Swallow Falls - The Fungi

In addition to enjoying the falls, we, at least a few of us, enjoyed the variety of fungi along the trail

I don't even try to identity all the fungi I see, so this will just be a set of pretty pictures.

Enjoy!

While on our hike we came upon a man and his son searching for mushrooms. Not to harvest, just to observe. Striking up a conversation, he told us that this park was the best place in the area at the best time of the year to find mushrooms. He also told us we was on his way to visit friends and he was already late because they were finding so much good stuff.

I suspect they were there long after we had left. There was that much more to explore. I hope his friends, like us staying at a rental place in the area, but from much farther away, Thailand, weren't to upset when they showed up late.

You Can See A lot Just By Looking

The last weekend in July is the annual Cheshire party, which has not been help in Cheshire for quite some time. Kinda like our annual Finger Lakes Trip. But unlike the Finger Lakes Trip, which is somewhere different each year, "Cheshire North", as it has come to be called, is held in Tupper Lake, NY, at my friends Liz and Larry's place.

And for various reasons I have missed data last several, after being there for the first thirty some. But this year we went. 

And while there Patty lost her glasses while wandering about the woods. Looking at plants and fungi, and things. So the assembled masses became a search party. A successful one, as the glasses were found.

As were a few other things ...

I think this is Spindle Shaped Coral, Clavulinpopsis fusiformis, but fungi identification is a non-trivial endeavor.

And I think this is Comb Tooth, Hericium coralloides. These are just two of the many fungi species about the site. Our friend Tree (not his given name) forages for mushrooms and he was reluctant to ID any of what we saw.

We saw plenty of this. Often mistaken for a fungus, Indian Pipe is a flowering plant, albeit somewhat akin to fungi as it has no chlorophyl and, like some fungi, gets its nutrients from other plants. Although unlike fungi, Indian Pipe is parasitic on live healthy plants.

This is a healthy plant for sure, as it was growing all about the site.

I ID'd this as Running Ground Pine (Lycopodium clavatum), but I'm no expert (I'm pretty confident it's a Lycopodium). It's not a pine but rather a clubmoss, a type of plant, like ferns, which reproduces by spores and not seeds. Like fungi.

Finishing with a member of the third kingdom of macro-life (Fungi, Plants, Animals) we have a Northern Spring Peeper. Seen here on Lichen, which spans two (maybe three) kingdoms, Fungi and either Plants (algae) or Bacteria (biology is complicated).

🏕  🍄  🌿  🐸  🏕

It was a fun weekend and good to see old (college) friends. I truly missed going. I'm already looking forward to next year. And I think I'll bring more than just my iPhone camera.

⚾️  ⚾️  ⚾️  ⚾️  ⚾️

The title is a play on something Yogi Berra famously might have said. Of course, he may have also said, "I really didn't say everything I said."

Empty Nests

Bird's Nests ... of the Fungal variety.

After the encounter with the Worm Snake, I came upon an outcrop of White-egg Bird's Nest fungi, sans white eggs.

All the nests were empty.

This is not surprising. Once mature, the eggs are knocked from the nest by raindrops. And we've had two rainy days this week (it was raining while I was out there working on the fence).

And there is plenty of downed trees and branches for the spores to take hold on.

Which is no doubt what happened here. Each of the white spots on the main trunk is an empty nest.

Keep looking down.

🍄  🍄  🍄  🍄  🍄

Tiny Fungi

As you might have grokked from the Egg post, or from the Egg post, I notice things.*

Like tiny little fungus.

Eyelash Cup Fungi. If you look closely (bigafy!) you'll see the "eyelash" hairs around the edge of the mushroom cup. 

There is a similar species, the False Eyelash Cup, but it it is found on the ground, while the 'real' Eyelash Cup is found on rotting wood. 

I have several Fungi field guides. My most recent acquisition is the new Peterson Field Guide to Mushrooms, by McKnight, Rohrer, McKnight Ward, and McKnight. And all the guides note the edibility of the species listed. And for this species the edibility note is "Too small to be of interest."

And I concur. Very small, but the color gives it away.

Also small, and on the same rotting log, was this Trumpet Lichen. 

Mushrooms and fungi are difficult to identify. Lichens are even harder (to me anyway, your milage may vary).

🍄  🥚  🍄  🥚  🍄

* Patty clued me into these eggs, showing me the first on a walk. So I was prepared to look for them on subsequent saunters.

Fungi Web

In the Flat Red Bark Beetle post, you may have noticed the dark webbing where the bark has fallen away and exposed the tree trunk.

This:

Fungi.

Most fungi is like this, webs in soil or wood or other substrate. The fruiting bodies, mushrooms, puffballs, and the like, are a small and transient part of the organism.

But those are also the visible parts. The webs are rarely seen unless one goes looking for them.

Or an infested tree falls in your yard.

Bird's Nest Fungi

The other day I was aimlessly wandering about the yard when I came upon these tiny fungi on the path in our Feeder Garden. I wasn't sure but I had a suspicion as to what they were.

Alas, my mushroom guides to not have any images of them at this stage.

But my suspicion proved correct, they are Bird's Nest Fungi. Specifically Fluted Bird's Nest Fungi, Cyathus striatus.

I don't know what the little white tubular things, just left of center in the above image, are though. Should you know please tell me.

And to put things in perspective, the bird's nests are small, smaller than a dime. That's a Sweetgum ball at the bottom of the image (so those white tubular things are really tiny).

The "eggs" are actually peridioles, spore cases. As the fungi matures the "lid" or epiphragm stretches and tears, exposing the eggs, which are ejected by rain drops.

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This is the second species of Bird's Nest Fungi I've found in the yard, with the first described in a previous post, the cleverly titled, "Bird's Nest Fungi". I think that one is White Bird's Nest Fungi, Crucibulum laeve.

There are a few other species that occur in our area. So I'll keep wandering around looking.

Rusty Pine Tree

Patty and I went for a walk the other evening, just down and back on our road. And on the way back, almost home, I spotted this.

A brain growing on a pine tree limb. A curious sight for sure. It was the bright orange color of course that caught my attention, very rare for a brain.

Back home I did a little sleuthing on the interwebs, and best I can tell this is Fusiform Rust, a fungus that attacks both pine and oak trees, although only on pine does it look like this. As I (and you!) can learn from the linked page, while the fungus usually does little damage to oaks, it can be fatal to pines. It will be interesting to see what happens to this tree.

Owling

Spoiler alert: we did not find an owl.

This past weekend we went owling. To a local well known secret place.*

There is a certain mythology about keeping the locations of owl roosts secret. A couple of years ago I tried to find any actual evidence or research to back this. It seems common sense, but as someone who's studied physics, (see: relativity, quantum mechanics), I've a certain skepticism about arguments from common sense. And I found no such evidence.

But I digress ...

Patty and I met several friends and headed off into the woods.

As I've written before, when looking for owls one looks for whitewash (poop) and pellets (puke). And we found both.

Poop

Puke

But there was no owl above in the tree. There were no owls anywhere to be found.

What we did find were deer stands.

Half a dozen such stands in the area we searched. I do not recall these stands being here before. Perhaps they are taken down after hunting season? And Perhaps the owls don't like the company of hunters?

We also found evidence of woodpeckers.

But we saw no woodpeckers either. We did hear a Red-bellied Woodpecker or two though. So there was that.

After traipsing about in the woods for a couple of hours we split up and headed our respective ways. Patty, I, and our friend Bernie headed to a spot where Screech Owl has been roosting. But we saw no owl there. And then we headed to a local diner for a surprisingly large and yummy breakfast (I had the Jersey Devil omelet).

A nice but somewhat disappointing morning.

Then we went home and worked to get owls to come visit us.

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* I once joined my friend Steve Kacir on a trip to Peace Valley Park, for among other birds, owls. A location he dubbed a "A well known, secret place.", a phrase which has stuck with me. And one that points out a bit of the hypocrisy of 'not revealing owl locations'.

'Shrooms

And one day they were just there. In the side yard. Everywhere.

I couldn't walk in that part of the yard without stepping on them.

Growing singly and more often in clumps.

There were at least a hundred of them. In the grass. In the gardens.

Under the deck.

In the stone walkway around the fish pond.

And try as I might, I have no idea what species they are. Mushroom ID is hard.

The British are Coming!

Look for them in a wild place near you.

Stinky!

Part of the fun of living where we do and maintaining our yard as natural habitat is the interesting things we discover about the place.

This is one such thing.

A stinkhorn mushroom. A fast growing fungi that literally pops up overnight.

Ravenel's Stinkhorn, Phallus ravenelii, to be specific.

Rather distinctive in appearance and thus one of the few easy to identify fungi.

Similar to birds nest fungi in that respect. And in that it also fruits on rotted wood.

But significantly larger and much more popular with insects. The American Carrion Beetle shown above is larger than the entire birds nest fungi fruiting body.

The carrion beetles were there because the flies were there, as the beetles dine on fly larvae. Yummy!

Analogous to flower pollination, albeit with a rather different bouquet, the flies and other insects spread the mushroom's spores. The scent attracts the insects who walk on the sticky stinky goo picking up spores in the process. Some dine on the smelly secretions ingesting and then pooping out spores. Yummy!

We'll need to keep a weather eye (nose?) for more stinkyshrooms next fall. We've plenty of rooting wood in the forest the makes up and surrounds our place.

Keep looking down!