Sulphur Creek Falls, Broad View

Day 79: It is not an easy hike. The "trail" (if you could call it that) is nothing more than a track made through brush by elk and a handful of locals who know about Sulphur Creek Falls. Unless you have an eidetic memory capable of recognizing specific configurations of stumps and branches, you will probably not be able to duplicate your route two times in a row (either in or out). The slope on many sections is intimidating, the footholds narrow and unstable. Where the vegetation is thinner, the ground is covered with loose, sharp rocks in sizes from grapefruit to watermelon. At this time of year, the forest floor is deeply covered in decaying leaf litter, making the way even more difficult to follow, but oh, the reward when you arrive at the head of the canyon! Sulphur Creek Falls tumbles down 186' in two steps, forms a small plunge pool (which, incidentally, I have never felt confident to try to access) and then flows on down to fill Swofford Pond. The streambed is choked with devil's-club. Don't even think about going that way!

I like to finish out the year with a commemorative event. Sometimes, weather permitting, this manifests as a hike or snowshoe walk. Other times, the year's end is marked only by a rare restaurant meal. Today, I'd planned to do both, but when I arrived at my favourite Chinese place, still covered in mud from having fallen and slid more times than I care to count, there was a sign on the door saying "Now closed Mondays. Sorry for the inconvenience." Plan B was put into effect and, although it took me thirty miles out of my way, a satisfactory alternate was found. Say g'night, 2018. I can't say I'll miss you much.

Towels In The Raw

Day 78: Nothing inspires me to work more than a new project waiting in the wings. I've mentioned before that I set a rule for myself years ago that I could have only one of any particular type of project going at one time. There is some latitude in that; for example, I can have a piece of weaving on the floor loom and one on the rigid heddle because the physical process of weaving affects different portions of my anatomy...rigid heddle weaving is hard on my deteriorating shoulder and I can't work at it for any significant length of time. A few days ago, I decided that I wanted to make some wider scarves than the rigid heddle loom would allow, but in order to start, I first needed to finish up the cotton towels on the floor loom. I had three done and a fourth barely started, and just enough of the bouclé to finish up #4. The shortage of material was what had slowed me down; I batted ideas for #5 around in my head without coming to a satisfactory conclusion. Now feeling the push, I chose to go with the natural cotton (#5 is visible in the upper right). I set a goal of six inches per session at the loom, putting in up to three sessions a day. Bingo! In short order, the weaving was done. Now I'll warp for the new project and while I'm taking breaks from it, I'll twist the fringe on the towel ends.

Mill Pond Hand-Tint

Day 77: My maternal grandfather was a photographer in the days of glass plates and hand-tints, and sometimes I find a scene which begs to be treated in the same way. Eatonville's Mill Pond is one of those locations, although I would have liked to include the old sawdust burner which once stood just north of the pond. It blew over in a windstorm a decade or so ago, and while most of the newer residents of the area thought of it as an eyesore and bade good riddance to it, there were a few of us who mourned it as the passing of an old friend. I can recall when, as a child travelling with my parents from the east side of the mountains, its deliciously scary bulk would dominate the night, glowing red with internal fire and spitting sparks through its mesh canopy. It was one of three we passed on our way from Yakima, and if I was asleep, my father would wake me to see each one. Unfortunately, I lost the opportunity to photograph it before it collapsed. The best I can do now is imagine how my grandfather might have portrayed it in a hand-tint.

Affective

Day 76: More pungent than the scent of fresh-baked bread, heavier than the lap-weighted soul-comfort of a purring cat, more attention-demanding than any puzzle or project, a seasonally-affective day in the Pacific Northwest clings to shrub and window with all the persistence of a stubborn tick and just as welcome. I know my cheery chickadees are out there because I can hear them when the heat pump stops roaring in its hyper-heat voice and the muttering rills of rain subside. Every now and then, a flash of white catches my eye, but I can't tell if it's a 'dee or a junco's tailfeathers. Steller's Jays are crayon smears on the feeders, Towhees indistinct black gobs on the ground below. They might as well be molehills, but for the fact that they move, occasionally casting themselves into the abstractionist blur of the filbert. I suppose I should be glad to be indoors and warm, unlike my feathered friends, but somewhere along the line I was plagued with the ability to recognize that things could be better. I do not readily accept my lot; they do. I wish I was a bird.

Two Tatters' Tatting

Day 75: Having learned most of my needlearts from my grandmother, I went to work as an art-needlework consultant not long after my 18th birthday. I made it clear to my employer that whatever other skills I might have, I did not know how to tat. I'd tried to teach myself to no avail (and since have learned that I was making the mistake most beginners make of getting the knot in the wrong thread). I was fortunate in that another of the employees was an expert tatter and even more to her credit, she was a patient teacher. She took my hands in hers and stepped me through the motions, explaining how the knot was transferred from one thread to the other so that the ring could be tightened when the sequence of double-stitches was complete. The tatting mystery was solved.

There weren't many patterns available in those days, but my husband's grandmother had a stash from the 1930s-1940s. She and I got along famously because of our shared interest in needlework. When she moved into an elder-care facility, she gave me her books. When she passed away, her incomplete projects came into my hands and were tucked away for safekeeping as heirlooms. Two of the edgings above are hers: the off-white piece and the aqua/yellow. The brown and orange are mine, including the hemstitching on the handkerchief. Can you tell? I thought not. Tatting is a timeless art.

Christmas Portraits

Day 74: I try to capture my kids' portraits a couple of times a year, but neither of them is particularly fond of the camera, nor are they amused at my antics when I try to get them to look up and open their eyes. My success yesterday was thanks to a Christmas gift, a cute shelf-sitter costumed crow which provided the photographer with a genuine "Watch the birdie!" prop. Waving it around wasn't sufficient; it had to peck Tip in his pudgy ribs to keep him from going back to sleep. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. Photographing cats is second in difficult only to herding them. For those of you who haven't made their acquaintance yet, Skunk is my "old lady." She's 16. Tippy (aka Tip, short for Tipperary) is 10.

Old Snow

Day 73: Another relic from my childhood, these snowflakes aren't quite as old as I am. They were produced in a time when products made of plastic weren't yet common in households, and the few items which were tended to be rather too breakable for everyday use. Most plastic stuff was ornamental, meant to be used until it broke and then tossed out, a convenience which set us to paving a slippery path with disposables. I think the original set contained a dozen, at least half of which were clear like this one, but there were colours as well. The red was transparent; pastel green, blue and pink were semi-opaque, and if there were duplicates of those, I do not recall them. I still have a total of nine: the four colours and five clear, at least one of which has been mended. I handle and pack them away with great care. Christmas memories are precious, and I wish many happy ones for you and yours!

Noel Of Small Birds

Day 72: During the years when I used to play Celtic harp and perform professionally, I wrote much of my own material. Most of it was instrumental, but occasionally, I'd compose a song.

Noel of Small Birds

All the birds of winter gather in to find a shelter,
Begging for a bit of food and warmth in the cold weather.

From their homes in barren trees, sparrows go, and chickadees.
Finches search for bright berries, flying back with treasure.

From a journey returning laden, they sing merrily.
Song fills the sky, and the snow is so white
And red the rowan tree.

Gifts of Man shall help in need, crumbs of bread and scattered seed.
Thankful small birds all indeed, merry to a feather!

Singing, soaring over the forest, freely they shall fly.
Dance on the wind over moorland and glen
In the sparkling winter sky.

All the birds of winter gather in to find a shelter,
Begging for a bit of food and warmth in the cold weather.

All along the hedgerow gay, birdsong beckons in the day,
From the holly and the bay, and the hoary heather.

Tiny birds take wing to go wassailing. Questing they shall go.
Thicket and bush for a moment are hushed
By the silence of the snow.

Masters of their frosty hall, they announce the minstrel's callm
Pleasure to accord to all, singing all together.

Thus their carol rises unbounded, joyful hearts in flight.
Echoing trills lie like mist on the hills
On a starry winter night.

Holiday Hardanger

Day 71: Years ago, I happened to connect with an elderly woman who was running a Scandinavian gift shop out of her home. She was also an expert needlewoman and stocked the fabrics and patterns for Norwegian Hardanger embroidery. After several visits and after I had shown her some of my work, she asked me if I would be interested in making pieces which she could display in her shop. She offered me supplies and patterns in exchange for allowing her to use the finished needlework for six months to encourage further sales of books and patterns. Then the finished pieces would be returned to me. I agreed, and over the course of the next several years, I must have stitched at least a hundred designs, most of which I have since given away. At Gloria's insistence, I entered my original work in a national Hardanger contest and twice took honourable mention, a distinction which came with a cash prize and publication of my designs in the promoter's annual pattern book. This holiday piece is not original, but it was one of my favourites from the many I stitched, and I bring it out for display every Christmas season.

Unreasonably Unseasonable

Day 70: Let's get one thing straight: Pussywillows do not bloom in December in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, when they started blooming in late January instead of February, I began ranting about changes in the climate. A decade later, they were appearing mid-month. I have never, repeat NEVER seen them bloom before Christmas, and mine, living at elevation as they do, are later than those in Flatland. It's one thing for stores to start their Christmas push before Hallowe'en and put valentines on the shelves before New Year's, but when Nature follows the lead of crass commercialism, one can only say that she's being unreasonably unseasonable.

Mistletoe And Holly

Day 69: Happy Solstice! The mistletoe and holly are laid, the candles are lit, and...wait, what's that stuff on my garage roof? Snow! If you had gathered up every bit in my yard, you might have been able to fill a teacup, but snow on Solstice is even better than a white Christmas. Although I'm not as fond of the stuff as I was when I was a child, I still love snow, with the proviso that it does not linger on the ground when I have places to go and people to see, and allows me to enjoy it from the snug warmth of my home. Snow is fine if I can go to it; if it comes to me, it should have the politeness to give fair warning and refrain from calling at an inconvenient time or overstaying its welcome. A dab on the Solstice is genteel; a foot, unless it comes when I have nothing better to do than admire it, can only be considered a vulgarity not to be borne.

Weaving The Years

Day 68: The years have flown by at warp speed from the time I bought my first loom. It was a table loom, operated by jacks (hand levers), and as a deteriorating shoulder became more and more painful, I did less weaving than I would have liked. During the same period of time, my two favourite fiber suppliers closed up shop and it became difficult to find the threads and yarns common to the craft. Eventually, I put the table loom aside, sad that something I had so greatly enjoyed was possibly lost to me forever. Some years later, a knock sounded at my front door. The woman standing at the bottom of my steps was unfamiliar to me, but she explained that she'd talked to me at length about weaving and spinning during a yard sale I'd hosted a decade earlier. Then she asked, "Would you be interested in my four-foot floor loom? I don't use it any more." Exciting as that sounded, I had reason to suspect it was out of my reach. I asked her, "How much do you want for it?" Her response left me flabbergasted: "I want to give it to you."

One thing led to another, and a week or so later, I met her at her storage unit and we dismantled the loom in order to get it in my car. I brought it home with only a vague idea of how to put it back together, so launched into the project while the memory was still fresh. There were a few mishaps, fortunately easily rectified, and a few missing bolts, but by the end of the following day, I had a fully functioning loom occupying roughly 40 percent of the floor space in my back bedroom. It has not set idle more than a week or two at a time since that day.

These are just a few of the fabrics I've woven over the decades. I didn't keep samples at first, and many others required every inch of thread I had available. Most of the finished pieces are long gone, given as gifts. The only large piece I've retained for myself is the double-bed sized overshot coverlet which provides the background for the sample cards.

Fresh Pict Haggis!

Day 67: Och, th' wee beastie is nabbit! Ane twa-p'und haggis, tucked awa' neat an' ready for th' eatin' on Burns Night. The hunt was done despite torrential rain, tree-toppling winds and some small confusion about the time at which the creatures might emerge, but once secured, the fresh-Pict trophy was placed in a snug hibernation chamber where it will be coddled and cosseted over the next six weeks to keep it from losing weight or becoming over-stressed. Haggis, for all their ferocity, must be handled gently in captivity and, as Burns Night approaches, they should be given a diet of neeps and tatties plus a wee drap o' ale or beer.

Bubble Tree

Day 66: Tonight's post is born out of desperation. Unaccustomed to a social life, I find that I have one suddenly. The fruit of several trees including the Park, Morris dancing and even fishing has ripened into a jam-packed schedule of visits, practices and performances to such an extent that after two nights of no more than four hours sleep each, when I dragged back through my door late this afternoon and sat down in my chair, my eyes closed and my head drooped and the world was left behind. I waked to find it after dark, with no hope of staging the photo I'd wanted even if the rain had not been coming down in buckets with bits of broken branches flying through the yard on gusty winds. "Ack!" I said in horror when my eyes came open. "I haven't got a blog shot!" There have only been two or three similar instances in my eight-plus year history of  daily blogging, so I cast about the room for anything worthwhile and settled on the Bubble Tree, a fossil from my equally prehistoric childhood. I had hoped to refrain from too many of the season's seemingly obligatory images of ornaments and yard decor, but there you have it. One week to go, and then the hectic holidays are behind us...for this year.

Nostalgia

Day 65: Most of us experience some degree of nostalgia at this time of year, and while a part of that may direct our thoughts back to childhood holidays, another invites us to step into a time machine to travel to another era. Where does your TARDIS take you? Mine carries me into Dickens' time and is peopled with carollers clad in bustles and tophats, bundled against the cold in the thick woolens of the day, strolling along the gas-lit streets of old London. The Grinch, the Elf on a Shelf, the Peanuts gang can't be found in my nostalgic vision of Christmas, and Santa has an entirely different character than his modern counterpart who lavishes gifts on children both naughty and nice, never leaving lumps of coal or bundles of sticks in the stockings of those who didn't mind their parents. The charity of the time was personal: helping a disadvantaged neighbour, giving food and clothing to those you knew were in need, not leaving them to fight through the bureaucracy of agencies and entitlement programs. Peoples' lives were not as long then, no, but they were richer in human connection, in core humanity than in our present disconnected society. These are the images I see in my nostalgia, admittedly a romanticized version of the time, but not of the message which permeated it: to be kind and respectful to one another throughout the year.

Coo-coo Birds

Day 64: The Coo-coo Birds are seldom brave enough to come into the yard proper, preferring to hang out on the power lines or scrabble in the driveway rocks for bugs. Today, however, a pair of them were cleaning up the spilled seed, "pair" in the sense of "mates" as opposed to "two birds." Mourning Doves are not uncommon here, but unlike their pigeon cousins, they aren't obnoxious. That said, as members of the clan, they're not exactly the sharpest crayons in the box either, although if they disappeared, I would miss their soft voices. Oddly, their mewing is very similar to the sweet-nothings I've heard exchanged sotto voce between courting ravens, but then, ravens and crows are capable of producing a much wider range of vocalizations. It's no wonder doves are a symbol of peace. They can only speak words of love.

Special Gifts, Special Friends

Day 63: I think Santa must have decided I've been nice this year because I can't believe he dispatched two pair of special elves to the wrong address, not when their gifts were so obviously meant for me. "Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Rainier" came from my Team Biota partners Joe and Sharon; "Flora of Mount Rainier National Park" and "How to Identify Mushrooms to Genus" were brought to me this afternoon by Arnie and his wife Sara. The two plant books are old, and are therefore a ticket to a fantastic ride through the taxonomic forests of yesteryear. The mushroom book is magnificently illustrated to guide students of mycology through the differentiating features of fungal genera, in detail most field guides lack. I have many hours of brain-work ahead of me here!

Renamed As Sphaerophorus Tuckermanii

Day 62: The snowy forests of the Pacific Northwest are not as lifeless as they appear on first glance. In fact, the cold season is when lichens are at their prime: growing, fruiting, propagating. In the vacancy left by the showier vascular plants, lichens emerge as the "wildflowers" of winter, displaying apothecia plump with the spores of reproduction. Their colours brighten with the hues of health, the greens and blue-greens unlike anything seen during the drier summer months.

Formerly known as Sphaerophorus globosus, this graceful and common lichen was split into two species recently, S. tuckermanii (shown above) and S. venerabilis, based on research by Wedin, et al. and published in "The Lichenologist" (the quarterly journal of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society). It has several sub-species which are visually identical and can only be differentiated with chemical testing and microscopic examination. Yes, those pesky taxonomists have struck again, damn their eyes.

Icmadophila Ericetorum, Faerie Barf

Day 61: For the most part, I tend to commit to memory the Latin nomenclature for vascular plants, fungi and lichens, but once I had seen the common name "fairy barf" applied to Icmadophila ericetorum, I could not dismiss it from my mind (and believe me, I tried). That said, I prefer an alternate spelling ("faerie") for this lichen and the weakly pink apothecia and pastel green thallus which characterize it. Since lichen common names are not standardized like the majority of those applied to vascular plants, I feel justified in taking a small liberty to afford a slight measure of dignity to the species. Bottom line? Icmadophila is one of my favourite lichens. It deserves better than it's been given.

Best Rock In The Park

Day 60: There are three known species of "matchstick" lichens in the Pacific Northwest, two of which can be found in Mount Rainier National Park. Pilophorus clavatus ("tapered matchstick," left) and Pilophorus acicularis ("devil's matchstick," right) are easy to miss because at their tallest, their thready stems do not rise more than an inch in height. Clavatus' apothecia (fruiting bodies) are elongated and club-like, supported by reddish podetia (stalks), while the knobby, round heads of acicularis cap pale green podetia. They are both pioneer species, occurring on freshly broken rock ("freshly" being defined here as a measure of decades rather than weeks). Not far from the Administration Building at Longmire, the two matchsticks can be found together on what I think of as "the best rock in the Park."

Hand

Day 59: If you hang around spinners often enough, you will hear the term "hand" being batted about. This refers to the textural feel of a fiber as well as the ease with which it is manipulated into yarn. There are a number of considerations which enter into "hand," including crimp, fineness (measured in microns) and type of critter from which the fiber was harvested. Currently, I am spinning an alpaca/Romney blend which has the best hand of any wool I've ever spun. The fibers are long (4" or more!), silky and almost without crimp. Purchased as roving at a local bazaar and meticulously processed by the seller, this blend develops into a yarn of uniform diameter effortlessly, slipping through my fingers like silk as it winds onto the bobbin. Now I wish I'd bought more than a pound!

Same Tree, Different Bird

Day 58: One of the most colourful birds to visit my yard, Steller's Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) is also one of the most common and certainly the most consistent. Year-'round, their population remains more or less constant, unlike the juncoes who, although also a year-'round species, experience rises and falls in their census. By mass and duration, the jay population may even occupy a larger amount of air space than the crows who generally only come for breakfast. Many people dislike jays, claiming that they bully smaller birds; such is not my experience with them in any of the locales where I have had them as guests. There is little reason for competition at my feeders at any time except when the Grosbeaks arrive to consume black-oil seed in copious amounts. The jays take a respectful back seat to them, knowing that I'll put out more seed as soon as I notice the feeders are empty. Like all members of the Corvidae, Steller's jays are smart, and mine certainly realize they've discovered an almost limitless supply of food in my yard.

Saturday

Day 57: This is Saturday. No, I don't mean "today." I mean the plant. This little Tillandsia ("air plant") has survived a year under my casual care, the first time I've ever been able to keep one alive for more than a few weeks. The secret to success is in its nickname. Every Saturday, it gets a light spray of fresh water. I realized where I had gone wrong with its predecessors, giving them the soak recommended by the seller and thereby causing them to rot; too much of a good thing is as sure a recipe for failure as not enough. Saturday, cheerfully gracing the west window of my bedroom, reminds me not to indulge in excesses.

Leaf Litter, A Monochrome Study

Day 56: One definition of "hoarfrost" is "a crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor formed on vegetation and other objects at temperatures below the freezing point." It has been particularly lush during our recent cold snap here in the damp Pacific Northwest. It can take a number of different forms from fine needles to crystals resembling those of sugar "rock candy." It differs from "frost" only semantically; the term "hoar-" is appended when the crystals become more distinct than a thin film of ice. On the other hand, "depth hoar" occurs at the base of snowpack, building on existing snow crystals and frequently attaining much larger dimensions than "surface hoar." The word "hoar" derives from an Old English term meaning gray or old.

Young Towhee

Day 55: The cold weather has brought the Spotted Towhees out by the dozen. Although I see them here in the summer occasionally, I think of them as a "winter bird," doing their peculiar hop-back scratching step as they hunt for fallen seed in the snow. This one is a young bird. How can you tell? Pipilo maculatus juveniles have brown irises; their eyes will change to bright red at adulthood. Primarily ground-feeders, these birds' colouration gives them excellent camouflage in leaf litter, the pattern of black and white simulating broken shadows. Handsome birds, Towhees, but those red eyes make the adults look like they've had too much espresso.

First On The Tree

Day 54: I'm off schedule this year, but at least I'm early instead of late. I don't usually put the tree up until the 10th, but with today being St. Nicholas' Day and the first batch of cookies having been baked several days ago, I decided I'd at least assemble it and string the lights. That done, the bare boughs nagged at me when I sat down to enjoy my book, so I dragged the ornaments out of the closet and set to work. The first ornament I hang is always Cocoa's, and it goes in a place of honour, front and center at eye level. Hard to believe that the dearest love of my life has been gone almost twenty years.

Bryo Cryo

Day 53: It's cold. Okay, it's only Pacific-Northwest cold, not East-Coast cold, but it's all a matter of what constitutes "normal" for the residents of any given area. I'm sure somebody in Florida would classify 40 degrees as "cold," 30 degrees as "damn cold" and 25 degrees as "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey," but here in the PNW, 22 degrees is cold enough to justify complaining. Let it drop into the teens, and we go into full-blown weather cursing. Now I happen to know that there are a lot of people out there who believe that colder winters disprove global warming, but they are confusing two non-interchangeable terms. "Weather" is what we get daily. It rains, it snows, we have a dry spell or a heatwave. That's "weather." Climate change is, in a short definition, a long-term shift in norms, e.g., a shift toward lower annual rainfall or hotter summers charted over decades or even centuries. There may be some backsliding in the graph, downturns when an unusually wet summer seems to make up for 20 years of dried-out lakes and glacial retreat, but when viewed from farther back temporally, a shift becomes obvious. Climate and weather are not the same thing, and while thousands may lose their lives in a meteorological event like a flood, a global shift in climate will make its effects known on all living creatures.

Getting A Jump On St. Nick

Day 52: St. Nicholas' Day (December 6) normally initiates the cookie-baking season in my kitchen, but this year I got the jump on St. Nick with a batch of premature spritz. Spritz are one of my two favourite Christmas cookies, the other known variously as Russian tea cakes, sandies or snowballs. The holidays are not fully in sway until both varieties are baked, bagged and frozen. Spritz are a bit of a pain to make, but not nearly as much so these last couple of years as previously. I invested in a trigger-operated cookie gun which spits out uniform bits of molded dough with each individual click. The secret to success lies in having the cookie sheets cold when the dough is extruded onto them; the chilled surface makes them adhere. I put my heavyweight pans in the freezer the night before, and shooting cookies was an absolute breeze the following morning. The crunch of abundant crystal sugar provides texture to the rich, buttery, almond-flavoured cookies. I was delighted to find it in colours other than red and green this year. I mean, whoever heard of a green snowflake outside of politics?

A New Yew

Day 51: I've long since given up any hope of finding a new me, so I'll settle for having several new yews instead. In point of fact, the European yew hedge running along the front of my property has two notable inadequacies. The first is that of roughly two dozen individual shrubs, only one is female. The other is that the hedge stops short of the edge of the property by at least another dozen plants. A few years ago, I found a "volunteer" sprout about ten feet away from the orderly row; I transplanted it, and now it's about a foot tall. Obviously, it'll be a few years before I have to worry about trimming it with the rest of the hedge, but at least it's a start on filling in the gap. That said, yesterday I discovered five more volunteers beneath Big Doug. I'll lift them in the spring for relocation to the hedgerow. As in needlework, the most valuable asset a gardener can cultivate is patience.

Four Of A Kind

Day 50: If you're talking Chickadees instead of poker, two pair beats four of a kind. I probably won't know what I'm actually holding until next spring (and perhaps not then), but I suspect there will be at least one full house if I can find suitable nesting boxes for any of the four dee-dees who were flitting around the feeders today. Four! I knew I had two, so it looks like word has gone around that the black-oil sunflower seed magically appears in the trays shortly after sunrise every day. Dee-dees! It took me almost thirty years to entice them from across the road! And if that wasn't enough for one day, shortly after first light, two grouse ("mouse-mice," "grouse-grice" in Crow-specific argot), one rummaging through the leaves beneath the contorted filbert, the other momentarily confused by having gotten into the center of the tangle without considering possible exit routes. I've never had grice in the yard before. I was unable to see them clearly enough to determine species.

Penny Peridioles

Day 49: Nidula candida is arguably the most common bird's-nest fungus in Pacific Northwest forests. Its cups are persistent, i.e., you can find them year-'round, although the "eggs" may be absent. The tiny lentil-shaped structures shown in this Penny Perspective are called peridioles ("peh-RIH-dee-uhls") and contain the spores of the fungus. In the case of N. candida, a viscous substance holds the peridioles in the cups until rain washes them free. If you look carefully at the photo, you can see a few "eggs" outside the cups on the wood. In some other species of bird's-nests, the peridioles are attached to the cups by tiny threads. In either instance, the spores seldom fall more than a few inches from the parent fungus, a factor which generally allows bird's-nests to colonize in compact "family groups."