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

[anwyn_elfmaiden]

Funghiii <3

The ghost pipes look so so cool! Never seen those before.

Oh, we have white nightshade in the garden.

I love the purple flowers of yours!

[rubyelf]

I think ghost pipes (also called Indian pipes) are native to North America.

[anwyn_elfmaiden]

Oh nice :). They look like from a fairytale.

[gaiman_phile]

I loved reading this and seeing your pictures. The lake was the best part. Beautiful! I want to take my camera out - I've had it for about a year now, and barely used it - and take pictures of stuff, but I never know what to take pictures of. I've got loads from Ren Fest last year, both times we went, I've got pics of my animals, random pics of my fiance' and me, but I'd like to broaden that a little bit and try out new things, but I don't even know where to start. Any suggestions?

[rubyelf]

Suggestions... anything and everything. Small things. Little flowers. A rock. Anything you don't know what it is. Little things in the water. Odd-looking spots on leaves. Things growing on rocks or the sides of trees or buildings. Anything. Everything. Then you go home and start looking things up and try to find out what it is, and why it was where you found it, and what it was doing. At least, that's what I do.

[gaiman_phile]

Thanks! I generally have my weekends to myself, but Saturdays are going to start getting busy. So, Sundays, when the weather cooperates (rare as that is these days), I'll have to go exploring. Thanks again!

[bluegerl]

Dammit ... wrote a comment, and lost it. I started with WOOOOOO Fungi with extra dressings... or something

[rubyelf]

I have only seen Dead Man's Fingers once. I would like to see them again.

I was pleased to find a mushroom that was so kind as to have a nice, very easy-to-find cup at the base so I could take a picture of it... all the nastiest death caps have it.

The nightshade is not THE nightshade that ladies used to drop in their eyes to dilate their pupils (dilated pupils are a subtle cue indicating sexual excitement), but it's still a nightshade and a few berries will kill a child.

No more porcupines, and there's lots of young sapling bark for them to gnaw on this time of year, so they're not quite so desperate as to come into human territory as often. And the baby ospreys don't appear to be flying yet, but they are peering out of the nest and mother is scolding them for it.

[ragnarok_08]

Wow - that's a lot of fungi!!

That's so interesting that there are different types :)

[rubyelf]

Aren't there different types of most things?

[con_grazia]

I'm so glad you love mushrooms, because you are getting ME to love them too and I'm learning so much about them from you! I feel that way about sharks myself, but unfortunately I don't have as much access to them (NONE) as you do to mushrooms.:)

And those ghost pipe thingies? They are really, really cool.

[rubyelf]

Fungi are wonderful and amazing and the best part is that they are everywhere, all the time, under our feet and on our skin and in the dirt and in the air, and all it takes to find them is to look. I've read many books about ocean life... particularly the small things, the invertebrates, worms and snails and crustaceans and corals and bryozoans and such... but I know I will probably never get to go deep sea diving off the California coast to look at them.

I have a particular fondness for ghost pipes, partly because people tend to refuse to believe they are really a plant and I like any organism that confuses people. :)

And not much makes me happier than knowing someone learns something occasionally from my rambling. Thank you.