Wild Wednesday ~ Tiny Things

Yesterday, when walking in the woods with my kids, I came across something I've been hoping to see for years: green stain fungus.

Okay, actually I've seen the fungus, Chlorociboria spp., many times, in the form of chunks of wood stained a lovely dark teal. But I haven't seen the fruiting bodies, which are known as green elf cups. And then there they were on this little chunk of wood near the river.


I didn't have my camera or even my phone with me, so I brought the wood home and left it outside under a tree overnight. After a solid soaking from an all-night rainstorm, the fruiting bodies doubled in size, from pin head to peppercorn. I imagine they'll keep growing until they develop the classic goblet shape that gives the species its common name.



In other tiny fruiting body news, today I found on our driveway this dead aspen branch that came down in the storm.

Closer inspection revealed that it was colonized with all kinds of life. Each of these orange blobs of jelly fungus was about the size of a currant. I think they might be very tiny specimens of witches butter, Tremella mesenterica, another type of fungal fruiting body. 

And all over the branch grew this bright golden lichens, which is also fruiting, and I think may be Candelaria fibrosa.



Those round disk thingies are the apothecia, or fruiting bodies. Everyone's getting in on the fruiting act it seems.



We've also had a very tiny visitor to our sunroom this week, who I was going to release outside when it got warm today, but the darn thing went and hid on me. Hopefully I'll find him in time for the next edition of Wild Wednesday.

Wild Wednesday ~ One Week in Late August

Last Wednesday I went out and took some photos of late August happenings, with the full intention of writing a Wild Wednesday post, but then I got busy doing other things and it never happened. I considered a Wild Thursday or Friday post, but those days got filled up, too (oh, how glorious that school is back in session!!). Now here it is Wednesday again, and I thought I'd do a little compare and contrast from one week to the next.

Late August is goldenrod season around here, and a few species, including early goldenrod, were blooming.



Now the early goldenrod has gone by,



But several other species are coming online.



I haven't had a chance to go out with my field guide and identify  them yet (or re-identify, since I'm pretty sure I've learned them at least once or twice before).





Last week, most of the queen Anne's lace was on its way out, though a few were still blooming



By this week almost all (except for a few small ones here or there) have gone to seed.



The tall asters had come into full bloom last week,



And are still the predominant flower in the fields.



I had seen this puffball mushroom, about the size of a softball, on my morning walk up the driveway. By the time I came by again around noon, some little critter had nibbled away at it.



Over the next few days, it turned black and slimy and now this is all that's left. When you stamp on it—which is irresistible—it gives off its spores, like a cloud of purple smoke, which smells oddly of chocolate.



There were a few of these teeny tiny puffballs along the driveway as well, each about the size of a large grape, covered in a spiky white skin.



The skin dried and cracked, peeling away, leaving behind a brownish volcano that spurts little puffs of greenish-yellow spores.

One of my favorite flowers growing on our property is this sedum, called live-forever. Most of our wildflowers are white or yellow, and while I might not choose to dress in or decorate with magenta, I'm thrilled whenever it grow wild on my land.

It is, unfortunately, not so aptly named. Just a week later, and the blooms and stems have turned a rusty red.

What's wild in your neck of the woods this week?

Weekend Things ~ Before

I wish I'd gotten around to writing this post Monday or Tuesday, when I still felt the magic in the world. Maybe it's now more important than ever to find beauty in tiny things, in little moments. Or maybe it's stupid and self-indulgent. I don't really know, but back when tiny things mattered, here are a few from my weekend.

I did some exploring for mushrooms.





I brought my field guide and my camera into the woods.



But these specimens proved trickier than the ones I saw last week.







I even brought a few inside to try spore prints, in an admittedly haphazard way. And then I let them all go when they started to turn slimy, before I'd done the really hard work of keying out.



We didn't have much of a garden this year, being gone all summer, but C planted a few carrot seeds before we left and I harvested them Saturday. They were small, having never been thinned, and hairy, having been left in the ground too long, but they were beautiful (and tasty roasted).



I stole a little daylight knitting time. I'd started a project on tiny needles with fine-as-cobwebs yarn and wasn't getting too far in the evenings, in the dim light, in front of the TV. After a few minutes of knitting in a patch of sun, I was able to get into the rhythm of the pattern enough that I could knit all through 3 hours of Sunday night PBS-watching and am well on my way to an ultra-soft cashmere hat. I'm not sure if gray is my color, but I don't think I care.



Finally, I made a batch of cookies for a picnic at friends' Sunday. They're chocolate sables from The Standard Baking Company (if you have not been to The Standard on Commercial St. in Portland, drop everything and go there now). They're my absolute favorite cookie in the world, but even though I've had their cookbook for a couple of years now, this is the first time I baked them. They're a rich, chocolatey shortbread with a faintly sandy texture that I adore. And they weren't difficult to make, at all, although my dough logs (they're like an icebox cookie) were not exactly round, and the baking time was a little fussy (too long and they start to burn, though you can't tell because of the dark color; too short and they don't hold together).



Every time I took a bite of one of these cookies, I felt happy to be alive. I mean that, really and truly. Unfortunately, I finished the last of them Tuesday morning. I think I need to make another batch, stat.

Wild Wednesday ~ Mushrooms

A couple of weeks ago, I found this weird mass of mushrooms growing next to our driveway.

Because it was near the house, I could run inside and grab my mushroom i.d. book, rather than my usual "I'll just try to remember what it looked like and look it up later" routine.

And I actually started with the key in the guide, and then, once I got to family Lepiotaceae, cheated and flipped through the pictures till I found a good match, Leucocorinus caepestipes. Which is a mouthful; don't ask me how to say it. And there doesn't appear to be a common name.

Learning a new facet of the natural world is always a challenge because each category has its own unique vocabulary. Mycology was not part of our Master Naturalist training, so I'm starting from scratch, and since my mushroom book is big and heavy and I don't travel with a mushroom basket, I rarely have both book and specimen in the same place, so the education has been slow.

But, with the rain that has come to Maine in recent weeks, I've seen more mushrooms popping up in the woods, and I've been in need of a focus to get me outside and naturalizing, so maybe I'll start toting the mushroom book into the woods, and learn more about these very fun guys.

Wild Wednesday ~ Leaves Unfurling and Fungus

For a long time, I felt like spring snuck up on me. Like I'd wait for it and wait for it all winter, and suddenly one day the grass would be green and the trees all had leaves and the flowers were in bloom and I somehow missed the steps that got us there. While it was lovely to finally exist in a green and vibrant world, it was also a little like walking into a movie at the climax, having missed the rising action. Over the last few years, I've become more aware of the gradual buildup of the season, the subtle signs that show the world awakening in new life, and this year, especially, I've been keeping an eye on the trees as their buds split and release the year's new growth.

Each tree has a unique pattern of buds and those buds each open in their own time and fashion. I love the pink-bordered symmetry of these striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) buds.

American beech (Fagus grandifolia) buds are long and narrow, pointed on both ends ("cigar-shaped" is the usual description), and right now they seem to be telescoping open. The remind me of those things we used to make as kids by rolling up several sheets of newspaper, cutting a fringe at one end and sliding the sheets apart into a kind of scepter (I tried to find a picture of this online and it does not appear to be a thing. I guess I'll have to try to recreate them with my kids, so you know what I'm talking about).

I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember what kind of tree these leaves came from. American hophornbeam, maybe? Anyway, they look so cheerful and ready for spring I had to include them anyway.

Of course, along with spring things, I continue to see many sights that have been around all winter, like these polypore fungi. I think this is violet toothed polypore (Trichaptum biforme). I've seen it all over the place all winter, though I haven't seen any actual violet specimens (and I keep forgetting to look for the teeth).

Another fungus I learned this winter, which is easy to spot because birch trees are easy to spot, is the birch polypore (Piptoporus botulinus). Learning natural history can be a slow process (although I'm beginning to think I'm just slow at everything), and learning fungus seems to be extra slow, so I'll be happy to get two species per year.

Wild Wednesday ~ Holiday Weekend

Up until Monday, when winter finally came, we've had warm weather that made for lots of walks in the woods over the long weekend. We walked with friends and family, C and I walked together, taking pictures with our new toys, and I walked alone in dusky drizzle. Before yesterday's snow the ground was alive with dried leaves, evergreen ferns, and moss. And also this dead crow foot. I found the carcass (wings, part of the spine, the upper bill and skull, and one leg, all picked clean of any flesh) a few weeks ago and learned that the boys had found it a few weeks earlier. It's hard to tell how long it's been there--it looks as "fresh" now as it did in November. I'm not even positive whether it's a crow or raven. And I wonder, what would take down such a large bird? Hawk? Owl? A mystery, but a kind of fun, creepy thing to find in the woods on a rainy day, which wit was the day I first spied it.

Leaving behind the dead bird, C and I found these gorgeous cinnabar polypore (Pycnoporus cinnabarinus) growing on a  dead birch tree. 

My parents got me a mushroom field guide for Christmas, but this one has me stumped (ha ha, get it?)

As does this one. I need to spend some time with the book, learn the organization and vocabulary (and actually bring it out in the field with me).

In addition to lugging the mushroom book into the field, it's the time of year I need to start taking the winter weeds book out, too. I think this is Epilobium. 

And I can't help myself taking pictures of Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) whenever I run across them. This is the only specimen I know of on our property. A friend of mine proposed a theory that it's name comes not from it looking a little-kid's-drawing-of-a-Christmas tree nor from the fact that it's green at Christmastime, but from the pinnae being shaped like Santa's sleigh. I think I like that theory.

What's wild in your neck of the woods?