The Plants of Edgewood Forest

It comes in waves. News of the war between the Edgewood Civic Association and the Federal Aviation Administration will suddenly erupt in the local newspaper and then, after a few weeks, will disappear until the next eruption, and it’s been happening for as long as I can remember. The crux of the whole argument is about tree cutting in Edgewood Forest and it hinges on whether or not a 1983 amendment to the original deed, which said that trees on the property “may be cut or topped in order that they will not constitute an obstruction to air navigation,” is legal and binding. Residents say it isn’t, because the parties involved lacked the authority to make such an agreement, and the city of Keene says it is legal. In the end it seems that it will be up to the courts to decide but the original deed did say there was to be no tree cutting allowed on this deeded parcel.

Injunctions are filed and other court procedures go on, but meanwhile so does tree cutting. A friend told me about this tree topping and when I saw it, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would go to all of the trouble to top trees when they could have just cut them down. If they had cut them down, they wouldn’t have needed all the equipment it must have taken to lift them to such lofty heights to cut the tops off. Now of course, all of these trees are dead and will fall, and some are mere feet from the main trail.

The topped trees are also not too far from the many wires that follow this trail.

I don’t know what the W stands for on this huge old pine tree, but I’d say it’s a fair bet that it isn’t wisdom. Since our tallest trees are white pines which these days might reach 150 feet on a good day, and by law aircraft cannot fly “closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure,” I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It seems to me that if a plane hits a tree, it was flying far too low and was breaking the law. It seems simple, but I’m not a pilot.

On this day I just wanted to wash my hands of the whole thing and go into the woods. Or what’s left of them, anyhow.

There is something about the place, probably the fact that the soil has lain undisturbed for so long, that draws many native wintergreen plants that you don’t see anywhere else, like striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata.) It is my favorite of the native evergreens because I like the way its foliage turns deep purple in cold weather. The Chimaphila part of the scientific name is from the Greek cheima (winter) and philein (to love,) so it loves winter and does not die from the cold. It is relatively rare; I know of only two or three places where small colonies grow.

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) also grows here in great numbers. In spring its small white to pink, very fragrant flowers appear and that’s why it was once over-collected into near oblivion. In fact my grandmother and I looked for it for years and never could find any. Though it looks like a groundcover botanically speaking it has a persistent woody stem, so it is classified as a shrub. These days it can be found at many nurseries but it’s very fussy unless it’s given the right amount of light, water, nutrients and soil type. That’s true of many of our native evergreens, in fact. They want to grow where they want to grow.

Shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica) is another of our native wintergreens that grows in large numbers here. It’s interesting to me how so many native evergreens have chosen this place to grow in. Other than the long undisturbed soil I don’t know what the attraction would be. It might also have something to do with the humidity level as well, because there is plenty of water in the area. Shinleaf’s common name from the way Native Americans used it as a poultice to heal wounds; especially shin wounds, apparently. Like several other native wintergreens it contains compounds similar to those in aspirin and a tea made from it was used to soothe many ailments.

Fan shaped clubmoss (Diphasiastrum digitatum) grow fairly well here but I haven’t seen large numbers of them. They’re pretty clubmosses that look quite different from others, and that means they’re easy to identify. They were once collected almost into oblivion for Christmas wreaths, and not that long ago. I can remember seeing clubmoss Christmas wreaths. That’s why I don’t usually tell anyone specifically where they grow.

I saw quite a few dead fan shaped clubmosses here, which is something I’ve never seen before. I hope it doesn’t signal something ominous.

Years ago I found a single downy rattlesnake plantain orchid growing behind a tree so I marked the tree with my pocket knife so I could find the orchid again. Of course the tree grew, its bark healed my little X mark over, and I couldn’t find it or the orchid again. Then, on this day I found another orchid just sitting there, not by any tree at all, and that means they are spreading. I’m very happy about that because they’re a beautiful little plant. And I do mean little; this one would fit in a teacup with room to spare. The flowers look like tiny white teapots and are very hard to photograph.

There is quite a lot of swamp land in Edgewood Forest and this particular spot is rich in peat mosses.

I have enough trouble identifying mosses without taking on the peat mosses but I do like to see them. This one seems to turn bright yellow in winter. I keep hoping to find spore capsules on them but since there are over 380 species of sphagnum peat mosses, I never really know what species I’m looking at.

Swamp dewberry (Rubus hispidus) leaves turn a nice purple color in winter but they will stay on the plant under the snow. It’s a trailing plant with fruit like a black raspberry and its stems are every bit as prickly. It also looks a lot like a strawberry when it’s pretty white flowers bloom.

Young yarrow plants grew here and there. Considered one of the nine “Holy herbs” by ancients, this plant has been healing mankind since before recorded history, important enough to be traded from one country to another until now it is found in nearly every country on earth. The young leaves are very feathery and very pretty.

It looked like these pear-shaped puffballs had puffed out all their spores already. People have gotten deadly lung infections from inhaling puffball spores so It’s really best to just let them be.

Lumpy bracket fungi (Trametes gibbosa) grow on many species of hardwood logs. They’re usually white or cream colored but I think this one had some algae growing on it, which is said to be common. These fungi decompose wood by causing white rot.

The pores on a lumpy bracket fungus look as if they’ve been stretched and look maze like, unlike the round pores found on a turkey tail fungus.

For years now I’ve seen this yellow crust fungus on conifers and though I once believed it was the conifer parchment fungus (Stereum sanguinolentum,) now I’m not so sure. The examples I see are always very dry and thin, almost as if they were part of the bark, and they are hard enough so, though I try to dent them with my fingernails, they remain undamaged. What I see here in this photo does not match the conifer parchment fungi I see online so for now, I’m still in the dark.

Powdery mildew grew on oak leaves. Powdery mildew is a fungal disease which usually grows where there is little direct sunlight, high humidity and poor air circulation. Some plants like bee balm, lilacs, and grape vines seem particularly susceptible to it. I think this is the first time I’ve noticed it on oak.

Because bracket fungi like birch polypores grow with their spore bearing undersides pointed toward the ground you can always tell if they grew before or after a tree fell. All of these grew after this birch fell.

A huge old birch tree had two trunks but one fell away, leaving what you see here. I thought the colors and grain patterns were beautiful. I wish I could make a table top from it.

Last year a group of volunteers came together to remove invasive water chestnut plants from this swamp that borders Edgewood Forest. Water chestnut is native to Eurasia and Africa, and was brought to the U.S. in the 1870s as an ornamental. The plants form a thick mat on the surface and crowd out natives. It was nice to see them gone from this spot and nice to know that people worked together in a place that has been so divided for so long. That’s exactly what needs to happen here.

In any conflict there are always three sides; two opposing and the innocent who are caught in the middle. ~A.J. Garces

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Fall Fungi

Though there are mushrooms known as “winter mushrooms” we’ve had a few nights of freezing temperatures now so I think our mushroom hunting season is over. What you’ll find in this post are all the mushrooms I’ve found since the last mushroom post I did in September. Mushrooms can be both interesting and beautiful, and by the end of this post I hope you’ll agree. Hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa,) shown in the above photo, is an edible polypore that often grows in the same spot year after year. I usually find them at the base of very old oak trees. They are called the “dancing mushrooms” in Japan. That’s something my imagination won’t let me see, but I can see the back of a brown hen’s ruffled feathers, and that’s how they come by their common name in this country. They are also called ram’s head or sheep’s head.

Lion’s mane, bear’s head, monkey head, icicle mushroom-call it what you will, Hericium americanum is a toothed fungus that is always fun to find in the woods. Soft spines hang from branches that reach out from a thick central stalk, making it look like a fungal waterfall. They can get quite large and I thik the biggest one I’ve seen was about the size of a grapefruit. Every one I’ve seen has been growing on a log or a dead tree as this one was. Though it was slightly past its prime I thought it was still pretty. This mushroom is edible but unless you can be 100% sure of your identification you should never eat a wild mushroom.

Carnation earth fan (Thelephora terrestris) is also called the common fiber vase. It is a small, tough, inedible fungus that grows on soil. It is said to like sandy soil under pine trees and that’s just where I found it. It is also said to have a moldy, earth like scent, which I didn’t smell. It does look like a carnation. I like its deep reddish-brown color and frosted white edges. It has a cousin called the stinking earth fan (Thelephora palmata) but it looks quite different.

I found quite a large colony of common ink caps (Coprinopsis atramentaria) on a lawn at work, and it was a good thing I found them when I did because the cap margins were starting to roll up.

Once the cap starts rolling like this, this mushroom doesn’t have a lot of future left. Common inkcaps are said to be edible, but they become toxic if consumed with alcohol. For that reason they are known as “tippler’s bane.” They create a strong sensitivity to alcohol by inhibiting the liver’s ability to break it down. You don’t die but you do get very sick.

Inkcaps release their spores by a process called autodigestion, dissolving into an inky liquid which contains their spores. The black, spore rich liquid that this mushroom becomes was once used as ink for printing. They come and go quickly; I’ve seen them disappear in just a day.

White worm coral fungus (Clavaria fragilis) is one of the club fungi, and is also called fairy fingers. Each fruiting body is tubular and unbranched, and they usually grow in clusters like those seen in the photo. I found these very clean examples at the edge of a swamp. They’re fragile so if you want a photo of them complete it’s best not to touch them.

Cockscomb coral mushrooms (Clavulina cristata) are ghostly while and, like many coral mushrooms, seem to prefer growing in hard packed earth like that found on woodland trails, and they often grow in large groups. It’s startling to see something so pure white come out of the dark soil.

The deceiver (Laccaria laccata) gets its common name from the way it resembles many other small mushrooms. When young like these in the photo were they can appear reddish, pinkish brown, or orange. As they age, they can change enough to even appear white or sometimes nearly colorless.  

The rather deep gills of the deceiver are a mixture of long and short. Though when young these gills are dark colored, they lighten as they age and get covered by this mushroom’s white spores. They are said to be edible but with their ability to mimic other mushrooms and a name like the deceiver I’m not sure I’d eat them.

Every time I do a mushroom post I have photos of mushrooms I can’t identify, and this is one of those. I’m adding this shot to this post because they’re a pretty color and fun to look at, and you don’t need to know a name to be able to see their beauty.

In case you’re searching for a name for that mushroom in the previous photos, here are its gills.

I found a big cluster of red painted suillus mushrooms (Suillus spraguei) in a lawn. It is also called the painted slippery cap and red and yellow suillus. The caps are dark red when young like I think these examples were, and develop yellowish cracks as they age. They also have mats of reddish hairs on the cap but it had just rained so they were hard to see.

The real surprise was the hairs on the underside of the cap. They looked like spun sugar, but are really the remnants of a partial veil that once covered the spore bearing surface. Along with the marbled stem and yellowish elongated pores, they made this mushroom very pretty. It does indeed look like it has been painted.

A young thin maze, flat polypore (Daedaleopsis confragosa) might fool you into thinking it was a turkey tail fungus, but one look at its underside would tell you otherwise.

On a turkey tail fungus the underside is full of round pores that look like pin holes, but the lower spore bearing surface of the thin maze polypore is maze like, as its name suggests. Michael Kuo of Mushroom Expert. com says that this mushroom’s appearance is highly variable, with pores sometimes appearing elongated and sometimes rounder. With mushrooms it’s always about increasing the surface area that its spores grow on so it can produce more spores, so I’m guessing this one produces an amazing number of them. These polypores grow on fallen branches and logs.

Usually, if you say the word “polypore” to someone who knows mushrooms they think of a mushroom with pores on the underside of the cap but as we saw with the thin maze flat polypore, they don’t always have pores. In fact, sometimes they have gills, like the rusty gilled polypore (Gloeophyllum sepiarium) seen here. I found them growing on an old timber at work and that made sense, because their job is to decompose dead wood like white pine, which our forests are full of.  It’s a velvety, colorful mushroom that often grows into a lozenge shape like that seen in the above photo.

And here is what the gills on a rusty gilled polypore look like. There are always unexpected surprises in nature.

The velvet footed pax (Tapinella atrotomentosa) is a large bracket type fungus that grows on conifer stumps and logs. Though it is considered to be a bolete it has gills, so it’s easy to get confused when you find it. The most interesting thing about it is how it contains several compounds that repel insects, so it is unlikley that you’ll find any fungus gnats on it. All those insect repellants will also make you sick, so it’s best to let it be. It looked like an animal ran its claws over the cap of this example but I didn’t see any insect damage. The depressed center and rolled rim help with identification, so I think I have this one correct. It matches several examples I’ve seen online.

The real clincher for indentification on the velvet footed pax is its velvet foot. Black to brown velvety hairs cover the base of the stem (stipe.) One of the things that bother me about this one is how the outer rim isn’t rolled under quite as much as I’ve seen on a few other examples.

Pear shaped puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme) grow in clusters on stumps and logs but I’ve also seen them growing on a rotted part of a living standing tree, and that is never good for the tree. Their common name comes from their kind of upside-down pear shape. As they age pores open in the top of each one so its spores can be released. This one is fairly common but I see it more after it has released its spores than before.

I’ve seen a lot of yellow spindle coral fungi (Clavulinopsis fusiformis) but I’ve never seen them do this. These fungi usually grow in tight clusters often in the hard packed soil on the side of the trail, but I’ve found them on the forest floor as well. I’m not sure why they would have entwined like that.

Surprise webcaps (Cortinarius semisanguineus) appear in early fall under pines, and the pine cone in this photo shows where these grew. They are also called red gilled fibercaps because of the fine fibers that grow on the orangey brown caps.

The semisanguineus part of the scientific name means “half blood-red,” which is a reference to the bright, blood red gill color, and this is what the “surprise” in the common name also refers to. Though my color finding software sees “Indian Red” I think this color would pass.

This group of yellow mushrooms, so tiny I couldn’t see enough features to help in identification, have to take the prize for smallness in this post. The penny shows you just how small they were.  

I think this (parasol) mushroom has to take the prize for simple beauty. I’ve had a bear of a time trying to identify it though, and even though I started trying a month ago, I still don’t know its name. But not knowing a name isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing. As Henry David Thoreau said: I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Of course the prize for the most colorful mushroom in any mushroom post has to go to the turkey tails (Trametes versicolor) with their bands of vivid color. Just after the leaves fall but before it snows is the perfect time to find them, and I’ve been seeing a lot of them. I hope you’ll have a chance to see them in person as well.

Nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain. Aristotle

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Things I’ve Seen

I saw a clouded sulfur butterfly (Colias philodice) on an aster recently. It moved from flower to flower but was willing to sit still long enough for a couple of photos. I like the color combination.

Painted turtles are still lazing in the sun along the Ashuelot River. Soon they will burrow into the mud on the river bottom. As the water cools their internal temperature will drop to nearly match the water temperature and their metabolism will slow. They will take up enough oxygen to stay alive through their skin and hibernate until the weather warms in spring.

The American dagger moth caterpillar (Acronicta americana) feeds on the leaves of deciduous trees like birch, elm, ash, hickory, maple, and oak. This one had someplace to be and was moving about as fast as I’ve ever seen a caterpillar move. It had a black head but it wouldn’t let me get a shot of it. American dagger moth caterpillars aren’t poisonous but some people do get a rash when they handle them.

A coworker found a moose antler in the woods and I asked if I could get a photo of it for those who have never seen one. This was from a young moose and wasn’t that big, but some can get very big indeed. One recent trophy moose had antlers that spanned over 6 feet (75 5/8 inches) from tip to tip. Shed antlers aren’t a common site in these woods even though moose wander through every town in the region. Since they are relatively rare large moose antlers can be valuable when found in good condition. The trick is to find them before the mice, birds, coyotes and other critters chew them up.

Fall always seems to start at the forest floor and slowly work its way up to the trees. At present it has reached the understory, as this Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) shows. I grew up with this plant; my mother loved it so much that she planted it to grow up the side of the porch. I watched it turn red each fall when I was a boy and now I look for it every year at this time.

Burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) are also showing signs of fall, with more pink leaves coming every day. This shrub is much loved for its fall color but it is extremely invasive so its sale and cultivation are banned in New Hampshire. Our native highbush blueberry bushes (Vaccinium corymbosum) are quite colorful in the fall and are good alternatives for burning bush. Plant breeders have developed cultivars that are even more colorful than the natives. The American cranberry bush (Viburnum opulus var. americanum) is another native shrub that breeders have been working on and some cultivars display amazing color.

They may be invasive but it’s hard to deny the beauty of burning bushes. Along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey there is a narrow strip of woodland where nearly the entire understory is made up of hundreds of these shrubs. It’s a great example of how invasive plants choke out the natives and create a monoculture. I’m not happy about the monoculture but when all of these shrubs turn the color of the leaves shown in the photo it’s an astoundingly beautiful sight. Though I can understand and even agree with every argument that says they should be destroyed, I have to admit that I’d be sorry to see them go.

Birch trees are among the first to turn in the fall but these examples are still showing more green than gold. We’ve had a very dry summer and I’m curious to see what the colors will be like this year; muted or more intense? So far the shrub colors don’t seem to be affected.

Bear’s head or lion’s mane mushroom (Hericlum americanum) is a beautiful toothed fungus that looks like a fungal waterfall. Soft spines hang from branches that reach out from a thick central stalk. As it ages it will change from white to cream to brown. I didn’t think I was going to see one this year but I found this naval orange size example growing from the cut end of a felled tree just yesterday. I took its photo with my cellphone because that’s all I had with me. I haven’t had much luck taking close-ups with that phone so I was surprised when I saw that this shot was useable.

I think this white coral fungus might be cockscomb or crested coral (Clavulina coralloides.) Crested corals have branches that end in sharp tips which often turn brown. I don’t see these as often as I do other types of coral fungi. They are supposed to like growing under conifers and that’s just where I found it.

Golden pholiota (Pholiota limonella) mushrooms grew on a beech log. The gilled, lemon yellow caps with reddish scales are slimy to the touch on these inedible mushrooms. An oak kindly dropped an acorn beside them for me so I could give you a sense of their size.

Pear shaped puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme) grow in clusters on stumps and logs but these examples were growing on a rotted part of a living, standing tree. That’s not good and the tree will eventually have to go. Their common name comes from their upside down pear shape which can’t really be seen in this photo. As they age pores open in the top of each one so its spores can be released.

The wild plums are ripening. I found a thicket of about 3 small trees under some power lines in Swanzey a few years ago and though I’ve taken photos of the flowers I never came back to take any of the fruit until this year. I thought they were American plums (Prunus americana) but I’m not positive about that. They could also be Canada plums (Prunus nigra.) I’m going to have to pay very close attention to the flowers next spring. The fruit is small at about half the size of a hen’s egg but is said to make delicious jelly, whether American or Canadian.

Botanically speaking a whorl is an “arrangement of sepals, petals, leaves, stipules or branches that radiate from a single point and surround or wrap around the stem,” and nothing illustrates this better than Indian cucumber root (Medeola virginiana.) Its leaves wrap around the stem arranged in a single flat plane, so if you saw them from the side theoretically you would see an edge, much like looking at the edge of a dinner plate. If any leaf or leaves in the arrangement are above or below others it’s not a true whorl.

Native little bluestem grass (Schizachyrium scoparium) catches the light and glows in luminous ribbons along the roadsides. This grass is common, growing in every U.S. state except Nevada and Washington. According to the USDA its appearance can vary in height, color, length of leaves, flowering, and clump diameter from location to location. It’s a beautiful little 2-3 foot tall grass that lends a golden richness to life outdoors. After a frost it takes on a reddish purple hue, making it even more beautiful. The world would be a duller place without it.

There is a lot going on in a light catching little bluestem seed head but I won’t try to explain it; I’ll just let you enjoy its unique beauty.

I’ve been walking the banks of the Ashuelot River almost since I learned how to walk and I’ve seen some unusual things over the years, but by far the most unusual thing I’ve seen recently is this statue of the Hindu deity Ganesh that I found on its banks in Swanzey. Ganesh is said to be the lord of success and the remover of obstacles on one’s spiritual path. He is also thought to bring education, knowledge, wisdom and prosperity, so I’m wondering what it is the river is trying to tell me. It seems like whatever it is can only be good.

He who has experienced the mystery of nature is full of life, full of love, full of joy. Radiance emanates from the whole existence itself; it does not know the meaning of holding back. ~ Maitreya Rudrabhayananda

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Letting Nature Lead

There was a blog post coming up in just a few days and I had nothing; not even an idea, and I wondered if, for the first time in almost 4 years, I’d miss a post.  I shouldn’t have wondered at all because I know that all I have to do is free my mind of expectations and walk into the forest. If I go into the woods expecting or hoping to find a certain thing then I usually don’t find it, but if I just walk in with an open mind and let nature lead, I often see things that I’ve never seen before.

If you have ever walked down a woodland path with a two year old child then you know that they’re open to anything and fascinated by everything. They also walk very slowly down a crooked path, toddling from this to that and back again with a sense of wide eyed wonder. That’s exactly how to see the things in nature that others miss-let yourself be a child again. I walk at the pace of a two year old and my path is never straight. I stop and look around often, never knowing what I’ll see, and if I have to get down on my knees to take a photo I’m sure to scan the forest floor around me for a full 360 degrees before I stand up again. I’ve seen some amazing things by doing that.

One of the first things I found on this day was this orange crust fungus, which I think is the crowded parchment fungus (Stereum complicatum.) The complicatum part of its scientific name means “folded back on itself.” This fungus often grows on fallen oak limbs and parasitizes some types of jelly fungi.

Before I stood up I followed my own advice, looked around and saw these pear shaped puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme,) which grew on a log and stood out against what I think is a bright white lichen background, possibly whitewash lichen (Phlyctis argena.)

I walked further down the trail and saw this excellent example of whitewash lichen. From a distance it looks like someone has painted the tree. These lichens can cover quite a large area and can be greenish white, silvery, or bright white. They usually grow on hardwoods but can occasionally be seen on conifers as well.

Naturalist John Burroughs once said “to find new things, take the path you took yesterday.” I’ve found that to be very true and am always surprised by what I’ve missed on my first, second and even third visits to a place, so though I’ve followed this small stream a hundred times I decided to follow it again.

Partridge berries (Mitchella repens) aren’t new to me but though I’ve seen them a thousand times they are always a welcome sight, especially when there is snow on the ground. I don’t know about partridges, but I do know that wild turkeys eat the berries. Though the plant creeps along the forest floor like a vine, botanically speaking it is considered a “sub-shrub,” which simply means that it is a dwarf shrub, usually woody at its base.

Here is something new. So new in fact that I’m not even sure what to call it, because I don’t know if it is a lichen or fungus. I’ve never seen a lichen with fuzzy edges like these and I’ve never seen a fungus, even a crust fungus, that was so very thin and flat. I’ve searched all of my books and online and haven’t seen anything close to it, so this one has me stumped. It was a little bigger than a quarter and was growing on the bark of a standing hardwood. If you know what it is I’d like to hear from you.

Note: Biologist and botanical consultant Arold Lavoie has identified this lichen as Lecanora thysanophora, which is also called maple dust lichen. It is supposed to be common in the northeast but I’ve never seen it. Arold is from Quebec and has a website that looks extremely interesting but unfortunately I don’t read French. If you do you can visit the site at http://aroldlavoie.com/ Thanks very much for the identification Arold!

This bluish-lavender lichen appeared in several spots on a boulder. I’ve never seen it before and I’m not even sure if it’s a lichen but if not I don’t know what else it could be. I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking for something similar in books and online and haven’t found anything. Again, if you know what it is I’d be happy to hear from you.

On the same boulder as the lichen in the previous photo, growing out of a crack was a tiny evergreen fern that I think is an intermediate wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia.)  Evergreen plants send sugar into their leaves in the winter to act as antifreeze, so evergreen ferns get a jump on photosynthesizing in the spring, basking in the sunshine for a month or two and growing new leaves before being shaded by tree leaves. By the time other ferns are just poking their fiddleheads from the soil the evergreens are well on their way. The boulder probably soaks up heat from the sun all day and releases it slowly at night, making this little fern’s life much easier.

Something else I’ve never seen is veins running through an amber jelly fungus (Exidia recisa.) Amber jellies are common at this time of year on oak and alder limbs and when I find them I like to hold them up to the light and look through them, because they often look like stained glass. They grow like little pillows or sacks of air and I wonder if, instead of veins those are wrinkles. These fungi are also called willow brain but I’ve never found one on a willow.

I’ve seen tree skirt moss (Anomodon attenuatus) growing on thousands of trees but never on trees this small. The biggest one in this photo was hardly bigger in diameter than an average garden hose.  Tree skirt moss grows up to 3 feet high around the bases of hardwoods, especially oaks. Knowing where certain mosses prefer growing, whether on soil, stone or wood, can help with identifying them.

 

Beautiful smoky eye boulder lichens (Porpidia albocaerulescens) are one of my favorite lichens but, though I’ve walked these woods since I was a boy I’ve never seen them growing here. I noticed this one and then took a closer look at the other stones in the area and found that they all had this lichen on them! I have to admit that at that moment I didn’t feel very observant, that’s for sure. It really is amazing what we can miss in the forest, and that’s why I keep going back to the same places again and again. Just when you start thinking that you’ve seen it all nature will show you that you haven’t even scratched the surface.

The storm we had on Thanksgiving eve brought down a lot of branches, especially those of white pine (Pinus strobus.) There are a lot of tiny pine cones on these limbs which will never grow to release their seeds. Next fall the animals that eat them might have to hope for a good acorn, beech and hazelnut crop.

I found that someone, probably a young boy with a brand new jackknife, had whittled a pine branch into a tent peg. He had done a good job, too-there was no blood on it. The smell of the freshly carved pine and the thought of whittling took me back to my own boyhood and I’m sure I must have had a bounce in my step when I left the forest on this day. Not only did nature show me several things that I hadn’t seen before, but I felt twelve years old again for a time. How can you ask for a better day than that?

I can’t guarantee that everyone who goes into the woods will come out feeling twelve years old again but I can guarantee that if you walk slowly, stop often, and look closely, nature will show you things that you have never even imagined-mind blowing things, as we used to say back in the day.

Humans who spend time in the wilderness, alone, without man-made mechanical noise around them, often discover that their brain begins to recover its ability to discern things. ~Robert Anderson

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Things I’ve Seen

The folks over at Bug gide.net tell me that this is a brown hooded owlet moth caterpillar (Cucullia convexipennis.) They feed on asters and goldenrod and this one was perched on a slender fragrant goldenrod leaf (Euthamia tenuifolia.) I thought he was a real snappy dresser.

This is another one I needed help with. I’m told that this little caterpillar will become the largest and most broad winged wasp moth (Ctenucha virginica) in North America. That’s surprising, since the small caterpillar was less than an inch long. They feed on grass, which is just what this one was doing when I found it. The bluish hairs on each end are supposed to be white and I’m not really sure why they look blue unless it was the low light. Or maybe it’s a new kind of Ctenucha virginica.

What I think was a cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) was on the damp sand at the edge of a river. There aren’t many plants in the cabbage family there, so I’m not sure what it was looking for. Moisture maybe?

Golden pholiota (Pholiota limonella) mushrooms grow in clusters on living or dead wood, in this case a dead but still standing birch. The caps are yellow to orange yellow and slimy and always look wet. The stems are often covered with yellow to reddish brown scales like those in the photo. These examples were small but they can get quite large. They are said to be inedible.

I was really surprised to see these Indian pipes blooming in October. They were just turning their nodding flowers to the sky, which means they’ve been pollinated and are ready to set seed.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen them growing this late in the year.

Aspen boletes (Leccinum insigne) are very similar to birch boletes (Leccinum scabrum) but the aspen bolete has an orange cap and the birch bolete’s cap is reddish brown. Both have rough looking stems which are caused by dark brown, wooly scales. Boletes have pores on the underside of their cap so if you look there it’s impossible to confuse them with any gilled mushroom. It is however easy to mistake one bolete for another and since some of them are toxic, it’s always wise to know your mushrooms well before taking even one bite. Even experts have been poisoned by them.

It’s the time of year when puffballs appear and I’m starting to see quite a few. These examples are pear shaped puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme). Inhaling certain puffball spores can lead to a respiratory disease known as Lycoperdonosis, where yeast like structures actually grow in lung tissue, so it shouldn’t ever be done. There are several recorded instances of children, usually teens, inhaling large amounts of spores under the false belief that they could get high, only to get very sick and end up in hospitals instead. It’s fine for children to “puff” a puffball as we all have, but they should never inhale the spores.

The small blue berries of Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) look a lot like blueberries, with the same powdery bloom. Native Americans used the dried potato-like roots of this plant to grind into flour for breads and soups. Young shoots are also edible, but the berries are not. The plant also has many medicinal uses.

The folks at bug guide.net might be getting tired of hearing from me, because I had to ask their help in identifying this insect too. They say that it’s a green stink bug nymph (Chinavia hilaris.) He looked very platy and had a dragon’s face, complete with fangs, on his back.

 

After I watched him for a while and took a couple of photos he turned and started doing what looked like push-ups. Of course, he could have been gearing up to release his stink from the stink glands on the underside of his thorax, I don’t know. I’ve read that it is a very foul odor so I’m glad that I didn’t have to smell it. These bugs can cause a lot of damage in gardens and orchards.

This grasshopper appeared to have gotten himself stuck in a crack between two pieces of railing. I tried to get him out using a key but he wanted none of it and fought my help, so I let him be.  He didn’t seem to mind having his picture taken.

 

I was surprised to find a fresh oak apple gall this late in the season because they usually develop in the spring. Theses galls are caused by a gall wasp known as Biorhiza pallida laying an egg inside a leaf bud. Tissue swells around the egg and a gall is formed. You can see the gall wasp larva in the center of the gall section on the right. Once they develop into an adult wasp they make a hole through the side of the gall and fly (or crawl) off to begin the cycle again. I’ve read that some gall wasps can hatch in winter but I’m not sure how that would work.

 

The leaves are falling fast now but I might get in another foliage post or two before they’re all down.

 

I found a large patch of vinca (Vinca minor) in the woods and one plant seemed to think that spring was here already. I’m hoping that it knows something I don’t.  Quite often when you find this plant growing in the woods it’s a sure sign that there is an old cellar hole nearby because this was a plant that was often passed from neighbor to neighbor, even though it isn’t native. Lilacs and peonies are other plants that were shared in the same way and when found in the woods they also signal a cellar hole. I’ve found remarkable examples of all three blooming beautifully out in the middle of nowhere, as they must have been for 100 years or more.

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. ~Lewis Mumford

Thanks for coming by.

 

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Things I’ve Seen

This photo of pond ice does something to satisfy that abstract craving that I have every now and then. It seemed to want to be in black and white so I granted its wish, even though it hardly changed from the original. These shards of ice were quite long and looked like they had just started to form. The process of ice crystals beginning to form in super cooled water is called nucleation.

 

There were bracket fungi growing on this tree when it fell. Bracket fungi have their top toward the sky and bottom toward the soil but when the tree they grow on falls, what was horizontal can become vertical. They solve that problem by growing young, horizontal bracket fungi from the older ones that now grow vertically. That’s determination.

 

A shot from another direction shows that these bracket fungi have teeth.  I think they might be Steccherinum ochraceum, which is a tooth fungus that can form brackets and is strongly affected by gravity and sunlight.

This old white pine had very colorful bark. There were several other old specimens growing quite close together but this was the only one that looked like it wanted to be as colorful as a sycamore.

 

Last year I did a post with this lichen in it and at the time I thought it was an example of a spotted camouflage lichen (Melanohalea olivacea), but after doing a little more research I’m now fairly certain that it’s a crumpled rag lichen (Platismatia tuckermanii .)The large greenish brown discs are apothecia or fruiting bodies, and they help identify this lichen. I usually find these on birch limbs.

I think this is an example of a lichen called heather rags (Hypogymnia physodes), but there are so many that look almost the same that I can’t be completely certain. This lichen has gray, inflated, puffy looking lobes like heather rag lichens do, but so do many others. Heather rags gets its common name by its habit of growing on unburned heather in the United Kingdom, but it is also quite common here in the north eastern U.S.  No matter what its name, this example is a beautiful lichen.

Lichen books say to look for soralia bursting from lobe tips when identifying heather rags lichens. Soralia are clusters of intertwined alga and fungi that form a granule-like mass, and I think I see a few of those in this close up. Soralia are a vegetative way for lichens to reproduce. Once separate from the main body of the lichen they will start new lichens, just as taking a cutting from a plant produces a new plant.

These yellow fungi looked like tiny dots, about half as big as a pencil eraser, on a fallen log. It wasn’t until I saw the photo that I realized they were very small examples of “brain” fungi, possibly Tremella mesenterica, also called witch’s butter. If so they are the smallest examples I’ve seen of that fungus.

I saw some pear shaped puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme) on a log and noticed that the darker, outer skin had split to reveal a lighter inner surface.  I assumed that this meant that they were ready to release their spores and poked one with a stick. Sure enough it puffed out some spores, which show as light gray powder in this photo. Inhaling enough of these spores can result in lycoperdonosis, which is a respiratory disease that starts out like a cold. The disease causes symptoms similar to those found in pneumonia, and is sometimes misdiagnosed as tuberculosis or pneumonia. If left untreated it can be fatal.

If you see a cherry tree with this type of growth on it you have found a sweet birch (Betula lenta,) not a cherry. I’ve pointed that out because its bark looks a lot like cherry bark and they are sometimes confused. The cone like object pictured is a female catkin. These catkins begin to shatter and release their seeds in late fall. The seeds, a few of which can be seen in the photo, are called nutlets and are winged, much like an elm seed. The easiest way to identify sweet birch is by chewing a twig. If it doesn’t taste like wintergreen, it isn’t sweet birch. Native Americans boiled the sap and made it into syrup. If enough corn is added, birch beer can also be made from it. After chewing quite a few twigs it seems to me that syrup or beer made from this tree would taste a lot like oil of wintergreen, and I don’t know if I could handle wintergreen flavored flapjacks.

I found a large patch of baby tooth moss (Plagiomnium cuspidatum) growing on a flat boulder in the sun. This moss can be a little tricky to identify because it has two types of stems with different growth patterns. Vegetative stems trail like a vine and stems with fruiting capsules (sporophytes) stand upright as they are in the photo. Each leaf has tiny serrations from its tip down to about mid leaf, and that’s a good identifying feature.

 

The sun had melted a dusting of snow from the patch of baby tooth moss just before I found it and many of the sharply pointed  immature sporophytes had tiny drops of water clinging to them. When mature the sporophytes will be more barrel shaped with flat ends, and will bend until the capsules droop just past horizontal.

Go to the winter woods: listen there; look, watch, and ‘the dead months’ will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest. ~ Fiona Macleod

Thanks for coming by.

 

 

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