Nature Post!
Honey is puzzled and amused with today's experiment. Today's experiment was to determine properly whether I am allergic to poison ivy (and by extension poison oak and poison sumac, all of which contain the same active ingredient). I know I've been in contact with it before, while painting houses or playing in the woods, but I've never had the rash...
So today as I walked I stopped at every nice healthy-looking poison ivy vine I saw and rubbed it across the back of my left arm. I even rubbed hard enough to scratch up the skin a bit, just to make sure I got a good exposure. I walked for an hour and a half after that, rubbing on more as I found it, and then after about two hours made it home and washed it off. Two hours should be MORE than long enough of an exposure, but now it's evening, and still no blisters or even marks.
Honey is amused because he apparently does not think normal people would do this. I told him I'm waiting for the last test when the leaves come out and I can rub some nice oily leaves on my arm. He asked if I was TRYING to get a rash and I explained that I was TRYING to prove (or disprove) a point. THIS IS SCIENCE DAMNIT.
ANYWAY. You know it' a windy day when there are actual little waves breaking on the shores of the lake. On my arrival today, I was greeted by a majestic bald eagle with its full white markings, and two younger ones (probably last year's fledglings). The majesty of these huge birds was made slightly less majestic by the fact that all three of them were very busy eating smelly, rotten, decaying fish that had washed up against the dam. Oh, well. I tried to get a picture but they were in the habit of snatching a dead fish and zooming away.
Another hard-to-photograph resident... see him? He's sitting on the broken branch, right in the dead center of the picture. He's pretty well-hidden, but he makes plenty of noise, and he was gone as soon as I took this picture! By the way, none of the trees are green yet... this is a shrub and I think it's invasive Japanese honeysuckle.
If this generously green stuff is invasive honeysuckle, it might explain part of why it's so invasive. It's head and shoulders above our native plants, most of which are still bare, and it's getting a hell of head start on photosynthesis.
The same pile of discarded acorn caps, in the same spot under the same tree, every year. And the tree isn't an oak. And they're not all the same kind of acorn. Which suggests to me that there is a large, fat gray squirrel with a nice hole up in this tree who stashes his acorns in there and drops them right out of the hole when he's done.
I cannot figure out what these are, although I find them often on dead twigs of this kind of pine tree. I don't know if they're the result of some kind of infection, if they'e something produced by the plant... they look something like mishhapen cones and I suppose they could be the remnants of the male cones that produce pollen. Odd. No good answers.
A pine cone from a different kind of pine. They seem to like to grow together in particular parts of the forest, perhaps where the soil is more to their liking or where they haven't been crowded out by other trees. This is an old pine cone and has served its purpose. The seeds, which have no protective coating (hence gymnosperm=naked seed), are tucked at the base of the scales, and the scales stay closed till the seeds are mature, then fold open to release them. Animals will hasten the process by chewing almost-mature pine cones to shreds to get at the seeds. This leaves what looks like a very tiny ear of corn with all the kernels eaten off. Birds are more delicate about it and can pry the seeds from the scales with their beaks.
I FOUND MUSHROOMS! I FOUND MUSHROOMS! *moment of dancing foolishly in the middle of the woods*. MUSHROOMS! These ones are really early, but this species is also known for coming up as soon as mid-April, far earlier than even the morels. This is, in fact, a FALSE morel, Gyromitra esculenta. Species of Gyromitra are considered edible by some people, but others have become very ill after eating them, and almost all field guides will list them as not recommended for consumption. Apparently special cooking methods can make them less toxic, but some people may still become ill. I am more than happy to leave them alone, but I was ecstatic to find my first mushrooms of the year!
Here's another one. There were LOTS. I could have taken pictures of all of them. After consideration, though, I supposed you did not need to see pictures of ALL of them. I actually only found them in one spot, growing in a widespread area under the base of an enormous old pine tree, which seems to be the sort of tree they prefer.
First violets of the year! There will be lots and lots and lots and lots and lots more!
In contrast to the sunny, exposed hillside where I look pictures last week, the lake around my forest is a dense mix of conifers and deciduous trees and is often exposed to chilly winds off the lake and shadows from the pines. As a result, these few little May apples are just getting started and looking a bit sorry for themselves in comparison to the ones from the other site. Still, they'll catch up and the forest floor will be covered with them.
I do not know the identity of these tiny white flowers, and when you try to look up small five-petaled white flowers in an identification guide you get so many matches that you can't possibly look through them all. They are early risers and early to bed, and will have vanished by the time the trees are fully leafed out.
Remember the two plants my husband insisted were the same thing a few weeks ago when they were just sprouts? Well, here I actually found them growing right next to each other for a side-by-side comparison! I showed them to Honey to gloat, but he insisted those ones on the left were NOT the same ones he was talking about (which they clearly are but he's not going to admit it because he's Wilderness Man and such).
My first trillium at the lake, brand new and just opened! Like all the ones I'll find at the lake this spring, this is the white color morph, while all the ones I find at the creek site will be the red morph. They are the same species and can interbreed, but since trilliums don't spread by wind and don't travel long distances, one color morph is likely to predominate in any given area. They will not show up here in the vast numbers that they do by the creek, but the creek's steep exposed hillside prevents trees from getting a foothold and seems to provide exactly the habitat these pretty spring flowers like best.
I've mentioned before that although there are hundreds of kinds of fungi that digest wood, they fall into two basic categories, lignin decayers and cellulose decayers. Most dead trees will have both at work, but often one gets there first. Lignin is the stringy brown fiber that gives wood its flexibility. If you find wood that has been reduced to brown fibrous material, a cellulose-eater has been there and eaten away all the cellulose. Cellulose, which is the dead and hollow cells that make up the bulk of the tree, is hard but by itself is not flexible, and when the lignin is decayed away, the remaining cellulose becomes crumbly and easily broken.
I barely squeezed this piece of wood in my hand and it came apart like this. It's unusual to find a tree where the cellulose is so intact but the lignin is totally gone. Usually by that point both types have gotten busy and the wood is brown, soft, and a general mess. This wood is very dry and crumbles nearly to a powder.
Happy little polypores budding from the side of a fallen tree. I don't know what kind they are because I'm not sure what kind of tree it is, but it's fairly fresh, and so are the shelves, which clearly made their appearance after the tree was already down, since they are parallel to the ground as all good shelf fungi try to be. The fact that the fruiting bodies are just appearing doesn't mean this fungus didn't contribute to the tree's downfall... for a nice crop of fungi like this, the actual body of the fungus has been at work inside the tree for years, digesting and eating it, saving up energy to send out these reproductive bodies. Unlike flowers, which are all about sex, mushrooms have nothing to do with it. Sex between fungi is not very exciting... two compatible mating strains coming into contact and exchanging some nuclei. The fruiting bodies are all about spore dispersal; they come along well after the sex part, if that part happened at all.
Here's me, performing my experiment.
And here is the brand-new beginning of what will be a seven-foot-tall plume of Joe Pye weed, which will open up just in time for the hungry bees and butterflies to come looking for it.
It's always nice to get a picture of baby ferns unrolling themselves... they look so lacy and delicate, but once grown up they will be quite tough and resilient. Few modern plants grow in this odd circular fashion, but ferns have been doing things this way for a long time and they don't care what anyone thinks about it.
And THIS is a woodpecker excavation that I climbed halfway up a tree to get a picture of because I wanted to see what the hell they were making such big holes for! I got my answer, though, when I saw all of those little tunnels at the back of the hole... those are tunnels where big fat grubs have been gnawing through the wood and hibernating through the winter, and that's exactly what the woodpeckers were after. The pileated woodpecker is the size of a crow and takes its grub-hunting VERY SERIOUSLY.
And THAT is the end of this nature post. Still no rash on my arm. Now I just have to wait for the leaves to come out and test them. Assuming that goes well, I will have several sets of poison ivy underwear in the mail to matheius next week.
.
.
.
So today as I walked I stopped at every nice healthy-looking poison ivy vine I saw and rubbed it across the back of my left arm. I even rubbed hard enough to scratch up the skin a bit, just to make sure I got a good exposure. I walked for an hour and a half after that, rubbing on more as I found it, and then after about two hours made it home and washed it off. Two hours should be MORE than long enough of an exposure, but now it's evening, and still no blisters or even marks.
Honey is amused because he apparently does not think normal people would do this. I told him I'm waiting for the last test when the leaves come out and I can rub some nice oily leaves on my arm. He asked if I was TRYING to get a rash and I explained that I was TRYING to prove (or disprove) a point. THIS IS SCIENCE DAMNIT.
ANYWAY. You know it' a windy day when there are actual little waves breaking on the shores of the lake. On my arrival today, I was greeted by a majestic bald eagle with its full white markings, and two younger ones (probably last year's fledglings). The majesty of these huge birds was made slightly less majestic by the fact that all three of them were very busy eating smelly, rotten, decaying fish that had washed up against the dam. Oh, well. I tried to get a picture but they were in the habit of snatching a dead fish and zooming away.
Another hard-to-photograph resident... see him? He's sitting on the broken branch, right in the dead center of the picture. He's pretty well-hidden, but he makes plenty of noise, and he was gone as soon as I took this picture! By the way, none of the trees are green yet... this is a shrub and I think it's invasive Japanese honeysuckle.
If this generously green stuff is invasive honeysuckle, it might explain part of why it's so invasive. It's head and shoulders above our native plants, most of which are still bare, and it's getting a hell of head start on photosynthesis.
The same pile of discarded acorn caps, in the same spot under the same tree, every year. And the tree isn't an oak. And they're not all the same kind of acorn. Which suggests to me that there is a large, fat gray squirrel with a nice hole up in this tree who stashes his acorns in there and drops them right out of the hole when he's done.
I cannot figure out what these are, although I find them often on dead twigs of this kind of pine tree. I don't know if they're the result of some kind of infection, if they'e something produced by the plant... they look something like mishhapen cones and I suppose they could be the remnants of the male cones that produce pollen. Odd. No good answers.
A pine cone from a different kind of pine. They seem to like to grow together in particular parts of the forest, perhaps where the soil is more to their liking or where they haven't been crowded out by other trees. This is an old pine cone and has served its purpose. The seeds, which have no protective coating (hence gymnosperm=naked seed), are tucked at the base of the scales, and the scales stay closed till the seeds are mature, then fold open to release them. Animals will hasten the process by chewing almost-mature pine cones to shreds to get at the seeds. This leaves what looks like a very tiny ear of corn with all the kernels eaten off. Birds are more delicate about it and can pry the seeds from the scales with their beaks.
I FOUND MUSHROOMS! I FOUND MUSHROOMS! *moment of dancing foolishly in the middle of the woods*. MUSHROOMS! These ones are really early, but this species is also known for coming up as soon as mid-April, far earlier than even the morels. This is, in fact, a FALSE morel, Gyromitra esculenta. Species of Gyromitra are considered edible by some people, but others have become very ill after eating them, and almost all field guides will list them as not recommended for consumption. Apparently special cooking methods can make them less toxic, but some people may still become ill. I am more than happy to leave them alone, but I was ecstatic to find my first mushrooms of the year!
Here's another one. There were LOTS. I could have taken pictures of all of them. After consideration, though, I supposed you did not need to see pictures of ALL of them. I actually only found them in one spot, growing in a widespread area under the base of an enormous old pine tree, which seems to be the sort of tree they prefer.
First violets of the year! There will be lots and lots and lots and lots and lots more!
In contrast to the sunny, exposed hillside where I look pictures last week, the lake around my forest is a dense mix of conifers and deciduous trees and is often exposed to chilly winds off the lake and shadows from the pines. As a result, these few little May apples are just getting started and looking a bit sorry for themselves in comparison to the ones from the other site. Still, they'll catch up and the forest floor will be covered with them.
I do not know the identity of these tiny white flowers, and when you try to look up small five-petaled white flowers in an identification guide you get so many matches that you can't possibly look through them all. They are early risers and early to bed, and will have vanished by the time the trees are fully leafed out.
Remember the two plants my husband insisted were the same thing a few weeks ago when they were just sprouts? Well, here I actually found them growing right next to each other for a side-by-side comparison! I showed them to Honey to gloat, but he insisted those ones on the left were NOT the same ones he was talking about (which they clearly are but he's not going to admit it because he's Wilderness Man and such).
My first trillium at the lake, brand new and just opened! Like all the ones I'll find at the lake this spring, this is the white color morph, while all the ones I find at the creek site will be the red morph. They are the same species and can interbreed, but since trilliums don't spread by wind and don't travel long distances, one color morph is likely to predominate in any given area. They will not show up here in the vast numbers that they do by the creek, but the creek's steep exposed hillside prevents trees from getting a foothold and seems to provide exactly the habitat these pretty spring flowers like best.
I've mentioned before that although there are hundreds of kinds of fungi that digest wood, they fall into two basic categories, lignin decayers and cellulose decayers. Most dead trees will have both at work, but often one gets there first. Lignin is the stringy brown fiber that gives wood its flexibility. If you find wood that has been reduced to brown fibrous material, a cellulose-eater has been there and eaten away all the cellulose. Cellulose, which is the dead and hollow cells that make up the bulk of the tree, is hard but by itself is not flexible, and when the lignin is decayed away, the remaining cellulose becomes crumbly and easily broken.
I barely squeezed this piece of wood in my hand and it came apart like this. It's unusual to find a tree where the cellulose is so intact but the lignin is totally gone. Usually by that point both types have gotten busy and the wood is brown, soft, and a general mess. This wood is very dry and crumbles nearly to a powder.
Happy little polypores budding from the side of a fallen tree. I don't know what kind they are because I'm not sure what kind of tree it is, but it's fairly fresh, and so are the shelves, which clearly made their appearance after the tree was already down, since they are parallel to the ground as all good shelf fungi try to be. The fact that the fruiting bodies are just appearing doesn't mean this fungus didn't contribute to the tree's downfall... for a nice crop of fungi like this, the actual body of the fungus has been at work inside the tree for years, digesting and eating it, saving up energy to send out these reproductive bodies. Unlike flowers, which are all about sex, mushrooms have nothing to do with it. Sex between fungi is not very exciting... two compatible mating strains coming into contact and exchanging some nuclei. The fruiting bodies are all about spore dispersal; they come along well after the sex part, if that part happened at all.
Here's me, performing my experiment.
And here is the brand-new beginning of what will be a seven-foot-tall plume of Joe Pye weed, which will open up just in time for the hungry bees and butterflies to come looking for it.
It's always nice to get a picture of baby ferns unrolling themselves... they look so lacy and delicate, but once grown up they will be quite tough and resilient. Few modern plants grow in this odd circular fashion, but ferns have been doing things this way for a long time and they don't care what anyone thinks about it.
And THIS is a woodpecker excavation that I climbed halfway up a tree to get a picture of because I wanted to see what the hell they were making such big holes for! I got my answer, though, when I saw all of those little tunnels at the back of the hole... those are tunnels where big fat grubs have been gnawing through the wood and hibernating through the winter, and that's exactly what the woodpeckers were after. The pileated woodpecker is the size of a crow and takes its grub-hunting VERY SERIOUSLY.
And THAT is the end of this nature post. Still no rash on my arm. Now I just have to wait for the leaves to come out and test them. Assuming that goes well, I will have several sets of poison ivy underwear in the mail to matheius next week.
.
.
.