Nature Post! Now with more fungi!

[rubyelf]

I had a feeling it was just about time, after all that rain, for some of my favorite mushroom spots to FINALLY start giving me the kind of variety I've been waiting to see. I was right! I found some lovely flowers, too, including one I've never seen before (or at least don't remember ever seeing before), and those I could identify, but as with most

Comments

[moth2fic]

Wow! A nature walk! I had just about resigned myself to the idea that there wouldn't be as many...

Day lilies, here, are treated as exotic garden plants, and unlike some imports, rarely escape or if they do, naturalise. I can't think why because we must have the right soils and climates since so many plants happily cross the Atlantic in both directions and take root.

We don't have your type of milkweed, or ghost pipes.

I was fascinated, when I read Dawkins' Ancestor's Tale, to realise for the first time that fungi are neither plant nor animal but a separate kingdom all on their own.

That reflection in the calm lake is stunning.

[rubyelf]

They're good for my mental and physical health, so I'm going to try to keep up with them.

Fungi are so distantly related to either plants or animals that a large part of their biology is still a total mystery. They are something completely different.

Milkweeds of that family are North American natives but there are are other latex-producing plants that go by similar names in other parts of the world.

Day lilies here, especially those particular kind, were probably naturalized on purpose to beautify ditches and roadsides. They are a particular species and may be more likely to naturalize and spread than the species that are used for gardening in other places.

[matheius]

The robin is our official National Bird now. Robins are idiots, I wanted the red kite, or to give it it's proper name, the Flying Ginger Bird of Death. But no, the fat little robin got chosen instead. Stupid England. Lions and unicorns and robins. Oh my!

Spiky balls. That reminds me, I need to book myself in for a waxing...

I wonder what the fungus gets up to underground. Nothing good I'd imagine. Putting up shelves and hanging naughty pictures and stuff.

[rubyelf]

North American and European robins are actually completely different birds, although both are idiots. Our robins are not fat and are reasonably large for a songbird. Apparently English settlers showed up here, saw a bird that looked almost nothing like their robins at home, and said, "Oh, look! A robin!". They are also idiots.

Fungus underground gets up to all sorts of things. Slinking around looking to hook up with a compatible mating strain, sharing nuclei between their cells, and generally being messy in ways that we animals cannot possibly appreciate.

[msilverstar]

this! Ours are so huge, I always felt British books must have been referring to something else.

[rubyelf]

Completely different birds. Not even close relatives. Theirs is smaller and rounder and fatter.

[annabelle50]

I think I saw ghost pipes recently. I had no idea what they were. I also saw an Amanita that looked like an egg (the photo where you said they are most likely to be collected and eaten), although I didn't realize it would grow into a larger mushroom.

[rubyelf]

There are a lot of white mushrooms that look like that when very young. Some of them are tasty and edible, but the fact that it's possible to mistake an edible one for a deadly one is why I don't collect them for eating. Those little eggs are sometimes called button mushrooms and they're the stage when the cap hasn't opened yet, which makes it difficult to identify them by things like the appearance of the stem or the attachment of the gills.

Ghost pipes are amazing, and many people think they're fungi because they are so white, but they are a true flowering plant and their relatives are perfectly proper green plants that do normal things. These ones evolved to survive in deep shade, so they grow in very shadowy places. Instead of getting their own sunlight they steal it from the trees above them.

[annabelle50]

Ah, okay, so it could have been a number of different kinds but the egg shape means it was a young one. I know very little about mushrooms, ha.

I wish I had gotten a picture of the ghost pipes. I didn't even know if it was a plant/fungi. I don't think I had ever seen (noticed) them before.

[rubyelf]

Most people don't know much about fungi... only those few of us who are oddly obsessed with them. They are easy to overlook if you're not looking for them.

Ghost pipes, at least for me, will normally come up repeatedly over the summer in the same places, usually in fairly dense forest where it's nice and shady.

[moominmuppet]

Oooh, lovely!

I especially love the ghost pipes. I did not know this: "It is a parasite not just on tree roots, but specifically on the symbiotic fungi of tree roots, so it is stealing the tree's energy second-hand by feeding off the fungi that support its root system"

[rubyelf]

As far as I know that's fairly recent research... there has been a lot of research on the role of fungi in supporting forest ecosystems and tree growth and health, because it's now being realized that sterilized and wrecked soil will not regrow its complex plant life until the conditions are acceptable for symbiotic fungi to set up shop. This is highly relevant to reclamation of damaged or polluted areas, and also to those who are attempting to restore damaged forests.

[resonant]

They are nice.

[rubyelf]

Thank you.