as anything else; the first post I’ve ever done in black and white and the first post that’s been about photography more than the subjects of the photos. This is also the first time I’ve had to see things so very differently, and for that I have Patrick Muir to thank. Patrick has a blog called Patrick’s Garden, which you can visit by clicking here. He saw the first black and white photo to ever appear on this blog and challenged me to do an entire post in black and white, so Patrick, this one is for you.

 

I thought I’d start at the beginning with this photo of a dead tree that I posted back in December. Though I admire photos by people like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange I haven’t ever been very interested in black and white photography, but then I saw a black and white photo on Tootlepedal’s blog (another one worth a visit) and thought it might be fun to give it a try. I found out by doing this little project that color can actually be a distraction and a hindrance, and sometimes you don’t really see until you remove the distraction.

 

Often in winter the world is more black and white than anything else so it was no work at all to turn the photo above and the first photo of the dead tree to black and white. If I showed both the color and black and white versions side by side you could barely tell which was which.

 

These pixie cup lichens (Cladonia asahinae) are the color of wood ash but many times they look almost white in a certain light. They have a granular, pebbly surface and the absence of color makes it much easier to see.

 

This is the seed pod of Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum). The plant itself is a terribly invasive weed that is almost impossible to eradicate, but its tiny whitish seeds have three wings that fly 120 degrees apart, and make up a papery husk around the seed. I never noticed the texture of their wings until I saw them in black and white.

 

Ice and water seem to make good candidates for black and white photography. The icicles are much easier to see.

 

Long time readers of this blog have probably heard me talk about my colorblindness at one time or another. The kind I have isn’t severe but, though I can see red and green traffic lights, if a red cardinal lands in a green tree he disappears. The above photo was rejected because it was (to me) monochromatic, showing only varying shades of brown. The mushrooms almost blended into the background but in the black and white version they really stand out.

 

Tree wounds can be interesting but this one seems even more so in black and white. The absence of color helps me to think more about shape and texture.

 

If you find something that looks like a maple leaf but has a deep green upper surface and a pure white underside, it is a leaf from a white poplar (Populus alba). Making this photo black and white did nothing to the leaf-it really was as snow white as it appears in the photo.

 

I like how the texture of the oak leaf that this tiny mushroom cap is sitting on becomes almost reptilian when seen this way.

 

The dark water and white hoar frost again meant little change when this photo became black and white.

 

This photo of gray birches (Betula populifolia) was another one that showed little change from color to black and white.

 

Last September, on a very foggy morning, I climbed Mount Caesar in Swanzey and found a lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) blooming long after any blueberry should have been. I posted the color version of this photo then, but I like the black and white version more. The water droplets make sense because of the dense fog, but I still can’t figure out what would have caused the bubbles on these tiny blossoms.

This was a fun post, if for no other reason than forcing me to climb out of my comfort zone and try something new. I feel though, because black and white photography is very easy in the winter when the world is black and white, that I’ve cheated a bit, so I’ll do another black and white post in the summer or fall. I have a feeling that will be a real challenge.

To see in color is a delight for the eye but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul. ~ Andri Cauldwell

Thanks for coming by. 

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