Exploring Along Beaver Brook

Toward the end of November I decided to take a walk up the old abandoned road that leads through the Beaver Brook natural area in Keene. I hadn’t been there in a while and since I had just tangled with Covid I thought the slight gradient of the old road would let me gently test my lungs and make sure they were still working as they should. Surprisingly I didn’t get winded at all; good news I thought, considering all I had heard about Covid.

I saw many beautiful things there that day but I would have been happy just seeing the mosses. They always seem so much greener and more vibrant in colder weather.

The brook was rushing along, not quite as high as I had imagined it would be but still with a bit of a roar to it. It has many voices, this little brook. In summer it becomes tame and moves slowly, giggling and chuckling shyly as it spills over the rocks in its bed. In winter it often becomes nearly mute, its voice muffled by a covering of thick ice. It can still be heard, but as if from a distance. In spring and fall, due to snow melt or excessive rain it swells up and shouts, sometimes with a deafening roar. Only one thing about it never changes, and that is its beauty.

There are a few pretty views along the brook and this is one of my favorites. I hadn’t gone there that day with a blog post in mind but I had a cell phone camera and the small Olympus I use for macro photos and in the end, I was glad I had brought them.

Of course, I had to stop and see my old friend the smoky eye boulder lichen that lives here because it is a beautiful thing. Both the way the light falls on it and the color of the thallus or body of the lichen make it stand out from other examples I’ve seen. Why it has this golden, orangey brown color I don’t know, and I also don’t know why the fruiting bodies always seem so blue or lavender when they are usually gray. It has to be the special way the light falls on it in this particular spot. Seeing it again is always like finding a jewel.

The squiggly black apothecia have appeared on the script lichens, as they always seem to do in the cold weather. If you look at them extremely closely, they look like the body of the lichen has been torn or cut open, and they erupt from it rather than sitting on it. But whatever happens when they appear, they leave no trace when they disappear. If you come here in warmer months all you will find are the white / gray body of these lichens, like spots on the tree’s bark.

I stopped at what I call the boulder fall. I’ve found mosses here that I’ve never seen anywhere else.

And one of those mosses is the pretty little rose moss. This moss likes limestone and since this area isn’t rich in limestone it always leaves me guessing. Somehow two or three of the boulders must have at least some limestone in them. I first found this moss on just one stone years ago and now it is on at least three of them, so it must be happy here.

Another rare moss that grows here is the glittering wood moss, also called stair step moss because of the way new growth comes up out of the midrib of the previous year’s growth. It looks delicate but I’ve seen it encased in ice in winter and still looking fine in spring. Not surprising since it can withstand conditions in the Arctic tundra. It sparkles in the light so “glittering” is a good description.

For years I’ve thought that snow load was what made our evergreen ferns splay out on the ground but this year we have no snow and they are still hugging the ground, so that theory has to be let go of. I recently read this on Westborough Massachusetts Community Land Trust page: “When the green fronds are on the ground, warmth from the earth keeps them warmer than they would be if they stood up in the wind and cold air. The fern’s stems weaken near the ground in autumn, helping the fronds to fall over.” That does make sense but I wonder where that information originally came from. I believe the fern in the photo is a marginal wood fern, but I didn’t check for spore cases.

A big old red maple tree had fallen and someone had come along and cut off all its branches. This tree had target canker but that doesn’t kill trees, as far as I know.

Target canker won’t kill a tree but it can certainly keep one busy by causing its bark to grow in circular patterns of new, thin bark plates, which helps protect it from the canker. According to Cornell university: “A fungus invades healthy bark, killing it. During the following growing season, the tree responds with a new layer of bark and undifferentiated wood (callus) to contain the pathogen. However, in the next dormant season the pathogen breaches that barrier and kills additional bark. Over the years, this seasonal alternation of pathogen invasion and host defense response leads to development of a ‘canker’ with concentric ridges of callus tissue—a ‘target canker.’” You can see the pattern of new, thin bark plates the tree grew each year in this photo. I count at least ten, so that means this tree fought off the invader for at least ten years. There are some things which once seen can never be forgotten, and target canker is one of those.

I saw what I think was a white cheese polypore on a fallen branch. It grows on hardwood logs and causes white rot, and gets its common name from its scientific one (Tyromyces chioneus). Tyromyces means “with a cheesy consistency,” and chioneus means “snow white.” These mushrooms are big enough to be seen from a distance and when they are fresh, they have a pleasing fragrance that some think is like cheesecake. Mushroom Expert. com says it is “just about the most boring mushroom going,” but it is a winter mushroom and I’m always happy to see mushrooms in winter. There is also a blue cheese polypore and a green cheese polypore.

From boring to beautiful; this must be the most colorful display of turkey tail fungi that I’ve seen. It was beautiful, with its many different colors all in the same growth. No matter how many times I come here I always see something I’ve never seen before, and that is why it pays to revisit the same places again and again.

I was surprised to find a little ice on the ledges. It has been cold some nights but all in all this has been a very mild winter so far. I doubt there is any ice to speak of in the deep cut rail trail where ice climbers usually practice.

This is one of my favorite reasons to visit Beaver Brook; to see what I call the “disappearing waterfall,” because it only appears when we’ve had enough rain to get it going. It’s a beautiful thing and in the spring, I’ve seen people standing in line waiting to get to the spot where you can get the best photo of it.

I saw two splotches of color on the end of a log and I thought I recognized them.

As I thought, they were wrinkled crust fungi (Phlebia radiata) but they weren’t quite as colorful as others I had seen. I suspected they were young examples which might change as they aged, so I decided to return in a week to see if they had. These winter fungi are rare in my experience and well worth a second look.

This photo of a wrinkled crust fungus I took years ago shows what I was hoping to find upon my return but no, the fungi in the previous photos hadn’t changed at all. A quick online search showed that they can be very beautiful like this example or rather plain like the previous example. Like many things in nature, finding them is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and paying attention. Unlike some fungi it’s hard to predict where or when they’ll choose to grow, though they do seem to like cold weather.

And speaking of being in the right place at the right time; as I was leaving Beaver Brook after my second look at the wrinkled crust fungi the afternoon sun decided to shine right up the brook. It was something I had never seen happen before and it seemed like a final, beautiful exclamation point to mark the end of my journey through a place filled with beauty.

Look at places no one looks at, so you can see the things no one sees.
~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for coming by.

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By a Stream

We’re having another one of those strange, almost snowless winters so far this season but even though it hasn’t been snowy it has been cold enough for ice to form, so in early December I decided to visit a stream near my neighborhood. Last year I found beautiful lacy ice all along it but this time as you can see, there was no ice.

There was frost on the lawns, so I thought for sure there would be ice on the stream.

A little neighborhood pond had a thin film of ice on it.

But there was little to no ice to be found here at the stream. No matter; there are always interesting things to see, like this pronounced meander in the stream. When I first started coming here it was nothing like this but over the years flooding has dumped a lot of sand and gravel in a pile over there on the left, forcing the stream to move more and more to the right. As it moves it washes soil away from tree roots and many trees have fallen.

I stopped to admire some beech leaves. The beech is a tree that gives beauty to the forest all year long.

I also saw some colorful turkey tail fungi on a stump. Part of their scientific name is versicolor, and it’s a good one. I’ve seen these come in pink, orange, blue, purple, and everything in between. They’re one of the most colorful fungi I know of and winter is a good time to find them. As far as I know no one has ever discovered what causes their many variations in color.

I looked back to where I had come from and saw how the stream meander is slowly cutting into the hillside and washing it away; a mountain slowly turning to sand. I thought the low sun falling on the green plants was a beautiful scene. It showed how, around every corner, there is the very real possibility of finding staggering beauty of the kind we’ve never seen. We need to learn to stop and let the beauty of life seep into us until it fills every part of our being; until the word Hallelujah comes to us naturally, without a thought.

One of the things I come here to see are the tree mosses. When I first started coming here there was a group of maybe ten plants right at the water line but now, they have grown away from the stream and there are hundreds of them. They must like wet ground because this place floods regularly and they often spend part of their life underwater. They’re beautiful little things and I’d like to see them in more places but so far this is the only place I’ve ever found them.

This unknown creature grew on a tree and though I was sure I had seen it before I couldn’t remember its name. It looks almost like a crustose lichen with an area of something else growing through it but I can’t imagine what that something else would be. In the end I decided it didn’t matter. Memories are like dogs that come when you call them but otherwise lie silent and still. Sometimes they don’t come at all, and seem so far off I can’t tell if they are even there anymore. The effort it takes to recall them doesn’t seem worth whatever limited value they may have. They are like things stored in the attic; not worth climbing the stairs to see, but seemingly still too precious to throw away. They sit gathering dust but one day they will have to go, so why bother adding to the pile by gathering up more of them? Let each day start fresh and shining brightly, unobscured by the film of dust that is yesterday.

This is a two-part post; what you’ve seen so far happened one day and what you will see from here on happened on another. Luckily the sun was shining brightly on both days. I would have loved to have been able to see it the way this NASA photo shows it.

On the second day I went to the stream, about three weeks later, there was ice. Strangely though, at nearly 40 degrees F. this day was warmer than the first.

Last winter when I came here, I found beautiful, lacy ice covering the surface of the stream but this year I saw mostly splash ice. Splash ice forms when running water splashes droplets up on cold surfaces, where they freeze almost immediately. It can be beautiful; all of what we see here is splash ice.

Ice curtains along the banks showed how the water level had dropped, with ribbons of ice forming at each different level.

This view is looking down on ice similar to that in the previous photos.

This ice sculpture grew on a twig that hung out over the stream.

This very thin, clear pane of ice had water droplets hanging from its underside.

This ice reminded me of the bullseye glass windowpanes you can still see in very old houses. Before modern glass making came along glass windowpanes were blown from a gob of molten glass that was spun at the end of the blowpipe until it formed a large disc. Rectangular windowpanes were cut from the disc with the outer, thinner, clearer panes sold to the wealthy and the inner, thick, wavy panes with the pontil mark bullseye in the center sold to the poor. You couldn’t see anything out of them but they did let in light and that was what was important. I can’t even guess how this ice would have formed to look just like them.

Neither can I explain why this bit of dead grass had a ray of sunlight falling on it.

I’ve heard that very white ice is white because it has a lot of oxygen in it, so maybe all the bubbles in this piece go along with that theory. It must have gotten very cold very quickly to freeze bubbles in place.

The only thing you can expect from ice is the unexpected, because no two pieces will ever be alike. Ice helps teach us that we should go into nature with no expectations and just enjoy what we see.

On the way home this scene looked more like March than December. Now into January without plowable snow in my yard, it looks to be another unusual winter. I hope you enjoyed coming along through the snowless woods. In a normal winter we wouldn’t have been able to go without snowshoes.

The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world. ~ Zhuangzi (c. 369 BC – c. 286 BC)

Thanks for coming by.

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Another Walk in the Woods

I drove north out of Keene Wednesday, thinking I’d do a climb but I saw that there was still a lot of ice and snow in the woods so I decided against climbing that day. Instead I went to Yale Forest in Swanzey, where there is always something interesting to see.

There was ice here as well, but not enough to matter.

Off in the woods I saw a mossy log. Since I was still looking for a chance to see what my new camera could do with a spore capsule, I decided to take a look.

But this log was as smooth as if it had been shaved. It wore a velvet coat of moss that didn’t have a single spore capsule in it.

Even the haircap mosses (Polytrichum) were capsule free.

A big red pine had fallen and that was a surprise because I hadn’t realized that they grew out here. I thought that any red pines found in this area had been planted but I wasn’t sure of that, so I went to the Yale University Forestry website and found that they were indeed planted here after the 1938 hurricane blew down much of the original natural growth. Thousands of trees were lost in that storm in Keene and surrounding towns. My grandmother told of driving from Marlborough to Keene in what she thought was a rain storm until she started seeing trees falling in her rear-view mirror. Luckily, she made it without a scratch.

It wasn’t a hurricane that took this tree, however. There was lots of bark beetle damage on it. They can girdle a tree just under its bark and once girdled, it dies. These particular beetle runs were much larger in width than those found on white pines.

Lots of bush clover grew along the road in sunny spots. These are last year’s seed heads.

What ice there was on this trail was rotten, as could be seen by its milky, opaque appearance. When I walked on it instead of being slippery it just crushed into pieces and I’d guess by the next day it was gone.

I saw these strange tracks further on and wondered who would be hauling what looked like a cart through here. Then later on I met up with a lady who was pushing her grandson (?) in a three wheeled baby stroller. It seemed that it would be very hard work pushing it over ice and through snow but she was smiling and mentioned what a great day it was, so she must have been doing okay with it. I hoped  I’d never meet up with her in an arm-wrestling contest.

I found a pencil size branch with some split gill fungi (Schizophyllum commune) on it. These tough, wooly coated bracket fungi are true winter mushrooms that appear in late fall. Split gills grow on every continent except Antarctica and are said to be the most studied mushroom on earth. It is known for its medicinal properties, which include antifungal and antiviral qualities. These examples were maybe three quarters of an inch across and that’s about as big as I’ve ever seen them get.

The “gills” on the split gill fungus are actually folds of tissue on its underside that split lengthwise when the mushroom dries out. The splits close over the fertile spore producing surfaces in dry weather and open to release the spores when they’re rehydrated by rain. As is all life, this little mushroom is driven to to ensure the continuation of the species, and that’s why it has increased its spore bearing surfaces with these folds of tissue. It’s an unusual strategy that makes this little mushroom very pretty.

A young red maple had fallen across the trail but luckily it rested high enough to walk under. I’d guess fungi weakened it and the wind did the rest.

Soon enough I was at the outflow stream from the beaver pond, which I was going to have to jump. Since the stream is getting wider all the time it gets harder to jump each time, but I just made it without getting wet. Apparently, my shadow decided to stay put while I looked for a suitable jumping spot. I can’t explain it; I was the only one there and I didn’t notice it until I saw the photo. Either there must be a human shaped tree out there somewhere or I had a very quiet companion.

The beavers hadn’t repaired their dam yet and by the looks of the ice on their pond they wouldn’t be doing anything any time soon. I’m sure the unlucky people who had to take it apart are happy about that. Taking beavers dams apart is hard work.

I thought this was a beautiful scene with the bright sunshine and all the colorful beeches.

This was my attempt to get a shot of beech leaves backlighted by the sun. When I could see again, I returned to the trail.

I saw some turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) with a little blue in them, which just happens to be my favorite color, so I was pleased. I’ve searched for many years now trying to find out what determines what colors a turkey tail will be but apparently nobody knows.

There was quite a large vernal pool thawing in the woods and I wondered how I missed it on the way in. I’d guess that it won’t be long before it’s full of tadpoles.

The last thing I noticed on the way back was a long beaked bird’s head on a log. The last time I was out here last fall I saw an old man’s face in a branch, so this place seems full of interesting “wood spirits.” Seeing faces and other objects where there are none is called Pareidolia and it is said to be a normal human tendency.

One of the best examples of Pareidolia that I can think of is the “Old Man of the Mountain.” The profile could be seen in the White Mountains of New Hampshire until it fell on May 3, 2003. This photo by Jeffery Joseph was taken just seven days before the event. Many thousands of people traveled from all over the world to see the “Great Stone Face” (actually a series of 5 granite ledges) so I suppose it might have been called mass Pareidolia.

One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible. ~Louis L’Amour

Thanks for coming by. And Happy Spring! (Tomorrow)

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Things I’ve Seen

According to statistics November is on average the cloudiest month in this part of the country, but as you can see by the above photo not every day is totally cloudy. This was one of those blue sky, white puffy cloud days and I took this photo because of the clouds. That lower one was growing quickly and I thought it might become a thunderhead, but it never did. It just got bigger.

Many of the photos in this post were taken before the snowstorm I showed in the last post. Snow or not I won’t be seeing anymore fleabane flowers for a few months now. It’s just too cold now for flowers.

November can be a very cold month, when we start to really realize that winter is right around the corner. Frost on the windows helps remind us of that, and I caught this frost crystal growing on my car winshield. They’re beautiful things that most of us pay no attention to.

Ponds are starting to freeze up as well. Bright sunshine has little real warmth in November unless it is coupled with a southerly breeze.

I went to the river to see if any ice baubles had formed along the shore but I got sidetracked for a bit by the beautiful light.

I’ve never seen this stretch of water look gold and blue like it did on this morning.

It was like seeing molten light. None of these colors have been enhanced by me. Nature did all the enhancing.

And on another, colder day, there were ice baubles growing along the shore. If you’ve ever made a candle, you know that you dip the wick in hot wax over and over again, letting the wax harden between dips. If you think of the twigs as wicks, you can see how every wave crest “dips” the twigs in water and the cold air hardens that water into ice. Over time, ice baubles like those seen here form.

Twigs aren’t the only thing that the ice forms on. Anything that the water splashes on over and over will ice up.

The ice baubles are usually as clear as blown glass but on this day a lot of them had air bubbles trapped inside. Many of these examples were nearly round as well but they’re often more pear shaped. Along a river or stream is the only place I’ve ever seen them form in this way, though I suppose they could form anywhere where there is splashing water in winter.

On shore, the sun lit up an oak leaf beautifully.

Some of the biggest oak leaves I’ve ever seen belong to the swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor.) This is a rare species in the woods here but in 2010 the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services removed a 250-year-old timber crib dam in this section of river, and when they replanted the river banks, they chose swamp white oak as one of the tree species. Though the trees are barely 10 feet tall this leaf must have been 8 inches long. Brown is the fall color for the leaves of this oak. The New Hampshire state record for the largest swamp white oak is held by a tree in Swanzey. It is 67 feet tall and has a circumference of 192 inches. That’s 16 feet, so I’m not sure if even 4 people could link hands around a tree that size.

One characteristic of swamp white oak is peeling bark on its branches, giving it a ragged look. On young trees like these even the bark of the trunk will peel, as it was on this example. Planting this species of tree here makes sense because it is tolerant of a variety of soil conditions and can stand drought or flood. The only thing they can’t bear is beavers, and these critters have cut down and hauled off many of them.

When I was taking photos of this tree’s branches I looked down and sure enough, beavers had been at its bark. This tree is a goner, I’m afraid. It has been girdled.

At this time of year, when the soil starts to freeze but before any snow falls, you can often hear the soil crunch when you walk on it. That’s the signal that you should get down on your hands and knees and peer down into those tiny frozen canyons. If you do you’re liable to find ice needles there, because the crunching you heard was probably them breaking. Several things have to happen before needle ice can form. First there has to be groundwater. Next, the air temperature has to fall below 32 degrees F right at the soil surface while the soil and groundwater remain thawed. Hydrostatic pressure forces the groundwater, sometimes super cooled, out of the soil where it freezes instantly into a “needle.” As more water is forced out of the soil the process is repeated over and over, and each needle grows in length because of more water freezing at its base. I’ve read that each thin needle is hexagonal in shape, and that needles have been found that were 16 inches long. The needles in these photos were 1-3 inches long I’d guess, and they were frozen into ribbons. They’re another of those gems of nature that many never see.

Puddle ice has been a friend of mine for a very long time. When I was a boy, after the snow melted in spring, I’d get my bike out and ride it to school. It was still cold enough for ice to form on the puddles and I used to think it was great fun to ride through them so I could hear the strange tinkling / crinkling sounds that the breaking ice made. I have since found out that the whiter the ice, the more oxygen was present in the water when it formed. These days instead of breaking the ice I look for things in it. This time I thought I saw a penguin in that curvy shape to the right of center.

I saw a pair of mallards but this is the only shot that came out useable. I thought this was unusual because usually one will tip up while the other stands guard and watches.

An oriental bittersweet vine had reached the top of a small tree and many of its berries had fallen into a bird’s nest, built where the branches met underneath the bittersweet. Birds love these berries but I think the bird that built this nest must be long gone for warmer climes. These vines are terribly invasive so the fewer berries eaten by birds, the better.

The birds have been eating the river grapes, finally.

They have plenty to eat. It has been an exceptional year for grapes and many other plants.

I love that shade of blue on juniper berries. 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 so they won’t last long.

The winterberries (Ilex verticillata) are covered with berries this year. This native holly holds its berries through the winter and they look great against the white snow. They have a very low-fat content and birds won’t eat them until other fruits with higher fat contents have been eaten. Other plants that fruit in the fall like maple leaf viburnum, high bush cranberry, and staghorn sumac also produce fruit that is low in fat content. That’s why you often see these plants with the previous season’s berries still on them in the spring. Due to the light of the day all three cameras I carried had a hard time with these berries but I wasn’t surprised because red is one of the hardest colors for a camera to capture.

I found a very old hemlock log. The branches had been cut off long ago but the stubs that were left were amazing in their texture. It was if someone had carved them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before.

Orange fan shaped jelly fungi (Dacryopinax spathularia) grew on the dark end of a log and looked like tiny lights. Actually they were more nose shaped than spatula shaped but I’ve found that fungi don’t always live up to what they were named. In the winter they’re a pretty spot of color in a white world.

But for color in winter turkey tails (Trametes versicolor) have to take the prize. These examples were beautiful, and they wore my favorite turkey tail color combinations.

I saw this foreboding sky at dawn one morning. I thought it was beautiful and I hope you’ll think so too.

In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in
But first, you hear the crackle of their wings. ~Vera Nazarian

Thanks for stopping in.

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A Little More Fall Color At Beaver Brook

I thought I might see some good foliage up at Beaver Brook but by the time I got there most of the leaves were on the old abandoned road. But not all of them; I did see some color a little further up the road.

Someone had swept away the leaves on part of the road so you could see the old no passing zone lines.

I stopped at the old bridge over Beaver Brook, which still has its guard rails made of channel iron beams and stout cables.

It’s not a bad place to get a glimpse of the brook as long as you’re steady on your feet.

The beeches were still colorful, which is what I expected.

And the hillsides were full of them.

But of course all the other trees like maples and birches had already dropped their leaves. I used to like moss hunting on the ledges here but there have been some big rock falls so I stay away from most of them now.

I did get close to this ledge so I could show you the icicles, but I didn’t stay long. It was cold in the shade.

The wet leaves below the ledges showed that the icicles were melting.

These were my favorite icicles. That rock on the right with an icicle on its chin reminded me of a skull.

The exposed ledges show that the place is quite literally crumbling away. Much of the stone here is soft, as in feldspar, and it looks like it has shattered. It’s no wonder there are rock slides happening.

The place is slowly putting itself to bed for another winter and once again it will sleep under a blanket of leaves. Seeing them covering the entire length of the old road showed me that.

The brook is slowly eating away the road and evidence of this is everywhere, like in the stilted roots of this golden birch. All the soil has been washed away from them and now the tree hangs precariously out over the brook.

These birches have some impressive root systems but they’re shallow, and the trees do fall over.

I saw a place where I could get to the water without breaking my neck. I noticed that one of the concrete guard posts had been washed up on shore but I didn’t want to think about how the brook would have had to rage to move such a heavy object. They’re about six feet long.  

When I reached the water, I looked upstream…

…and I looked downstream. I saw that the brook was being very well behaved and staying within its banks. It isn’t always so. Someday, I thought as I sat here, in the summer when it’s hot and dry and the water is low, I’d like to walk across this brook and explore the other side. The only thing I know for sure about it is that there is a boulder as big as a house in one spot.

I saw an animal den. It looked like maybe a woodchuck in size but I doubted they would dig so close to water. I don’t think they would find enough to eat here. They’re more a meadow or hayfield animal. Or your flower or vegetable garden.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a frost crack on an eastern hemlock before but I think these warty growths were a healed frost crack. If so, it would now be called a frost rib.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a red maple leaf this color before either. I like it.

What I call the disappearing waterfall usually only runs down this hillside in spring when the snow melts, but here it was running in November. It shows how much rain we’ve had. It’s a pretty scene and I’ve seen lots of people stop to take photos of it.

Once again, especially with all the slippery leaves, I couldn’t talk myself into crawling down the steep embankment to get a shot of Beaver Brook Falls. I did get a side view though. It was roaring.

The old road dead ends and there isn’t much to see after the falls so I usually turn around and head back the way I came. I admired more beautiful beech trees along the way.

And some colorful turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor.) They’re doing well this year and I’m glad about that because I like seeing them. There must be a thousand variations in color. I like the blue and orange ones.

I think it was my blogging friend Eliza who asked me last year if I ever saw any bigtooth aspen leaves. I believe I told her that I didn’t but I should have said that sometimes I miss things, because they were everywhere.

The presence of a path doesn’t necessarily mean the existence of a destination. ~Craig D. Lounsbrough

Thanks for stopping in. I hope none of you are seeing any severe winter weather. So far, so good here.

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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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The Last of the Summer Fungi

We’ve had so much rain that now, for the first time since I started this blog, I’m able to do a third summer mushroom post. Usually I might be able to do two in summer and one in the fall, so rain does indeed encourage fungal growth. The coral mushrooms have come along now, as this white coral shows. I think it is one called the crested coral fungus (Clavulina cristata.) Many coral fungi seem to appear more towards the end of summer, I’ve noticed.

Crown coral fungi are common and often get quite big. They also often grow in large groups. I think this pale orangey one might be crown tipped coral (Clavicorona pyxidata.) I’ve seen these get as big as grapefruits, with several of them growing in a large circle.

Yellow spindle or finger coral fungi (Ramariopsis laeticolor) can also grow in large groups. The taller ones might reach an inch and a half high and their diameter is often close to a piece of cooked spaghetti, but I’ve seen a few with larger diameters. 

Dyer’s Polypore (Phaeolus schweinitzii) is also called the velvet topped fungus because of its hairy appearance. These fungi are parasitic on the roots and heartwood of living white pines in the eastern U.S. and cause root rot. This fungus changes color as it ages and becomes a beautiful deep maroon / reddish color. If found when young like this one it can be used to dye wool a soft yellow or orange and older example will dye wool brown, and that’s where its common name comes from.

This is a dyer’s polypore in midlife. It looks a bit like a raspberry filled pastry to me at this stage. Or maybe I’m just hungry.

And this is what an older dyer’s polypore looks like. As you can see the color difference between young and old examples is dramatic. Some of these mushrooms can get quite large but this one was only about 4 inches across. It was also wet from rain; it’s usually fuzzy like velvet. Though they sometimes look as if they’re growing on the ground, they’re really growing on conifer roots or buried logs. This sequence of photos probably covers about two weeks in the life of this mushroom. Eventually they just disappear, but woe will befall the pine tree they grow on.

Turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) are one of the most colorful fungi in the forest. They are also one of the easiest to find, because they grow in nearly every state in the country and throughout Europe, Asia. and Russia. I especially like turkey tails because they can be found all year long. And they grow exclusively on wood; though it looks like they were growing in grass here there was a buried root that we can’t see. Next time you walk in the forest if you pay attention to any stumps and logs you might see, you’re liable to find some turkey tails on them.

This large clump of turkey tails showed off their beautiful color range perfectly, I thought. Finding something like this in the middle of winter is like finding flowers in a desert.

Violet toothed polypore (Trichaptum biformis) looks a little like the turkey tail fungus and I’m fairly certain that I have misidentified it as such here on this blog. Once you get to know the two though, it’s obvious that the purple edges on these are not found on turkey tails.

When young the undersides of violet toothed polypores are a beautiful lilac purple color but then it fades to brown, as is seen here. It’s easy to see where the “toothed” part of the common name comes from. The teeth on toothed fungi are usually simply folds of tissue that hang like teeth. With mushrooms it’s all about increasing the spore bearing surface, be it by gill, pore or folded tissue because more spores mean a better likelihood of the continuation of the species. This fungus and others like it are decomposers of wood. They are part of the reason the floors of our forests aren’t buried under fallen branches and logs, so we should be happy to have them with us.

I like to look at dead mushrooms because I often find that some are as beautiful in death as they were in life. I loved the colors and wave like contours I saw in this one. It had a lot of movement and I’d love to paint it, if I was still painting.

The shingled hedgehog (Sarcodon imbricatus.) How’s that for a name? It’s easy to see where the shingled part comes from but I’m not sure about the hedgehog part. The cap is brownish, with darker scales. It is also a toothed fungus, with grayish teeth rather than pores or gills on the spore bearing underside of the cap. It is said to like growing near spruce but I found it near hemlocks.

Here is an older example of the shingled hedgehog. Their caps curl as they age. Other names are scaly hedgehog, hawk’s wing and scaly urchin. I’ve read that no other mushroom looks quite like it and I can believe that.

I found the old man of the woods (Strobilomyces strobilaceus) growing between the fork of a fallen branch. This shaggy looking mushroom is a bolete, with pores instead of gills. The soft, dark gray or black overlapping scales on the cap give it a kind of hairy look, and that’s where the common name comes from. The stem is also quite hairy. I always see this mushroom growing alone, never in groups. They grow on the ground and I’ve read that they like to grow near oaks, though I’ve never paid close enough attention to notice. I think this is the first time I’ve shown it here.

There are various species of bird’s nest fungi but the only ones I ever find are the fluted bird’s nest fungi (Cyathus striatus.) They like to grow on wood and I found many hundreds of them growing in wood chips recently. I’ve also seen them in mulch and on old stumps. They’re beautiful and unusual little things, hairy brown on the outside and kind of silvery gray on the inside.

Bird’s nest fungi also very small; a pea wouldn’t fit in any of these examples. They’re called bird’s nests because of the “eggs” you find inside. The “bird’s nest” is actually a splash cup called a peridium and when a drop of rain falls into it with enough force the “eggs” are splashed out. These eggs are really disc shaped spore cases called peridioles. Once ejected from the splash cup the peridioles degrade over time to release the spores.

Black chanterelles (Craterellus cornucopioides) are also called deep purple horn of plenty or purple trumpet mushrooms and don’t seem common, but there are certain spots where hundreds of them grow. They are considered a great delicacy by mushroom hunters and I was told that they can sell for $50.00 per pound to restaurants. Because of their color mushroom hunters complain that they’re very hard to see but for a change I think colorblindness serves me well, because I can see them without any difficulty. I’ve read that colorblind people can “see through” camouflage. Maybe it’s true.

The spore bearing surface of this mushroom is a very beautiful color but it isn’t easy to see while they’re standing.

This shot shows the color range you can expect to see on black chanterelles. It also shows why some might find them hard to find. They do blend into the leaf litter quite well.

A friend at work told me about some mushrooms growing near a tree and when I went to look, I was stunned! I’ve seen Jack O’ lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus olearius) before but never this many. They were growing on this tree, which was an old maple, and its roots. They were big and beautiful. Pumpkin orange and some as big as my hand.

I’ve read that people mistake Jack O’ lanterns for chanterelles but to me the two look very different. For one thing chanterelles grow on the ground, never on wood, and they usually grow singly or two or three, not in huge colonies like these. Also, Jack O’ lantern gills are very thin and straight, and don’t fork. If you happen to forage for mushrooms this would be a good one to get to know well, because though it won’t kill you, I’ve read that it can make you very sick for a couple of days. In North America, there are over 40 species of chanterelle and chanterelle-like mushrooms.

The Jack O’ lanterns grew completely around the tree and also grew from its roots. There must have been many hundreds, and it was an amazing sight. An interesting fact about Jack O’ lanterns is how their gills are bioluminescent and glow an eerie green color in the dark. Anyone walking here at night would have been in for a big surprise. I’ve read that when the mycelium threads through the wood they grow on it is sometimes also bioluminescent, and in the Middle Ages people were very suspicious and frightened of the logs they saw glowing at night. They called the eerie light foxfire.

I scratched around in the leaves near where some Jack O lanterns were growing on the tree’s roots and found white mycelium but I haven’t been able to confirm that it is actually from the Jack O’ lanterns because the internet and my books are staying very quiet about what color Jack O’ lantern mycelium is.  

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. ~W. B. Yeats

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By a Stream

There is a little stream that I pass each day that I like to visit up close every now and then, just to see what changes have taken place and to see all the things I missed on my previous visits.

It was cold enough for there to be ice.

Here an ice bauble had formed around a stick that was sticking up out of the water.

This stream is called a meandering stream because of its sinuous, snake like curves. This shot shows how gravel has built up on the inside, slower part of the curve (left) which is called a point bar, and how this forces the water to eat away at the embankment on the faster outside part of the curve (right). In this way the stream swings from side to side over the length of its course and this is known as a meander belt. According to what I’ve read the length of the meander belt is typically from 15 to 18 times the width of the stream or river. But wait a minute I say, because this is a view of the stream when it is calm. After we’ve had a lot of rain I’ve seen it swell to 10 times this width, enough to cover all of the ground in these photos and more, so I wonder how that affects its meander.

A squirrel had a fine meal of white pine seeds if I am to judge by this large pile of scales at the base of the tree. Squirrels like to sit on something when they eat and I’ve seen these piles at the base of stumps, rocks, and even fence posts. They don’t like to eat while on the ground and I’ve always thought it was because they could spot predators better up a little higher.

I spotted a fine crop of what I believe were mock or orange oyster (Phyllotopsis nidulans) mushrooms. Since they were frozen solid and I couldn’t get above them I can’t really be sure but they were a touch of woodland beauty nevertheless. I didn’t see it at the time but you can see how the underside of the large example just above center has been gnawed on. I’ve seen squirrels eat mushrooms but I can’t say for sure what animal did it.

One of the bracket fungi that sort of mimic the common turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) is the thin-maze flat polypore (Daedaleopsis confragosa). (There are a few others) Since turkey tails have pores and these have what appear to be gills they are hard to confuse. Thin maze flat polypores start life very white but turn gray as they age. They have some zoning like turkey tails and are often covered with green algae.

The pores on this bracket fungus are elongated and can resemble gills but in any event they are very different than the “pin hole” pores found on the underside of turkey tails.

I did see some turkey tails but there were only two or three and they were so beautiful I couldn’t bear to pick one and show you its pores. 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.

Last year at work I was lucky enough to find some chicken of the woods mushrooms (Laetiporus sulphureus) that I could watch every day, and toward the end of their time they looked exactly like the dead, white examples seen here. Too bad I didn’t see them when they were alive; they’re a big beautiful, very colorful mushroom.

One of the reasons I wanted to come here was to visit my friends the tree mosses (Climacium dendroides). This is the only spot I’ve ever found them so they aren’t common in this area, but they are spreading here along the little stream. On this day some of them looked a little brown but I hope they’ll come back. They must not mind being under water for a time because when the stream floods they get very drenched, growing as they do right on its bank.

They are cheery mosses that remind me of little palm trees, and they always glow with a beautiful inner light.

I’ve spoken about frost cracks many times on this blog but I read recently in the excellent book Woods Whys by Michael Snyder that though frost cracks are indeed caused by cold that isn’t all of the story. Frost cracks usually appear where there is previous damage to the tree, such as the scar on this young maple. I have a feeling that this was caused by a male white tail deer rubbing its antlers on the tree.

I can’t guess what other animal would peel bark in strips like this. Porcupines eat bark but to my knowledge they don’t peel it and leave it like this. And I didn’t see any teeth marks.

By the way; though the book Woods Whys would be a great addition to any nature library I was told that it was out of print. Luckily though my local bookstore was able to find a copy after two weeks of searching, so if you’d like a copy don’t give up because they are out there.

This tree stand told me that my thoughts about buck rubs might be accurate. It’s a simple thing; a hunter would climb the ladder and sit at the top, waiting for a deer. But sitting up there in November waiting all day for a deer to wander by would take something that I apparently don’t have in me.

This natural trail leads into a swamp that the stream feeds into. I believe this trail was made by beavers. When the stream floods this entire area is under water.

There were animal tracks leading into the swamp.

This shows that even animals slip on the ice. I think there are the tracks of two animals here; the one in the upper left has nails like a fox or a small dog and the others look more like a cat, possibly a bobcat. In any event there was a lot of traffic going into the swamp.

This stump and quite a few others showed plenty of fairly recent beaver activity. By the way that stump is iron wood, which isn’t called that for nothing. I’ve also seen beavers chew through elm, which is another very tough species.

By looking at the black knot damage on this old cherry it was easy to see where the stories of ogres living in the woods came from. Black knot disease is caused by the fungus Apiosporina morbosa which can also attack plums, peaches, and apricots. If not pruned off and burned as soon as possible when the tree is young it will kill the tree, and I don’t think this one has far to go.

Even in what appears to be a dry area these fertile, spore bearing fronds of sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) tell a different story. Sensitive fern is an indicator species and it indicates that you’re in a wetland, so you had better have your boots on.

Sensitive fern fertile fronds are pretty things to stop and admire in winter. In this case the typically round spore capsules had opened, and this is something few people see. It isn’t a rare sight though in my experience; I think people simply don’t look.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little meander by a meandering stream. I had a great time and as is often the case, I had to pull myself away.

The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek.
~Edward Mooney Jr.

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Things I’ve Seen

Rosy maple moths are cute with their blonde hair and candy striped wings. They appear at about this time each year and are easy to identify because there apparently aren’t too many others that look like them. They have a wooly yellow body and pink and creamy wing stripes. These moths lay their tiny eggs on the undersides of maple leaves and that’s how they come by their common name. Adult moths do not eat but the caterpillars are able to eat a few leaves each. They are called green striped maple worms. We have lights on at night where I work and in the morning sometimes you might see twenty or more of these little creatures on the side of the building. They don’t seem to mind people at all but at a certain time of day they all disappear.

Fish are jumping right out of the water and this is why; the Mayflies are hatching. These aquatic insects have a very short lifespan. The males die after mating and females die after laying their eggs, but it all happens quickly; a male might live two days and a female a matter of minutes. The females lay their eggs in clean, fresh pond or lake water and when the eggs hatch into nymphs fish are there to eat them on the lake bottom. The nymphs that survive become more Mayflies and the fish jump to eat them, so it seems kind of a miracle that we ever see a Mayfly. It’s really all about numbers; a hatching can contain huge numbers of flies. They are also attracted to light and like the rosy maple moths, cling to lighted buildings at night. There are over 3,000 species of Mayfly so they can be tricky to identify, but they all have abdomens with 10 segments. Their presence in a body of water indicates that it is clean and unpolluted.

One of the strangest creatures I’ve seen on the shop building at work is this toothpick grasshopper. I knew it was a toothpick grasshopper because coincidentally I had just read about one on Mike Powell’s blog. I’m not sure what species it is; it could be a cattail toothpick grasshopper (Leptysma marginicollis) because of the brown stripe from behind the eye to the front legs or it could be another species. At this point the only thing I’m sure of is that it a toothpick grasshopper, which I’ve never seen.

Note: A helpful reader has written in to say that this insect is actually a caddisfly, order Trichoptera. I’ve never heard of either insect but hopefully I’ll recognize them next time!

Here’s a real close look at a toothpick grasshopper. I was surprised that it stayed still and let me get so close. By the way, if you aren’t reading Mike Powell’s blog and you’re a nature lover, you’re doing yourself a disservice. You can find Mike’s blog over in the ‘Favorite Links’ section. There is something new and interesting to see there each day.

I was going to get a photo of a box shrub flower to show you but then a bee came along and was willing to pose, so I forgot about the flower and tried to see what the bee was all about. As near as I can tell it’s a leafcutter bee, which uses leaves to cover its nest hole.

Leaf cutter bees are black with white hairs covering the thorax and the bottom of the abdomen and some species have large, powerful jaws that make the work of leaf cutting easier. They are said to fly very fast so I was lucky that this one was in the mood for a portrait sitting. From what I’ve read they  carry pollen on their abdomens, so they’re pollinators.

As I said in last Saturday’s post about climbing Pitcher Mountain, I was lucky enough to meet Samuel Jaffe, director of the Caterpillar Lab in Marlborough New Hampshire, in the woods one day. On that day he pointed out this caterpillar that looked like a bird dropping and explained that it was an Eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar. It was feeding on poplar leaves. I should mention again that the Caterpillar Lab is a unique and fascinating place, and you can visit it online here: https://www.thecaterpillarlab.org/ They have a caterpillar of the day and lots of other interesting things there which I think would be especially appealing to schoolchildren.

Here is the Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly that the caterpillar will turn into. I saw it before I saw the caterpillar so their different stages of life must be staggered a bit among the entire family. I’m seeing a lot of them this year.

As I seem to do every spring I came very close to stepping on this foot and a half long garter snake because I didn’t see it until the last moment. But it didn’t move; in fact it let me take a few photos and walk away, which these snakes often do. They seem to think if they don’t move you can’t see them, and they freeze. It’s a good thing my grandmother wasn’t with me because she would have been up the nearest tree, so great was her fear of snakes. She knew garter snakes weren’t poisonous, but she was still afraid of them.

Here’s a closer look at the garter snake. It saw my every move. It also looked like it might have had a bulge in its stomach, which would mean it had eaten recently.

I’ve been wanting a photo of a chipmunk with its cheeks full and this one sat on a tree and posed, so I got my wish. What might look like a big arm muscle just under its eye is actually a cheek full of seeds. These little rodents, bigger than a mouse but smaller than a squirrel, also eat nuts, fruit, fungi, grains and even bird eggs. They eat just about anything really, and nest in burrows in the ground. They store food for winter in underground chambers and stay underground until spring. In spring they’re usually very hungry, hence the fat cheeks. A face on shot would have showed them better but you can’t have everything.

It’s turtle time here in this part of New Hampshire and the big snapping turtles are on the move, looking for soft sand to dig their nests in. This one found a spot right on the edge of a road and that explains why they sometimes get hit by cars. Average adult snapping turtles can be over two feet long and weigh as much as 50 pounds and they can be very aggressive on land, so it’s best to stay away from them. They don’t have teeth but they have strong jaws and beaks that can easily break fingers. I took this photo of a large female laying her eggs just the other day. Snapping turtles dig rather shallow holes with their hind legs and lay anywhere from 25-80 eggs each year. Incubation time is 9-18 weeks but many eggs don’t make it anywhere near that long. Foxes, minks, skunks, crows and raccoons dig them up and eat them and destroyed nests are a common sight along sandy roadsides. These big turtles eat plants, fish, frogs, snakes, ducklings, and just about anything else they can catch. Oddly, when in the water they are rather placid and don’t bother humans.

I’ve had a few fungal encounters lately and one of the most interesting is the false morel mushroom.  I think it is called a brain fungus (Gyromitra esculenta,) which is a false morel that often grows very near true morels. This is a problem because false morels can be toxic and true morels are not, so if you are a mushroom forager you’ll want to know each one well. An easy way to tell them apart is by the way the cap attaches to the stem. The brain fungus cap attaches only at the top of the stem, and a morel’s cap attaches to the stem over its full length. Cutting one in half lengthwise will tell the story.

The brain fungus gets its common name from its reddish brown cap that resembles a brain. In my experience it really doesn’t resemble a true morel, either in color or shape, but I certainly haven’t met many morels.

I saw some striking turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor.) They aren’t usually this dark. I love how there always seems to be a surprise waiting with turkey tails. I’ve never seen them marked quite like this.

I’ve finally solved a mystery that has plagued me for years, and that was which maple seeds were from a silver maple and which were from a red maple. Of course there are no leaves in spring when the seeds are produced, so I had to remember to go back when the leaves came out. This year I finally remembered to go back and see the leaves. The leaves above are silver maple leaves. They have sharp points and are deeply lobed.

Now I can say with certainty that these pretty little maple seeds are produced by a silver maple. They quickly lose that white fur. To get a photo of them like this one you may have to visit them every day for a week.

This is a red maple leaf. The lobes aren’t as deep and the leaf looks completely different than a silver maple leaf.

And these are red maple seeds (samaras) just after they have formed. Pretty yes, but not as pretty as the silver maple examples, in my opinion. Now, next spring I’ll be able to tell you for sure which seeds are which.

The interrupted fern (Osmunda claytoniana) gets its common name from the way its green infertile leaflets are “interrupted” about half way up the stem by the darker colored fertile leaflets. The fertile leaflets are much smaller and their color makes them stand out even at a distance. This fern doesn’t seem to mind dry, sunny spots because that’s usually where I find them.

The leaflets on the interrupted fern’s fertile fronds are covered with tiny, round spore producing sporangia. They will release their spores by opening much like a clamshell, as this photo shows. Once the spores have been released the sporangia fall off, leaving a piece of naked (interrupted) stem between the upper and lower infertile leaflets. This is the first shot I’ve ever gotten of the open spore cases.

Grasses are starting to flower and I do hope you’ll have the time to look at a few, because they can be beautiful.

Poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) leaves usually appear red in spring but I couldn’t seem to catch any red ones this year. Red leaves mean plants are in no hurry to begin photosynthesizing but some years they seem to want to start immediately. This is one of those years apparently, and it makes me wonder what they know that we don’t. Notice how the new spring leaves shine.

And then notice how they no longer shine as they age. Poison ivy plants can appear very different at different times and in different situations. This poison ivy was wearing its vine disguise, climbing a tree by using aerial roots which grow directly out of the wood of its stem when it needs them. Poison ivy can appear as a plant, a shrub, or a vine and if you’re going to spend much time in the woods it’s a good idea to know it well. This one still had last year’s white berries on it, just about in the center  of the photo. Birds usually snap them up quickly, so I’m not sure why they left them.

If you happened upon a shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) tree just after bud break you might see what look like large pinkish orange flowers on the trees and think gosh, what beautiful things. If you get closer you will see that the colors are on the insides of the bud scales of the shagbark hickory tree, and aren’t flowers at all. And then you might wonder why such beautiful colors would be on the inside of a bud where nobody could ever see them, and as you walk on you might find yourself lost in gratitude, so very thankful that you were able to see such a thing.

Live this life in wonder, in wonder of the beauty, the magic, the true magnificence that surrounds you. It is all so beautiful, so wonderful. Let yourself wonder. ~Avina Celeste

Thanks for stopping in. I’m sorry this post is so long but every time I turn around there is another interesting and beautiful thing there waiting to be seen, and I can’t stop clicking that shutter button.

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Edgewood Forest

In 1906 Albert Proell, manager of the Keene Forestry Association, was allowed to start a tree plantation on unused land near what is now the Keene airport. Trees, chiefly Scot pine and Norway spruce, were grown from seed to be used in reforestation projects. The spruce trees have done well but the Scot pines have not; neither the soil nor climate is right for them. Many of the spruce trees are still here and, as the above photo shows, are tall but have no real girth because they were meant to be transplanted into other areas, not allowed to reach full size. They are too close together and cast such deep shade that nothing but a few mosses and fungi will grow beneath them.

This view looking up shows how the trees are more poles than trees.

The plantation trees often die young as this one did.

But the near sterile tree plantation is only part of the story, because not all of the trees in this forest were planted. In fact most of them weren’t and some have been here for a very long time. Many old and large white pines (Pinus strobus) grow here, as well as hemlocks, larches, birches, beeches, maples, oaks and poplars.

Beech leaves glowed in the sun. I watch these leaves in winter because when they start falling from the trees spring isn’t far off. This is a tree that brings me year round pleasure, from its beautiful new leaves in spring until the last leaves fall in the following spring. I just read that beech trees were a sign of soil fertility for early settlers moving west, and when they found a good stand of beech that’s where they would start their farms. It’s also a very important tree to woodland creatures and everything from mice to black bears eat its nuts.

A large part of this land is swamp, and this is where I come to see skunk cabbage, wild azaleas and many other plants I don’t find anywhere else.

Skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) are just waiting for it to warm up a bit and at the end of February or early March they’ll start to bloom. They’re one of our earliest spring blooming plants, if not the earliest.

I was happy to see seed pods on a few of the native roseshell azaleas (Rhododendron prinophyllum.) If a plant is producing seed it is happy, and these native shrubs are hard to find. The fragrant pink flowers are among the most beautiful found in the spring forest.

The shiny evergreen leaves of pipsissewa (Chimaphila umbellata) are quite easy to see in winter. They’re one of our native wintergreens and they like to grow in undisturbed, sandy woodland soil that is on the dry side. Pipsissewa was once used as a flavoring in candy and soft drinks, including root beer. Its common name comes from the Native American Cree tribe, who used it medicinally to treat kidney stones. It was thought to break them up into pieces. Even though pipsissewa photosynthesizes it supplements its diet by taking certain nutrients from fungi, and for that reason it is considered partially parasitic. This is one of a very few places I’ve seen it. 

The pretty little seedpods of pipsissewa persist through the winter and poke up out of the snow. They are woody and split open into 5 parts to release the tiny seeds. Each capsule is about a quarter inch across. They remind me of the seedpods of the Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora,) in some ways.

Another rarity in this forest is striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata.) I’ve found 5 or 6 examples here, all growing in the same general area. Striped wintergreen 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’ve also read that it won’t grow on land that has been disturbed in the last 100 years.

A yellow area on a tree had me thinking I knew what it was, but then I looked closer…

…and I realized that I had no idea what it was. But I thought that it must be a liverwort and after some digging I came up with a liverwort called flat-leaved scalewort (Radula complanate.) It is said to be relatively common on trees and rocks but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. It doesn’t like direct sunlight and it certainly wouldn’t have gotten any where I found it growing.

Another of our native evergreen’s leaves were buried under the snow but I didn’t need to see them to identify this plant. The big J shaped flower styles of shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica) are unmistakable, even on its winter seedpods. Shinleaf is quite common in this area and can form large colonies. It seems to be more successful than some other wintergreens. Shinleaf and other plants in the wintergreen family contain compounds that are similar to aspirin and shinleaf was used by Native Americans as a poultice on injured shins and other parts of the body. That’s how the plant comes by its common name. Shinleaf leaves form a rosette at the base of the single, 4-5 inch tall flower stalk.

I’ve seen a lot of holes in trees but this was more of a slit than a hole and I haven’t a clue how it came to be. It was in an old white pine that was hollow inside. There are an amazing number of hollow trees in forests but it takes a long time; a hundred years or more, for a tree to become hollow so most of them are quite large. Many birds, animals, and even frogs and snakes live in tree hollows, so they’re important to wildlife but they can also be dangerous if they’re near buildings. I saw a big old white pine that had fallen and cut a barn right in half. It was hollow inside.

Amber jelly fungi (Exidia recisa) looked like stained glass. Being in the snow meant these examples had absorbed plenty of water so they were pliable and rubbery, like your ear lobe. I see this fungus everywhere, especially on fallen oak limbs but also on alder and poplar as well.

A tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) looked older than the tree it grew on but of course that isn’t possible. These bracket fungi produce spores at all times of year but through spring and summer studies have shown that they can produce as many as 800 million spores in a single hour. Its common name comes from its usefulness as tinder for starting fires.

Turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) are some of the most colorful in the forest. For years now I’ve wondered what determines the colors that turkey tails display. Why are some brown and others blue? Or orange? Or purple?  If the question has an answer I haven’t found it, but I have found that they are full of antioxidants and contain many immune boosting properties. In fact studies have shown that they can boost the effectiveness of cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation.

Lots of clubmosses grow here and fan clubmoss (Lycopodium digitatum) is one of my favorites. The plant gets its common name from the way its branches fan out in a 180 degree arc at the top of the stem. Another common name is ground cedar because of its resemblance to the cedar tree. At one time this and other clubmosses were used to make Christmas wreaths and were collected almost into oblivion, but they seem to be making a fairly good comeback. A single plant can take 20 years or more to grow from spore to maturity, so they should never be disturbed. Clubmosses aren’t mosses at all. They are vascular plants that don’t flower; they produce spores instead of seeds and are considered fern allies. Fossils have been found that show the lowly clubmosses once grew to 100 feet tall.

Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora) are white and ghostly and grow in the dark places in the forest. They can get away with doing that because they don’t photosynthesize, but they do have flowers and when the flowers are pollinated they stand straight up toward the sky. This tells me that the flower seen here either wasn’t pollinated or didn’t see any need to stand up straight like all of its cousins. The seeds are fine like dust and I think the flower standing up straight must have something to do with rain being able to splash the seeds out of the capsule. Many plants and mosses use the same strategy for seed and spore dispersal. Fresh Indian pipe plants contain a gel that Native Americans used to treat eye problems, and the common name comes from the plant’s resemblance to the pipes they smoked.

That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again. ~Ali Smith

Thanks for stopping in.

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