Little Gold Crabapples

Day 84: Not far from one of the places I park when hiking in the Cowlitz Wildlife area near Mossyrock Dam, I noticed branches overhanging the road, heavily laden with some kind of yellow fruit. Curiosity got the better of me, so I pulled over and got out to take pictures, thinking I'd try to identify the tree when I got home. As soon as I zoomed in, I said, "Crabapples! Little gold crabapples!" and then confirmed it by picking up a mushy one from where it had fallen to the ground. The ones out of reach may still have been firm. I had no way to find out, but I'm thinking that next fall when they're in their prime, I might come back with a long-armed grabber to harvest enough of them to make pickled crabapples. These are just bite-sized!

Nature Reclaims

Day 83: Ma Nature does her best to clean up the mess we humans are making, but we are giving her too much to handle in a short span of time. For whatever reason, this car was abandoned in what was once a farm field, and is now a "natural area" protected by Cowlitz Wildlife. A forest has grown up around it: tangled salmonberry vines and big-leaf maples, scrubby alders, patchwork blankets of moss and fern and piggyback plant. It's always damp here, and some day, even the rusted framework of this old car will be reclaimed by the process of decay. But how much can we ask Nature to absorb before she rebels and becomes outright unfriendly toward our presence? For now, she is merely annoyed with us, and reprimands us with storms and temperature extremes, warnings that if we keep this up, she may get really, really angry.

Button-down Elf Cup

Day 82: One short section of trail in the Cowlitz Wildlife Area near Mossyrock Dam is a favourite with me because it nearly always produces something of interest, probably because the dominant tree is Big-leaf Maple rather than the Doug-firs I usually find myself among. Scarlet Elf Cup (Sarcoscypha coccinea) is easy to identify: a salmon pink/red cup with a whitish tomentum (fuzz) on the outer surface. Typically, it fruits in the cooler months, and grows on decaying wood. This specimen appeared to be "buttoned" to its substrate, and gave me a chuckle only another mycophile can appreciate. We take our amusements where we find them, and Ma Nature can be quite a humourist at times. Fungus with a belly-button! Whodathunkit?

At Last: Plagiothecium Undulatum

Day 81: And a happy New Year it is, because I finally identified Plagiothecium undulatum (Waved Silkmoss). It's been troubling me for at least a decade. As long as I was going after Chinese for my traditional New Year's Eve dinner and the weather was clear, albeit nippy, I decided to take a walk on my favourite Cowlitz Wildlife Area trail near Mossyrock before going to the restaurant. There were several old maples to crawl over, and a few to duck under, victims of a combination of heavy rain and winds. Many of my landmarks were no longer upright, and the trail was much more open and bright due to the decrease in canopy. However, Plagiothecium has always had a window on the sun, brief at times to be sure, but there it was in all its glory on its stump, that pale yellowish green taunting me again. I had not thought about it before I left home, so was stuck without a hand lens, and that meant it was time to get up close and personal. I did the best I could, glasses off and the moss held within an inch of my eye. That was sufficient to determine the shape of the leaves. Also missing from my bare-minimum pack was a test tube, so I did not bring a sample home. As I said, I hadn't really thought about identifying moss when I left the house. In any event, I gathered enough information to make an ID with roughly 85% confidence. Bryophytes are not my "thing," so I reserve the right to be wrong, and I won't be too ashamed to admit it if someone corrects me. That's how we learn.

Marah Oregana, Wild Cucumber

Day 247: Don't be fooled by the name. The small spiny fruits of Wild Cucumber (Marah oregana) are not edible. In fact, all parts of the plant contain cucurbitacins, compounds which can cause severe gastrointestinal reactions. Like many other cucurbits, Marah (an alternate common name) is a vine. The curling tendrils it produces will be familiar to anyone who has ever grown cucumbers or squash, and allow the plant to climb fences or any other available support (a tightly curled mass of tendrils can be seen in the photo just to the right of the unopened buds at the top of the inflorescence). Male and female flowers are borne on the same plant, generally with a spike (raceme) of male flowers appearing above a single female flower in the axil. Plants are self-fertile, and pollination is done by a variety of insects. Fruits can be up to three inches long by two inches in diameter, are dotted with spines in varying degree, and contain a few large seeds which are released when the "cucumber" ripens and bursts. The plant is also known as Manroot (Man-root or Bigroot) for its large tubers.

Shared Space - Usnea And Ramalina

Day 121: It is not uncommon to find lichen species crowding together, intertwined so thoroughly that one might think that the different shapes are simply different manifestations of the same lichen, especially when they are similarly coloured like this combination of Ramalina and Usnea. These two species share a common photobiont, the algae which performs the task of photosynthesis. However, the fungal component of these two lichens is different, as microscopic examination of their spores would likely reveal. The fungus is largely responsible for determining the general morphology of a lichen, i.e., whether it is foliose (leafy), fruticose (having a more three-dimensional structure) or crustose (crust-like). A third component in lichens is yeast, of which there are also numerous strains. Yeasts provide protection against microbes. There's a lot going on in this shared space!

Footnote: By request, a specimen from yesterday's Arum dig will be placed in the WTU Herbarium as soon as it is dry.

Arum Italicum

Day 120: During my last walk in the Cowlitz Wildlife area near Mossyrock Dam, I was able to get into areas I'd not patrolled previously for invasives thanks to the blackberries having been mowed. While on my ramble, I found a plant I knew was non-native, and I was fairly certain of its identity, but I wanted to be sure. I confirmed my suspicions with photographs, but what came as a real surprise was its listing as a Class C invasive in the state. Italiam arum (Arum italicum) has been reported in several counties in western Washington (although not in Lewis where I found it), and is considered an agricultural pest. It is poisonous to livestock and in fact may cause skin irritation in susceptible individuals among humans. I went back today armed with a shovel and wearing gloves to handle it, dug out roughly five gallons of the plant. It propagates by means of bulblets, and although I sifted through the soil for anything larger than the tip of my little finger, I am sure that hundred, perhaps even thousands of tiny pea- to pinhead-sized bulbs evaded me. According to authoritative sources, it may take a decade or longer of annual monitoring and treatment before it can be said that it has been eradicated. Once it was sold as a garden plant, but I abandoned any ideas I'd had of transferring it to my yard. All the material went in the bin with the exception of one specimen which is currently in my plant press and will be sent to the Burke Herbarium as the first documented occurrence in Lewis County.

Hypoxylon Fuscum

Day 110: When I first encountered Hypoxylon fuscum, I mistook it for a slime mold, an understandable error when you consider its appearance. However, it is fungal, specifically a saprobic "decomposer" which feeds on decaying wood. Its preference for Corylus as a substrate led to the common name of "Hazel Woodwart," but it can affect other hardwoods, and in this instance was growing on Red Alder (Alnus rubra). Its fruiting bodies form clumps which, when fully mature, resemble black raspberries in both size and configuration, but may be white or tan when young. Individual stromata are 2-5 mm. in diameter and 0.5-2 mm in height.

Let's step into the other room for a moment to talk about words. As with most scientific disciplines, botany has its own vocabulary which breaks into even smaller subsets with each specialty. Technical terms can be daunting ("stromata," "saprobic"), but the heavy use of Latin is a stumbling block many people find it difficult to surmount. As I have mentioned before, it becomes easier when you can relate a Latin name to an English word, so let's break "Hypoxylon fuscum" into its component parts.

First of all, there is "hypo-." It means "under" or "beneath." You know what a "hypodermic" does. It puts a medicine under ("hypo-") your skin ("-dermic," from "dermis," i.e., "skin"). "Xylon" also provides an English word, although it's botanical: the xylem layer of a tree contributes to wood formation, "xylon" meaning "wood." As for "fuscum," the root word brings us "obfuscate" which, while it may not be in your everyday vocabulary, you know means to cloud or obscure an issue. "Fuscare" means "to darken," hence "fuscus" means "darkened" or "blackish." And now that we have all that sorted out, I'll leave you to think about what you've learned today.

Sarcoscypha Coccinea, Scarlet Elf Cup

Day 109: It doesn't take a lot of imagination to picture elves and faerie folk sipping their beverages of choice from the elegant goblets of Sarcoscypha coccinea, the "Scarlet Elf Cup" of our Pacific Northwest forests. Normally a late-season species, this specimen was one of two I found while on a hike day before yesterday, and was easily three times the size of the first one I'd spotted. S. coccinea is saprobic, i.e., it is a decomposer which feeds on organic material. It occurs on hardwood, sometimes so well-concealed and buried by other debris that the fungus may appear terrestrial. In this case, its substrate was undoubtedly Red Alder (Alnus rubra), the dominant tree species at this location. I have also found it in association with Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum). While some field guides list it as edible, the words "in a pinch" come quickly to mind. In a desperate situation, one might find that they took the edge off a ravenous hunger, but they would not be my choice for cream soup or a gravy to go over steak.

Icmadophila Ericetorum, Fairy Barf

Day 108: Let's talk about evolution for a moment, specifically the evolution of language. Language, like any other living organism, evolves over time. Not only do some strains die off, others mutate from their original form, while others spring up seemingly out of nowhere and spread with the rapidity of a virus. Here, I'll give you examples of each scenario.

Yclept. Go on, use it in a sentence. I dare ya. You'll find it in Chaucer, but it had gone extinct by Shakespeare's day. It means to call or to be called. "Oon was Cyrus yclept, and th'othir Galfridus." i.e., "One was called Cyrus, and the other Galfridus." Dead as a doornail, except when someone like me resurrects it for illustrative purposes.

Hippie. In the jazz/swing era, to be called a "hep cat" implied that you were stylish and cool and "with it," but around the time Elvis Presley began making the top of the charts, "hep" got "hip" and moved up a notch linguistically. Somewhat later, the "hippie" generation was born. Oh, and while we're at it, jazz can be "hot" and "cool" simultaneously. Go figure.

Barf. Prior to 1960, you might have upchucked, urped, heaved, etc., and even Shakespeare might have puked, but you never would have barfed if you had eaten a bad meal. "Barf" cropped up spontaneously, its lineage untraceable by serious etymologists who suggested that it was probably imitative of a sound as many other words are known to be, and before long, children everywhere were barfing like crazy. Ugly and crude, it spread quickly among those who were not vaccinated against linguistic disease.

This brings us to Icmadophila ericetorum. When I first heard the common name for this lichen ("fairy barf"), I rejected it completely. Very few lichens have "official" common names, but since I. ericetorum was recognized as a species well before 1960, I felt that the term must have been someone's bad joke. However, "fairy barf" has come to be accepted as the number-one choice when it is listed in lichen field guides. Although I still think the humour in calling it by the phrase is puerile, we're stuck with it. It's easier to say than "Icmadophila ericetorum," although that may be the only point in its favour.

Written By A Lichen

Day 107: What do you suppose has inspired Graphis scripta to leave its unique graffiti on the alder trees along my favourite trail in the Cowlitz Wildlife Area near Mossyrock Dam? Truly the Banksy of the lichen population, these elegant, raised markings are in fact the reproductive structures of the crustose species. They are called lirellae, and if you look closely, you will see that they are split longitudinally, as if scripta's pencil held two adjacent leads. The thallus (body) of the lichen is a thin, greyish-white crust which frequently coats the bark of Red Alder (Alnus rubra) to the extent that the natural colour which gives the tree its name is no longer visible. But science aside, what is scripta writing about? What is it illustrating? I see a little chick just below and slightly left of center, as well as the initial E canted in italics near the lower left edge. You could get lost trying to decipher scripta's code!

Faerie Garden

Day 31: Scientist that I am, I am also a photographer. Sometimes you just have to push the analytical aside and simply admire the beauty. I'd come up for air after being intent on a particular white crust fungus for ten minutes when this scene caught my eye. I immediately thought of a village set high in a mountainous region, Tibet or the Andes perhaps, where grey rock towers above rough-hewn shelters and vegetation clings close to the ground in the desperate and only manner which will allow it to withstand harsh winds and biting-cold temperatures. People do live in such places, you know, without the benefits of electricity and running water and the other amenities we Westerners take for granted, and they have done so for thousands of years. On this day, however, the faeries or sprites who call this community home were either indoors or away at their business of hunting and gathering, following the course of their lives untouched by the artificial constructs of modern civilization. Time means nothing in such a timeless place as this: only now, only this moment.

Xylaria Hypoxylon

Day 30: It's not hard to imagine how the common name "Carbon-antlers" became attached to Xylaria hypoxylon. This dainty fungus grows on rotting wood and can often be found sticking up through the layer of moss which quickly engulfs logs and limbs here in the damp Pacific Northwest. It is also reported to be very mildly bioluminescent (a fact I only recently learned and have yet to observe) due to its ability to collect phosphorus in its tissues. This characteristic gives rise to another common name, "Candlesnuff fungus." It has been hypothesized that the species' bioluminescence may be a product of lignin degradation, and by extension that the degree of "glow" may depend on the substrate species...and here we go again: oh, if only I had more years left to me! There are so many things within my tiny realm about which we know very little. It is my greatest hope that my writings, photos and body of work (small though it may be) will inspire some young scientist to look deeper into the mysteries of the natural world.

Make No Assumptions

Day 26: There were so many other ways they could have phrased this cautionary sign, although I doubt a professional "No berry-picking allowed" wouldn't have deterred many people from taking what they wanted. That said, "Do not assume that the berries are organic" made me laugh out loud. I suppose this means that you have the liberty to make herbicide-laden jams and jellies if you so desire (and I will refrain from drawing the obvious parallel to masks and vaccinations). The phrasing allows you the latitude to choose for yourself, and was certainly worded to avoid any suggestion of a mandate, regulation or restriction. This photo will go in my collection of funny signs, but it will be a long time before anyone tops the sign on a sign which read, "Do not post signs on this sign."