Things I’ve Seen

November on average is the cloudiest month, but we’ve seen quite a lot of sunshine so far. Unfortunately the sunshine hasn’t warmed us up much and we’ve had a string of several cold days and below freezing (32º F) nights. This week we’re to see January type cold that could break records that have stood for 150 years. Historically the colder the November the snowier the winter, but we’ll see. In spite of all the cold this dandelion struggled to come into full bloom.

And this chicory blossom did the same. I was very surprised to see it.

We’re at the stage where the grass is coated by frost overnight but then it melts off as soon as the sunlight reaches it.

Leaves that have gone unraked get covered by frost and then become wet when it melts off.

Ice baubles formed in the Ashuelot River one cold night.

The waves in the river splash up on twigs or anything else that the water touches and it freezes there in the cold air. Much like dipping a candle in molten wax the waves splash again and again and ice baubles like the one in this photo form. It was about an inch across but I’ve seen them get bigger. Just as a side note: that small starburst over on the right hasn’t been added. This is just the way it came out of the camera. The ice is very clear and will act as a prism in the right light.

There was hoar frost on the fallen pine needles on the river bank. Hoarfrost grows whenever it’s cold and there is a source of water vapor nearby. When it is below freezing the water vapor from unfrozen rivers and streams often condenses on the plants and even trees all along their banks and covers them in hoarfrost. It looks so very delicate that I often have to remind myself to breathe while I’m taking its photo.  One touch of a warm finger, a ray of sunshine, or a warm breath and they’re gone.

I’m guessing there was plenty of water vapor coming from the river. The river wasn’t really raging but I did get to practice my wave catching skills on this day. At a certain time of morning the sun hits the river just right for a wave photo at this spot and the colors are ofen very beautiful. I love the how the colors of the water change as the light changes. The river taught me that if you want blue water in your photo you should have the sun more or less behind you, and it taught me that right in this very spot.  

This photo changed my mind about what I thought were oyster mushrooms because of the brownish cast I saw, which I couldn’t see in person. They might have been flat creps (Crepidotus applanatus,) which start out white and then shade to brown. Flat creps resemble oyster mushrooms but without a microscope to study the spores with it’s hard to be sure. I could have done a spore print; crepidotus species have brown spore prints and oysters have a white to lilac spore print, but I didn’t bring one home.

I’ve said a lot about turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) over the years, including how they are showing value in cancer research and how they have been used medicinally by the Chinese, Japanese, and Native Americans for thousands of years, but I keep coming back to their multitude of color combinations and their beauty. For me, that’s enough to keep me interested.  

I had been looking for scarlet elf cup fungi (Sarcoscypha coccinea) for a very long time and then a friend showed me a photo of something growing in the gravel of his driveway and I thought I’d found them. I went there and took the photos that you see here, shocked that they grew where they were, with just sand and gravel around them. That’s especially surprising when you consider that this fugus typically grows on moist, rotting branches. I would have guessed that there might be a branch or root buried under the gravel but they grew in groups over a wide area, so that theory didn’t work. That fact leads me to believe that they are instead the orange peel fungus (Aleuria aurantia.) It likes to grow in clay soil or disturbed ground, often in landscaped areas.

The clincher is, my color finding software sees shades of orange, but no scarlet. I was surprised by how small they were. Some were as big as a penny at about 3/4 of an inch, but a pea would have nestled perfectly in this example. Orange peel fungi get their common name from the way they look like orange peels strewn on the ground.

I always look for juniper berries at this time of year because I love that shade of blue. A waxy coating called bloom reflects the light in a way that makes them that color. I always wonder how many gin drinkers know that the unique flavor in their drink comes from this plant’s fruits. Though they’re called berries, botanically speaking juniper fruits are actually fleshy seed cones. Unripe green berries are used to flavor gin and the ripe, deep purple-black berries are the only part of a conifer known to be used as a spice, often used on game like venison, moose and bear meat. Birds also love them.

The golden sunlight on the blueberry bushes in the foreground was lighting up the trees on the far side of Half Moon Pond in the same way and it was beautiful, but I wasn’t fast enough to catch it. It disappeared in just seconds and before I could turn my camera on it was gone.

Here is that same golden light caught in the tops of these bare trees. Sometimes I see it in the morning on my way to work and it’s very beautiful. On this morning I had to stop and watch.

I like lake sedge (Carex lacustris) because of the way it seems to flow like the waves of the pond and lake shores it grows on. It is really the wind and its own weak stems that make it bend so, but I think it makes a pretty display. Lake sedge is native to Canada and the northern U.S. and can at times be found growing in water. Waterfowl and songbirds eat its seeds. Even when it isn’t blowing in the wind it seems to have movement.

Henry David Thoreau said about polypody fern (Polypodium virginianum) “Fresh and cheerful communities of the polypody form a lustrous mantle over rocky surfaces in the early spring.” I would add that, since they are tough evergreen ferns they are there in the winter too, and that’s what cheers me most about them. They are also called rock cap fern or rock polypody because they love to grow on top of rocks, as the above photo shows. There were hundreds of them on a large boulder.

Turn over a polypody fern leaf and you’re apt to see tiny mounds called sori, which are made up of clusters of sporangia (receptacles in which spores are formed) and are naked, meaning they lack the protective cap (indusium) that is found on many fern sori.

Once they ripen polypody fern sori are very pretty and look like tiny baskets of flowers; in this case yellow and orange flowers. They always make me wonder why so many ferns, lichens, fungi and mosses produce spores in winter. There must be some benefit but I’ve never been able to find out what it is.

Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) is one of the lowest growing evergreen plants on the forest floor, hardly growing more than 3 or 4 inches high. Plants have a vining habit but do not climb. Instead they form dense mats by spreading their trailing stems out to about a foot from the crown. Roots will often form at leaf nodes along the stems and start new plants. The 4 petaled, pinkish, fringed, fragrant, half inch long flowers appear in June and July. The berries shown here will remain on the plant for long periods unless eaten, and can often still be found the following spring. The berries are edible, but fairly tasteless and eaten mostly by birds. If I was going to spend my time in the forest looking for small red berries to feed on I’d be looking for American wintergreen, (teaberry) which are delicious.

Partridgeberry flowers always appear in twos as twins fused at the base. Once pollinated, the ovaries of these flowers will join and form one berry with 8 seeds. Partridgeberry plants can always be easily identified by the two indentations on the berries that show where the flowers were. Other names for this plant include twinberry and two-eyed berry. I like the hand hammered look of the leaves.

A big beech tree fell where I work and damaged one of the buildings, so it had to be cut up. When we cut it down to the stump we found it was spalted, and spalted wood is evidence of fungal damage. Sometimes woods affected by fungi can become very desirable to woodworkers, and spalted wood is one of them. Spalting is essentially any form of wood coloration caused by fungi but there are 3 major types; pigmentation, white rot and zone lines. Sometimes all 3 can be present as they are on the end grain of the beech stump in the above photo. Pigmentation is the blue gray color, which is probably caused by bluestain or sapstain. The white rot is in the areas that look soft or pulpy, and the zone lines are the dark, narrow lines found radiating randomly throughout the log. Zone lines often form where 2 or more types of fungi meet.

There is beauty everywhere in this world, even in an old tree stump. The question is, will we let ourselves first be drawn into it and then actively seek it out or will we ignore it? I choose to seek it out, and now I see it wherever I go.

Life can be rich and rewarding and full of beauty, if a person would only pause to look and to listen. ~Rod Serling

Thanks for coming by.

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Things I’ve Seen

Last week we had about two inches of rain fall in one day so I went to the Ashuelot River to see how it was coping. It had taken on a lot of water and was rolling itself into some beautiful waves, but thankfully there was no flooding that I saw. It was also roaring loudly and you could hear the strange booming sounds that the stones tumbling along its bottom make. It’s one of those sounds that can be felt as well as heard, and it goes through you.

The stones on the river’s shoreline were covered in clear ice that caught the sunlight like prisms.

Splashing water formed beads on the rocks that the sun turned into beautiful polished jewels. These spherical beads form when drops of water splash onto the rock and freeze over and over again in the same spot, building up each sphere with successive hair thin layers of ice. And it can all happen in one cold night.

Ice baubles hung from every twig. This teardrop shaped one was as big as a baseball, or about 2.5 inches across. I watched this for a while and saw that it had formed from the bottom up. The river waves washed over the twig again and again where the lower larger part of the teardrop is and hardly at all where the upper smaller diameter is.

Most ice is beautiful but some is not. Our trails have been plagued with a thick coating of ice for a while now. It makes getting through the woods difficult even with Yaktrax on but since it formed after we walked on the snow and packed it down, we have only ourselves to blame. I haven’t climbed any hills fora while now because of it, but I think I’ll try soon.

There were no hills here to climb. This forest is unusual for its lack of undergrowth. It is so shaded in places only mosses and fungi will grow on its floor.

In places that get a little more sun orchids also grow on the forest floor. This evergreen downy rattlesnake plantain came through winter slightly flattened but otherwise fine. I love it for its netted silvery leaves and if I could grow it in my garden I’d choose it more for its unusual foliage than its spike of tiny white flowers. Native Americans used the plant to treat snakebites, burns and many other ailments.

The downy rattlesnake plantain’s seed pods hadn’t released their dust like seeds and looked to be filled to bursting.

Striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) has a symbiotic relationship with the mycelium of certain fungi in the soil and is partially parasitic on them through a process called myco-heterotrophy. This means that, even though they photosynthesize, they supplement their diet with nutrients taken from fungi. That explains why they will only grow in certain places, much like our native orchids. It also explains their rarity. I read recently that the plant is considered rare in both New England and Canada. I keep finding more places where it grows but there are usually only a very few plants in any location.

Pipsissewa (Chimaphila umbellata) is another of our native wintergreens and is a plant that never seems to change. It looks the same in winter or summer and the only time it really changes is when it is blooming. It is said that the plant’s common name comes from the Native American word pipsiskeweu which means “it breaks into small pieces.” This refers to the belief that pipsissewa would break up kidney stones. The Cherokee people would nibble on leaves for food and they also made an infusion of the leaves for fevers, and a poultice of the roots for pain. It is said to make a marvelous spring tonic, even for horses. I’ve read that when a horse became listless and didn’t want to work farmers would add pipsissewa plants to their hay and before long the horse would be kicking up its heels and ready for work again. Pipsissewa was also once used as a flavoring in candy and soft drinks, including root beer.

I thought I’d see if our native American hazelnut catkins (Corylus americana) were showing any signs of opening and releasing pollen. They weren’t but they were still beautiful to see. The catkins are the shrub’s male flowers and are a winter food for turkey and ruffed grouse.

If you aren’t sure if what you’re looking at is a hazelnut just look at the young twigs; they’re covered with reddish brown hairs which you can feel when you run your fingers over a twig. This photo also shows a female bud which will bloom in April. Female flowers appear on two year old branches and are tiny, with only their crimson stigmata showing. They are fertilized when the wind blows the pollen from the male catkins to them. From then on they will grow into hazelnuts, which are also called filberts.

Hazelnuts were used by Native Americans to flavor soups and were also ground into flour. The sweet meat can also be eaten raw and has a higher nutritional value than that of acorns or beechnuts. They are high in protein and many animals and birds eat them, including squirrels, foxes, deer, northern bobwhite, ruffed grouse, turkey, woodpeckers, and pheasants. Finding these examples still on the bush in February was a real surprise.

Not only do skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) raise their own temperature through a process called thermogenesis, but the dark color of their blotchy spathes attracts sunlight and that means they are also heated by the sun. This makes a nice cozy warming room inside the spathe where early insects can come and hang out and warm up. While they’re inside if they happen to bump into the spadix full of flowers and get pollen all over themselves, so much the better. There’s always a tradeoff and in this case both sides win.

I’ve seen more blue and purple turkey tails (Trametes versicolor) this year than I ever have, but these examples were shades of brown as they most often are. Wood decayed by the turkey tail fungus often has black zone lines or borders between where different variants of the species meet. These zone lines produce beautiful patterns in the wood, which is known as spalted wood. It is highly prized by woodworkers and a log full of spalted wood can be worth many times what one without any figuring is worth.

If you’re a mushroom it’s all about spore production, and you increase spore production by growing as much spore bearing surface as you can. Some do this with gills and others like turkey tails and boletes do it with pores, which are long round tubes. Others like the thick-maze oak polypore (Daedalea quercina) pictured do it by creating a labyrinth. It was a beautiful little thing about an inch across growing on an oak log. The beauty in and of nature is always present no matter what time of year, and if we don’t see it it’s because we just don’t take the time to look.

Except for where it has been piled our snow is gone, even in the deep woods, but the ice remains. With all the sunshine and warmth it’s easy to lull yourself into thinking that spring is here, but we average about a foot of snow in March in this part of the state, so we could still see some. Since I work outside a lot I’m hoping not. I’m ready for spring.

When you reach the heart of life you shall find beauty in all things, even in the eyes that are blind to beauty. ~Kahlil Gibran

Thanks for coming by.

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Wood Eaters

As soon as I mentioned wood eaters this tree spirit started looking worried. Actually this carving doesn’t have anything to do with this post other than to show a tree’s remarkable ability to heal itself. This was carved into a tree on his property a few years ago by a local resident and it shows how quickly the bark is coming together to heal the wound. In a few more years if the tree stays healthy you won’t be able to see any sign of this carving.

On the other hand if you see a tree with turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) like these on it, the chance of it healing itself is slim to none. Turkey tails are sabprobic fungi, meaning they decompose dead or decaying organic material. Though they do occasionally grow on live trees, if you find them on a standing tree it is most likely dead. Turkey tails cause white rot of the sapwood. They also show great promise in cancer research.

Crust fungi are called resupinate fungi and have flat, crust like fruiting bodies which usually appear on the undersides of fallen branches and logs. Resupinate means upside down, and that’s what many crust fungi seem to be. Their spore bearing surface can be wrinkled, smooth, warty, toothed, or porous and though they appear on the undersides of logs, the main body of the fungus is in the wood, slowly decomposing it. Some, like the white rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysorhizon pictured above have been found to be useful in degrading of various pesticides, PCBs, and other poisons.  Some will even “eat” plastics. Because some crust fungi break down lignin, which is the brown in wood, and leave the white cellulose behind they are also being studied for use in the paper industry for “biopulping.”

It’s too bad that many crust fungi grow in hidden places like the undersides of logs because many are quite beautiful. I’ve spent quite a while trying to identify this blue-gray one but haven’t had much luck. I think it must be a variation of the cobalt crust fungus (Terana caerulea.)

The forest would be a very different place without fungi breaking down all of the twigs, branches and logs. It would probably be more like an impenetrable brush pile, just waiting for a fire to come and clean it out.

Here is a cobalt crust fungus (Terana caerulea) that I showed in another post recently. I’m showing it again here to illustrate the difference between it and the example in the previous photo, and also the one that follows.

Though this appears to be close to the same color as the cobalt crust fungus I think that it might be bluestain, which is also called sapstain because of the way it stains the sapwood of logs. If this log were sawn into planks the blue color could show on the surface of one or more of the planks. Both deep and surface bluestain can be caused by fungi called Ophiostoma minus and others, which all seem to be collectively called bluestain fungi and which can eventually kill the tree. It is thought that bark beetles and mites help it spread.

Some crust fungi have teeth, like the toothed crust (Basidioradulum radula) in the photo above. This crust fungus starts life as round, brownish yellow patches with creamy white margins. These round patches eventually grow together to form large irregular colonies like that in the above photo. It is very tough and has a waxy coating that protects it and allows it to revive after drying out. It’s another crust fungus that feeds on dead and decaying limbs and logs.

This milk white, toothed polypore (Irpex lacteus) is another upside down (Resupinate) fungus with a tooth shaped pore surface. As the photo shows, it will sometimes try to grow a cap which is white and hairy, and grows curled up around the edges. This fungus feeds on the dead sapwood and occasionally the heartwood of fallen hardwood logs and causes white rot.

Bootstrap fungus is caused by honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea), which are parasitic on live wood and send out long root like structures called rhizomorphs between the wood of a tree and its bark. When fresh these rhizomorphs are cream colored but darken to brown or black as they age. The fungus is also called armillaria root rot or shoestring root rot. It causes a white pulpy rot in the wood and kills many species of both soft and hardwood trees.

 

These are the honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea) that cause the bootstrap fungus seen in the previous photo. If you see them growing on a live tree, it’s all over for that tree. These examples were well past their prime when I found them.

Fungal rhizomorphs are threadlike or cordlike structures made up of branched tubular filaments called hyphae. They absorb nutrients and moisture and I think of them as a mushroom’s roots, even though that isn’t entirely accurate. They are worth looking for in leaf litter and on the undersides of logs because they can be very beautiful.

Trees and logs can be stained various colors, including black, white, brown, blue, green, yellow, red, and even pink. Discolorations can be caused by fungi, molds, bacteria, yeasts, minerals in soil, inorganic deposits, metals, enzymes, and even stress brought on by tension or compression. It takes a microscope and a trained eye to uncover what causes discolorations and since I have neither I can’t say what caused this pink stain on the bark of the tree in the photo. It looked good and healthy otherwise and I didn’t see any fungi growing on it.

Nor can I say what caused the pink stain on the wood of this cut limb. It isn’t a color that you see often in nature, though.

Sometimes woods affected by fungi can become very desirable to woodworkers. Spalting is essentially any form of wood coloration caused by fungi but there are 3 major types; pigmentation, white rot and zone lines. Sometimes all 3 can be present as they are on the end grain of the elm log in the above photo. Pigmentation is the blue gray color, which is probably caused by bluestain or sapstain. The white rot can be seen in the areas that look soft or pulpy, and the zone lines are the dark, narrow lines found radiating randomly throughout the log. Zone lines often form where 2 or more types of fungi meet.

A few woodworkers have learned how to recreate the natural spalting process artificially, and the worth of a log can jump from $30.00 to $3,000.00 after a few weeks of spalting. Why would a log attacked by fungi be worth so much money? Because of the beautiful things that can be made from it, like the spalted maple covered box made by Michael at Michael’s Wood craft blog. Michael knows wood and he makes some beautiful objects from it, including cutting boards, ice cream scoops, honey sticks, and just about anything else you can think of. If you haven’t seen his blog you’re missing a real treat. You can visit it by clicking here. You’ll see some of the most beautiful woods that you’ve ever laid eyes on.

I’ve found by studying wood specific fungi that I have a greater understanding of how the forest works, and a greater appreciation of the beauty of the fungi themselves. I’ve also had a lot of fun and have learned a lot by searching for various fungi and learning how they affect certain types of wood. It’s a fascinating subject!

If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks. ~Richard Feynman

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving.  Thanks for coming by.

 

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A Walk Down Another Old Road

Swanzey Lake is a place that I visit quite frequently because of the easy accessibility of the surrounding forest. Like most lakes in this area there is a road that goes completely around it. Off this road, near a huge boulder covered with rock tripe lichens, is another road that I’ve wondered about for years. I was able to finally hike it recently.

 

This is a class 6 road which means, unless you know someone who has traveled it, you’re better off walking it than driving it-at least for the first time. I know of another class 6 road with two old timber and plank bridges out and nowhere to comfortably turn around.  I had no idea where this one might lead, but I was determined to find out.

 

It wasn’t long before I was regretting leaving the Yak Tracks behind, but as it turned out the icy spots were relatively easy to avoid. I’m not in a Yak Track frame of mind yet, but I’d better get in one soon. Some of these old roads just end in the forest and others connect with networks of other old, forgotten roads.  There’s really no telling where they lead, and that’s part of the fun. Fun that is, as long as you carefully note any detours onto other roads that you might have to take. In some cases it’s possible to get seriously lost out here if you aren’t paying attention. I haven’t heard of any lost hunters yet but it usually happens every year at about this time.

 

I saw the longest ice needles I’ve ever seen along this road. The ones in the photo were at least 6 inches long and had frozen together to form thick ice ribbons.  Since they are extruded from the ground by hydrostatic pressure, they are almost always covered with sand or soil.

 

Instead of curling like they usually do these ice needles grew straight up and brought stones along for the ride. Several of these ice pillars were capped by tiny pebbles.

Stone walls mean this land was cleared once, and somebody lived out here. In 1822 the New Hampshire State Board of Agriculture suggested what farmers should do with all of the stones they found in their fields:  “Almost all farms have stone enough to make a wall for every necessary division and enclosure. Labor used in this way answers a double purpose; it secures the fields from the ravages of stock, and improves them by removing rocks which are not only useless, but inconvenient and injurious in their natural situation. A farmer ought to consider it his proper business, as he has means and opportunity, to secure his lands by stone walls.”  All he needed was a horse, a stone boat, and a strong back. And a couple of sons would have come in handy, too. By 1871 there were an estimated 252,539 miles of stone walls in New England and New York, enough to circle the earth 10 times at the equator. Today it is almost impossible to walk through these woods without finding them.

 

Somebody is still cutting trees here. None of these are very old and most are hard wood.

 Almost every inch of this hemlock twig was covered in ice.

It must be wind that makes waves on mud puddles-even small ones-this one couldn’t have been a foot long.

 

Puddles weren’t the only things displaying wave patterns. This fallen birch was as big around as a truck tire and might have made some interesting lumber. Spalting is a caused by fungi growing on dead trees and the wood is prized by woodworkers due to the unique colors and patterns that can form in the log. I was wishing that I could cut a slab or two just to see what the grain pattern would look like. This could be a very valuable log.

Next to the birch log stood a nice old sugar maple (Acer saccharum.) I don’t know why sugar maples are so often found near roads, but I’m guessing they were planted there so the sap buckets would be easier to get to. A paper titled Relationships between Soil Salinity, Sap-Sugar Concentration, and Health of Declining Roadside Sugar Maples by Graham T Herrick says that scientists all over the country are seeing dying sugar maples along roadsides. Road salt residue in soil inhibits plant water uptake and tips of branches in the crown start dying off. Before long the entire tree is dying. The strangest part of the study shows that the amount of sugar in the sap actually increases as the tree dies. The tree in the photo has probably never seen salt used on this old road, so it has had a chance to live a long, healthy life.

 

I found several hemlock varnished bracket fungi (Ganoderma tsugae) growing on an old eastern hemlock stump (Tsuga canadensis.) It has a white outer edge and underside when it is young and looks very different than those in the photo. They are annuals that grow new from the mycelium each spring, and these examples were at least a year old, I think. This mushroom is said to be among the most valuable medicinal fungi. The Chinese have used it in their medicine for over 2000 years.

 

It was cold enough to freeze this orange jelly fungus but the sun must have thawed it out.

 

This hole in the ground was about as big as a quarter-just right for a snake. Judging by the hoar frost around its rim there was plenty of moisture of coming out of it.  At this scale it looks like a cave.

 

I won’t be leaving those Yak Tracks behind again until March, I guess. Snowmobile and four wheel drive clubs do a great job of keeping these old roads open, but there’s nothing they can do about the ice.

 

Suburbia. Not exactly the wilderness I was hoping for and not what I was expecting to find at the end of a class 6 road, so back I went the way I came. At least now I don’t have to wonder where this road leads and I know where I can go for a short walk that has plenty of interesting things to see.

An old road always looks richer and more beautiful than a new road because old roads have memories. ~ Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for coming by.

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