The Calocera Cornea Club

Day 48: Per "Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest" by Steve Trudell and Joe Ammirati, the growth of Calocera cornea "in large troops on rotting logs and small size set it apart from the other club-fungi." Just how small? Well, I didn't have a penny, so used a dime instead to show that the tallest of these might have reached a towering 4 mm. I discovered it along the Hugo Peak Trail in Pack Forest, first time I have observed it there. The species is not uncommon and occurs around the globe, fruiting in late summer and autumn. A member of the order Dacrymycetales, it is characterized by the Y-shape of its basidia (spore-producing bodies). Despite the similarity in appearance to the coral fungi, DNA analysis has shown that the clubs form a second, unrelated evolutionary group. It's a private club, no corals allowed.

Short Pack Walk

Day 47: At a loss for a blog post but having a parcel which needed to be mailed from a larger post office, I took a brief detour to Pack Forest for a short walk. I had only gone a little way on the Hugo Peak trail when my phone rang. Kevin was done setting up my new laptop (or at least he thought he was), and asked if I'd like to stop by to pick it up. I'd already gotten a few pictures, although none of them was of anything new or particularly exciting, so I asked him to give me an hour and continued up the trail. That didn't leave time to get up Hugo, so I snapped this scenic view from one of the few open spaces and shortly thereafter, discovered a colony of fungi which will appear in tomorrow's post. No, the computer didn't make it home with me yet, but we're close.

Such A Puzzle!

Day 46: When the contorted filbert is fully leafed out, it provides excellent habitat for the assortment of bird species which come to my feeders, but even after the leaves have dropped, it forms a tangle through which no hunting hawk can pass quickly enough to snatch a songbird. The little guys can navigate among the twisted branches with ease, and usually, the jays are alert to any danger. One alarm call, and all the small birds disappear into the heart of the bush, warily emerging once the hawk has left. Now decorated with a lush crop of catkins, the tree puts me in mind of another type of puzzle: jigsaw! Wouldn't this Spotted Towhee make a wicked 1000-piece challenge?

Saved By The Ball

Day 45: It's the time of the year when my crafting thoughts turn from delicate lace and hand-sewing and lean instead toward the warm and cozy end of the spectrum, i.e., the bulkier work of socks, hats, mittens and gloves. I've turned out several afghans for the Park's Christmas auction and have gotten thoroughly tired of crochet, so I thought I'd knit a stocking cap. I grabbed a full skein of yarn from my stash without paying attention to the number of ounces in it. I mean, there was enough, more than enough, so why worry? I finished the hat and eyed the remaining ball. "Hmmmmm," sez I, "I wonder if there's enough in there for mittens?" Weighing it, it seemed like there might be, but there was definitely no "wiggle room." I reeled it all off into a pile in order to measure the yardage. Yeah, it would be close, but I still wasn't sure. The only option remaining was to make a "trial mitten." I marked the halfway point with a knot, in the knowledge that if I got to it before I got to the end of the mitten, I'd be unravelling a day's work .

After working the trial mitten up through the thumb gusset, I measured again this morning. It was looking a little scant. I cussed myself for making a wide turnback on the hat, hindsight being so much clearer than foresight. Another forty yards would have made the difference, just a few rows left off the hat. On the off chance that I might have a small ball of the same yarn tucked in with my "short balls" (leftovers from other projects), I went digging. Lo and behold, at the bottom of one of the plastic storage containers I found a WHOLE 'NOTHER SKEIN of the same yarn. You might say the impromptu mitten portion of this project was "saved by the ball."

Decorative Edge

Day 44: Knitters, crocheters and lace-makers will be familiar with the term "picot" as it refers to a decorative edge. The French word by itself means "pin," and refers to a lace-making technique which twists threads and winds them around a pin to leave a small loop when the finished lace is taken off the pillow. In knitting and crocheting, something similar is executed in various manners depending on the work. In horticulture, the word undergoes a slight change when it is applied to petals with a distinct border and becomes "picotee," i.e., a flower with a fancy edging. This type of colouration is often seen in begonias, dianthus, ranunculus, cosmos and others, and petunias commonly exhibit this marking in striking reverse to display a distinctly white edge on a richly coloured trumpet. A picotee Zygocactus is a festive addition to any holiday mantel!

Schizophyllum Commune, Split-Gill Fungus

Day 43: Geocache aside, my best find from yesterday's exploits was Schizophyllum commune. Arguably the "world's most common fungus," I had never observed this species until a few years ago when a friend found it on her property and invited me over to identify it. Yesterday's discovery was only the second location in which I've seen it in full fruit. These specimens were a little rain-worn and not as pinkish as they would have been otherwise.

Known also as "split-gill fungus," this species' common name reflects a characteristic unusual in fungi. If you look closely, you can see that some of the ribs are split lengthwise. These "gills" open in response to wet conditions, releasing basidiospores when conditions are optimal for propagation. They close again during dry periods. New Split-Gills erupt only in the autumn; older specimens will dry out during the summer months and then rehydrate when the rainy season begins. Dry, they will resemble small grey polypores (shelf fungi), but examination of the underside with a hand lens will reveal their true identity.

OptOutside

Day 42: You don't have to twist my arm to get me to #OptOutside on Black Friday or any other day, for that matter. However, I do prefer to go when the rain isn't coming down in buckets, so I postponed this adventure until this morning when I thought I could squeeze the hike in between downpours. That's not to say I wasn't anticipating an abundance of water en route. That was unavoidable, given the amount of rain we've had this week. Consequently, I went prepared with waders, a trekking pole, and of course the camera and tripod. I had four crossings to make to reach a geocache, and this (the second one) was the deepest. The fourth one took me by surprise. Since my last visit, the beavers have been busy. I had to bushwhack through a tangle of snowberry bushes in order to get below their dam. The water has pooled above the dam to a depth which probably would have gone above my chest waders. Go on, tell me you had more fun pounding the pavement at the mall and parting with enormous amounts of your hard-earned money! I'm not going to believe you.

Turkey T'angks!

Day 41: Today we should be thankful for the things which enrich our lives.

I'm thankful for my lichens.
I'm thankful for the rain.
I'm thankful for my friends
And this mountainous terrain.
I'm thankful for my kitties,
I'm thankful for the flowers.
I'm thankful for the crafts
Which occupy the hours.
I'm thankful for my health,
Dance to keep me perky,
But most of all, today
I'm glad I'm not a turkey.

Move over, Shakespeare. You don't stand a snowball's chance.

Day Projects

Day 40: Although friends may liken me to a bulldog when I have something between my teeth, that steadfast determination runs concurrently with an amazingly short attention span. My big projects consume vast portions of my time, but I tend to hit one, work on it for half an hour or less, and then pick up something different. As one is completed, another takes its place. In the end, they all get done by whatever deadline I may have set (if any). In addition to my regular diet of needlework and sewing, the occasional "day project" adds spice to the recipe. Day projects are quick fillers and although some of them may actually take more than a day to complete, most can be fiddled up in an hour or two. Having a store of short-term resources keeps me from getting bored. That said, another secret to bringing each thing to completion is that I don't allow myself to work on more than one item in a specific genre, e.g., I won't start knitting a hat if I have socks on the needles. If the hat was to be crocheted instead, that would be allowable as long as I didn't have another crochet project on board. Day projects may include such novelties as casting soaps, pouring candles, paper-making, beadwork, etc. The necklace and earring set shown above took less than an hour and will be a Christmas gift for a very special friend.

Analysis And Determination

Day 38: Once upon a time, this mushroom was a Suillus. Field guides separated Suillus from Boletus by the shape of the pores on the underside, i.e., Boletus had small round pores and Suillus had open, irregular pores. It was easy to remember (and of course we like that), but then the scientists took a closer look at the dividing line between the two genuses and decided that pore shape wasn't an accurate indicator. Many of the species formerly placed in Suillus were shifted into Boletus as a result. This particular 'shroom was one of the victims of taxonomic flux, and I had to reset my head to accept the new nomenclature.

Science is always moving forward. Advances in technology put DNA sampling within the reach of more professionals, and suddenly the poor botanist would tuck in at night with one species name, only to find that it had changed by morning. The phenomenon wasn't limited to species. Whole new genera were created when DNA revealed that some species we thought of as siblings turned out to be fourth cousins by marriage three times removed. It was as if we discovered that our old friend Mary Smith's brother John was really her grandfather's ex-wife's nephew's daughter's husband. The family tree hadn't just been pruned; it had been cut back to the base and was growing into a many-branched bush.

Yesterday, I had to unlearn this mushroom again. Fortunately its distinguishing visible cues haven't changed, although you do have to use a microscope for the final analysis. As far as this one is concerned, you can line out "Suillus" or "Boletus" in those old field guides. Under its new nomenclature, Xerocomellus chrysenteron can be identified by its cracked, tomentose (velvety) cap, its red-tinged stipe base, its irregularly-shaped open pores, its tendency to bruise blue, and lastly, the telling oval spores which differ from the blunt-ended (truncate) spores of X. truncatus.

Identifying Usnea

Day 38: One of my favourite tools for introducing beginners to lichen identification is provided by the family of Usneas: a stretchy "rubber band" or "spinal cord" which reveals itself when a section of the lichen is stretched gently to open the cortex. Even the tiniest branches possess this elastic core (note upper arrow in the microscope view), but of course they're thicker in the main branches.

A couple of years ago, I had occasion to take a troop of Scouts on a lichen walk in Longmire Campground where Alectoria (a different family) is present in abundance. I explained how to differentiate it from the Usneas and unbeknownst to me at the time, one of the boys took it as a challenge. As we progressed around the campground, he kept picking up bits and stretching them. After what must have been a few hundred tests, he came rushing up to me in excitement. "Crow! Crow! I found an Usnea!" Sure enough, as he carefully stretched the section, the "spinal cord" was revealed. His diligent pursuit of the elusive lichen had paid off, and I knew in that moment that I'd inspired the spirit of scientific curiosity in that young man. When I'm down and feel that nothing I do matters, I try to remember those occasions when my labours paid off. Damn, but I was proud of that kid!

Age 10 And Up

Day 36: I was much younger than 10 when my mother helped me plant my first garden of Magic Rocks, and I still remember the fascination I felt as I watched them grow right before my very eyes. This simple science project was revisited on several more occasions while I still lived at home, but when I reached my teens and my living situation changed, I found myself subject to the mind-set which said, "Science isn't for girls." I pursued my interests covertly, smuggling copies of Scientific American into my personal library, concealed in school notebooks and only read when I knew no one was around. At school, biology was a requirement, and I participated in the experiments with glee. Chemistry and physics were electives, and although I was not allowed to enroll, I seized upon science whenever it availed itself to me, regardless of its form. At recess when my classmates were chatting, the teachers could find me off to the far side of the field, picking garnets out of schist, examining bryophytes with my nose to the spore capsules to make up for the lack of a hand lens, or looking for insect larvae in a small pond at the bus stop. For all of their encouragement of my curiosity, the dreaded phrase "Science isn't for girls" even fell from their lips. I never got the chemistry set I coveted, but I never forgot the Magic Rocks of my early years.

Some time after I reached adulthood, I stumbled across Magic Rocks on a store shelf, identical to those of my youth. I think I bought three or four packages, enough that if they became unavailable, I'd have some to play with several years hence. I planted one batch, and was rather surprised by the fragility of the crystals. Thinking back, I suppose my mother had done the handling of the chemicals, and I'd only watched the process. After making a mess of one grouping, I was more careful with my second lot, but even though the planting was a success, I placed the crystals in a bright window (the better to see the colour) and they soon faded to white.

In the intervening years between then and now, I've grown a number of "Depression Plants" (shown in my October 30 post), and the process always reminded me of Magic Rocks. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for kid-level science projects on Amazon, and Magic Rocks popped up on the screen! I couldn't resist.

Galerina Marginalis

Day 36: I think yesterday afternoon's event merits a poisonous mushroom. My computer is on its last legs. It's had issues from Day One, and attempting to replace it at Best Buy when it was less than a week old was a less-than-satisfactory experience. I wound up returning home with it, problems and all, and I suppose I should count myself lucky that it's lasted this long before giving me the Black Screen of Death. In any event, if my blog runs suddenly dry, I ask your patience until I can replace it. I'll catch up, promise.

So...subject here is Galerina marginalis, one of the commonest species to be confused with edible look-alikes. It was formerly known as G. autumnalis, but thanks to DNA tests, it has been recombined with at least two other Galerinas under a single taxon. It can be deadly if consumed in even small quantities, and any other mushroom which has come into contact with it should be discarded. Identify your 'shrooms BEFORE you put them in your basket!

Sphaerophorus Globosus

Day 35: This post of Sphaerophorus globosus (a graceful and beautiful lichen) is in celebration of a new Parkie friend, Sue. She works in Natural Resources and has only recently discovered the joys of lichenology. She has asked me to tutor her (not that I'm an expert!), a proposal which required no arm-twisting for me to agree. Yesterday, we did a short tour of the parking area at Longmire, and following her request, I did not identify anything, but explained what identification points to look for on a number of different species. Then on the way home, I had her make a U-turn in order to show her Usnea longissima, and stretched out a strand of Nature's Christmas garland to show her the "spinal cord" in the middle. It was a rather brief lesson, but there will be many more to come!

Calibration

Day 34: While it's a fairly simple matter to measure a dissection specimen or other object seen under low magnification, measuring under high power is another story. Note the slide in the foreground. Inside the circle in the center, there is a line which is almost invisible to the naked eye. Seen through the microscope, it reveals itself to be a ruler one millimeter in length. This ruler is divided into 100 smaller units of 10 micrometers each. Since we don't want to lay a specimen directly on this slide (somewhat confusingly referred to as a "stage micrometer") and in any case, would find it impossible to prod a teeny-tiny sample into the proper location, we are going to need another tool. Enter the eyepiece reticle.

The eyepiece reticle is equipped with a grid in its lens, also divided into 100 sections. If you install the reticle and use it to observe the stage micrometer, you'll probably discover that the divisions are very different from those in the reticle and don't align. By figuring out the ratio between the stage micrometer divisions and the reticle divisions, a little simple math will provide a conversion to use in conjunction with the eyepiece reticle. The stage micrometer is only used to calibrate the microscope.

When using a different objective, the magnification factor changes. Therefore the ratio of stage micrometer divisions and reticle divisions changes accordingly. We must recalibrate for each objective, and if we have more than one microscope, we'll have to calibrate them as well. In the upper right, I have shown the two sets of divisions. Although you can't see it in the photo, using the 40x objective of my brightfield microscope, 30 reticle divisions equal 75 stage micrometer divisions, i.e., 750μ, therefore a single reticle division is equal to 25μ. In lichen identification, a diagnosis sometimes hinges on the size and/or shape of ascospores. To give this perspective, the spores of Boletus edulis (one of my favourite edible mushrooms) are 12-17μ in length by 4-6μ wide.

Yarn Holder

Day 33: Knitters use a variety of containment systems for their working yarns. I've seen the thread emerging from a ceramic elephant's trunk, for example, or from a hole in the top of a lidded basket. I've used cardboard boxes, coffee cans, and yes, even a knitter's caddy, but mostly, I just put the skein on the chair beside me if it's being used in a short-term project like socks. My knitting assistant is keeping it from slipping off onto the floor.

Skunk came to me at six weeks old, a feisty little thing who'd fended off two kitten-eating dogs at the cost of nearly losing a paw. Consequently, she wasn't the friendliest of cats, didn't like being touched, wouldn't sit on my lap. When she was seven, she lost her hearing and went into a severe and nearly fatal decline. During her recovery, her personality changed. Now she demands lap-time and will insert herself under whatever project is in my hands, there to sleep until I can no longer resist the urge to get up and move around. As yarn holders go, you can't beat one which also serves as a purring lap-warmer!

Bright Star

Day 32: To encourage bloom and to ensure crisp colour unmuddied by blush tones, Zygocacti should be kept cool during the winter months. While blush doesn't matter much on the pink/red/fuchsia shades, it ages whites and yellows prematurely, and makes them appear as if they're already fading. I keep my Zygos in the back bedroom with a baseboard heater turned down low. Set back from the window roughly 8-12", they receive south light for about six hours a day. Morning and late afternoon light is filtered by trees.

Road Closures

Day 31: When a friend posted the bottom photo, it gave me quite a start. "What is Nancy doing in Pack Forest? OMG, does she realize how close she is?" Then my mind registered a few subtle differences in her view from that of my memory, notably the bark on the log across the road. Her scene was too summery as well. Reading her text, I discovered how badly I'd been fooled. Y'see, Nancy's photo was shot in Blackbutt Forest Reserve, New South Wales, Australia. My photo, taken this morning, is on the 1000 Rd. in Charles L. Pack Experimental Forest, Washington, USA.

Actually, I made the four-mile round trip hike in yesterday's rain, only to find when I got home that Nancy's photo (which she graciously gave me permission to share) had been shot in wide-screen and I'd taken several in portrait. Cross with myself for not checking beforehand, I decided to make a second trip today despite harsher weather. The rain held off until I reached the landing, sprinkled through the photo session, and began pouring just as I was putting the camera away. Rain and wind accompanied me all the way back to the car, but I think getting wet was a small price to pay for this antipodal comparison.

Trypophobia

Day 30: This will sort out which of my readers are trypophobic! The term describes an irrational dread/fear of small holes or bumps, and Lecanora pacifica's apothecia certainly qualify as the latter. Tiny, they rarely exceed 1.2mm, so it takes a good eye to find them even though they are common on alders in the Pacific Northwest. The lichen thallus (body) is white or yellowish, and the apothecia may appear in a range of shades from pale pinkish-yellow to almost black. Some disks may exhibit more than one colour. I never walk the Bud Blancher trail without checking this tree. I guess I must not be trypophobic.

Yellow Leader

Day 29: "This is Yellow Leader. Buds up! Stamens out! We're going into bloom!"

Yellow Zygocactus invariably starts the holidays a little earlier than his companions, although White won't be far behind. Picotee's largest bud isn't quite pea-sized yet, so it will be a few weeks before she puts on a show. The standards are lagging way behind, perhaps feeling a little like they've already been upstaged by the first contestants.

Yellow is not as hard to find these days as it was when I got my first one about thirty years ago. This specimen is a slip from the original. Zygos tend to take over your plant shelf, so I pinch mine regularly and rotate the older plants out into new homes. I prefer to have more varieties in smaller pots than one or two sprangly monsters taking up most of the available space. Not only are they more manageable, having more varieties assures me of a consecutive run of colourful blooms.

Tools Of The Trade

Day 29: My little home botany lab is equipped with a variety of specialized tools, mostly the hand-held (and less expensive!) versions of mechanized professional devices. Some of them require an extra degree of skill in order to get good results, and that's particularly the case with the microtome. Small specimens must be embedded in paraffin before mounting in the jaws, but larger pieces such as a snapdragon stem can be used without additional preparation. A straight razor is drawn across the glass plate to level the material, and then by turning the dial on the base, the specimen may be advanced in increments of 0.01 mm (10 microns). A second slice with the razor will yield a section of tissue suitable for viewing under the microscope.

The implement with the gold handle is also a measuring device. It is called a "mini-tool" and the spade end is 5 mm. wide, with each millimeter marked off in 10 divisions. With its markings barely visible to the naked eye, this tiny "ruler" is placed under the microscope objective at lower powers to determine such things as cell length/width. For higher powers, a reticule and/or stage micrometer are required, but that's for another post. Scientists have the coolest toys!

Darkfield

Day 27: It occurred to me that I hadn't properly introduced Darkfield to my readers, so with today being another Pacific Northwest Classic (i.e., rain and gloom), I grabbed a little botanical material and some of the tools of the trade to keep him company in this presentation. Darkfield microscopy employs a special condenser below the stage to focus light in such a manner that that which is directly transmitted does not enter the objective, only scattered light from the specimen. The specimen appears on a dark background rather than the bright field seen through a standard microscope. Specimen features invisible in brightfield may become visible in darkfield. The darkfield 'scope is definitely a step up for me, and since I bought it, not a day has passed that I didn't use it to examine something.

Finn River FarmAll

Day 26: It was a blustery, chill day, so even if I hadn't been up to my eyeballs in meetings and paperwork, I wouldn't have gone out in the snow to search for a fresh science lesson for my readers. As a matter of fact, I wasn't much inclined to do anything today, and told Kevin that I'd seriously considered "calling in worthless" as a more honest statement than "calling in sick." Consequently, here I am, home at last, without a blog shot for the day and feeling much like just going to bed and pulling the blankies up over my head. Some days are just like that, but the day I took this photo wasn't one of them. We were dancing the Morris at Finn River Cidery, and during the break between sets, I discovered a FarmAll, a real tractor, the kind my daddy used to drive. Right there, Finn River won me over. I've been looking for an excuse to post the image. Vile weather tipped the scales.

Parrot Invasion!

Day 25: What? Who said that? Did I hear an inquiring, "Churp?" I looked up from my crocheting and saw parrots...Porch Parrots, Evening Grosbeaks, Coccothraustes vespertinus, one of my favourite birds and common spring/summer guests at the feeders. I've seen them in January (in fact, if any of you recall the saga of Friend, it took place over three weeks in January and February), but not November, and I certainly wouldn't have expected a flock. It's a small conclave, maybe a dozen or so birds, males and females, but still they made very short work of today's ration of black-oil sunflower seeds. Something tells me I'd better up the quota. Gotta keep the beaks happy!

It's A Jungle Out There

Day 24: "Leaf" them lay! The fall and subsequent decay of healthy leaves provides nutrition and shelter for a wide variety of small ground-living organisms, and if left to decompose naturally, serves as a mulch against weeds. The coarser materials add texture to soil. If you don't like the appearance of a blanket of leaves, hit 'em a lick with a mulching mower. If that doesn't fit into your urban lifestyle, go ahead and rake them, but compost them over the winter and add them back into your garden in the spring. Make good use of Ma Nature's gifts!

Cladonia Squamosa

Day 23: Sufficiently variable in form to confuse budding lichenologists, Cladonia squamosa is quite common on the west side of the mountains, most often found on rotting wood. A few points (or lack of them!) are helpful in narrowing down the species, if perhaps not the subspecies. Brown apothecia are uncommon, but if you're lucky, that will give you a starting point as will a dense layer of squamules (scales) on the short, squat podetia (stalks). These squamules dislodge fairly readily and often leave the white medulla exposed. The medulla darkens on exposure, so sometimes the lichen has a brownish tinge. Most diagnostic are the openings at the tips of the podetia (not obvious in this photo). Chemical testing is required to narrow down an identification to subspecies.

Tempus Redit

Day 22: Tempus redit...time returns, or at least it gets set back an hour tonight. But does it? Of course not. We don't "lose" an hour or "gain" an hour when we switch to or from Daylight Time. We just shift our perspective. For that matter, not all civilizations view time in the same manner as Western Man. Our perception of it is governed by our desire to have some measure of control (total, if possible) over the things which set the patterns of our lives. We delude ourselves into thinking that by changing the hands of the clock, we are somehow enriching our existence. Poor fools we!

Stop and think about time zones for a minute. When it's 3 AM on the east coast, it's midnight here in the PNW (or so they'd have us believe), but this statement relies on geographic divisions, not where the sun falls. Realistically, when it's noon at my house, it's roughly 12:01 at my office, 12:02 at the Sunrise Visitor Center, 12:04 in Yakima. Our system is woefully inaccurate, and yet we trust in it like no other factor save perhaps our religion if we have one. Time is horridly unscientific, yet we use its figures to record when a bird species was observed gathering nesting material ("2017-05-06, 7:02 AM PST, Coccothraustes vespertinus male observed returning to nest with fine animal hair of indeterminate origin"), or when a peak wind gust occurred ("2017-11-02, 1419 hours EDT, 43 MPH"). This gives us a marker to which we can relate, but it tells us very little about the natural time of the occurrence, i.e., the point at which the sun stood above the horizon. Yes, we can calculate that if the need arises and some studies go into that depth, but by and large, our system for measuring time is as rough as measuring a molecule with a yardstick.

The human animal is not as advanced in evolution as it would like to think it is (speaking both generically and individually). Our brains are not adequately developed to accept a larger explanation of time. Einstein and a few others have barely stirred the surface of temporal science. Now, go set your damn clocks back and stop grumbling. There's a picture here which is a lot bigger than an hour.

Fence Gardening

Day 21: I take as much pleasure in what grows in my garden naturally as I do in the species I carefully cultivate. My rail fence is a wonderland of lichen forms, from squamous and cupped Cladonias to thready Usneas and puffy Hypogymias. They are colourful as well as diverse in shape and size, ranging from lime green through grey-green or sometimes tinted with a blush of orange or pink. The fruiting bodies (apothecia) of the Cladonias dot the colonies with specks of brown and brilliant red, and one could imagine that the faerie folk were decorating for the holidays. A four inch by four inch section of rail may hold a forest of half a dozen species, each one as alien in appearance as the next. Take a closer look at lichens when you're on the trail. You may become as fascinated by them as I am.

Rainy-Day Adventures

Day 20: It's the time of the year when I struggle to find interesting material for my daily posts. That's not to say there's nothing interesting going on in my life. Indeed, I have lots of things to keep me occupied, and right now, the darkfield microscope is pretty close to the top of the list. As a direct result of its acquisition, it's been necessary for me to practice with the microtome to perfect my technique. I've also had to re-learn how to pull stains effectively. Although my pond-water samples haven't yielded up any particularly exciting results, I've found plenty of other things to play with. This morning's exercise was performed on a horseradish leaf stalk. The top four images show a cross-section stained with methylene blue, an unstained longitudinal section, an 800x view of the nuclear material in the same section, and another longitudinal section stained with eosin. The lower row shows an eosin-stained longitudinal section of an iris leaf, unstained epithelial tissue taken from the inside of my cheek, a smear of butter which shows the fat globules, and a piece of pear skin stained with methylene blue. The butter smear reminds me of Aboriginal art!

Pigmentation

Day 19: Why do leaves change colour in autumn? As you already know, leaves contain chlorophyll, the substance which allows them to convert carbon dioxide into the starches and sugars which are their food. Sunlight and warmth encourage the production of chlorophyll, and in the autumn, this process slows down as temperatures begin to dip and even more specifically, to length of day. As nights grow longer, thicker cells form near the juncture of leaf and stem (technically, this is the "abscission layer"), blocking the transport of carbohydrates. Evenutally, this will be the point from which the leaf falls. As the chlorophyll in the body of the leaf breaks down in response to the decrease of carbs, pigments such as anthocyanin (red), xanthophyll (yellow) and carotene (orange) are quite literally unmasked, no longer obscured by an abundance of chlorophyll. After a freeze, these pigments also deteriorate until no pigment remains but brown tannins. Various external conditions can affect the intensity of colour, such as lack of water, steady low-range temperatures above the freezing point, or a hard frost. The amount of each of these pigments in the leaves is responsible for the hues typically seen in certain species, and of course gives each geographic area its own unique character.