mushrooms
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Mushroom Monday
All found on the same uprooted tree. This is possibly a Sandy fatality, meaning three years later, this supposedly “dead” thing is swarming with life.
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Oak
I’ve noticed these grapefruit/softball-sized growths on the side of this big old Red Oak (Quercus rubra) before. But on my most recent pass, there was a new one. Turns out to be a fungus.
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After the rain
A wet, leaf-rotting, ground-enriching fall is good mushroom weather.
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The forest for the trees
A hike in the fall woods is always a sensual and philosophical experience.I was in a yellow light under oaks and beeches in an overcast sky, later speared through by shafts of sunlight.Yes, both the woods and I were speared. My eyes kept shifting from the whole to the parts. Walking over even relatively smooth…
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Plants and other lifeforms
A few more from Maine. Here’s Low-bush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) in flower. I’m mad for those little Maine blueberries, which I get frozen and eat all winter.Starflower (Trientalis borealis).Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), a wildflower relation of Dogwood.Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) needs to be revealed. Hiding its light under a bushel. This is a plant I’ve never run…
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Mushroom Print
One of Lois Long’s lithographs for the collaborative work, Mushroom Book, she and John Cage created in 1972. It’s on display at the Horticultural Society of NY until Thursday. Cage was instrumental in re-starting the modern incarnation of New York Mycological Society. I was at “The Hort” to hear a lecture on using mushrooms for…
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Shroom
One of the polypore mushroom species, aging nicely in Prospect Park.
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Glazed oysters
Water spilling off a tree stump had coated and frozen around these mushrooms, giving them a glaze. I believe they may be Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus), or another Pleurotus species. The gills make a pleasing pattern:
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Trick or Treat Fungus Among Us
Inexplicably, there will be few fungus costumes today, just as in Halloweens past. And that’s a shame. Fascinating, ubiquitous, vitally important in the plant’s interconnected systems, fungi are a high-level rank of life, a kingdom, up there with plants, animals, and bacteria. It’s important to remember that fungi are not plants, or even much like…
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Weekend Naturalist
Through the Naturalists’ Gate at 77th Street, past the enormous head of the great geographer Alexander von and under the eagle eye of this AMNH topper I entered the Central Park and rambled in the Ramble in search of the barred owl that had been reported yesterday. The owl remained with Minerva, although the local…
Backyard and Beyond 