Coniophora Sp.

Day 8: I am hesitant to put an identification on this specimen beyond "Coniophora sp." due to the fact that two very similar species of wet-rot (C. puteana and C. arida) occur in the Pacific Northwest. C. puteana can be found on both hardwood and conifer wood while C. arida (which I believe this to be) grows only on that of conifers. Suffice to say that it is a resupinate fungus, i.e., one whose pores are on the outward side. The growth is tightly appressed to the substrate...big words there...attached firmly to its chosen host and impossible to lift away without a knife. I did not have my specimen kit with me on this hike, so did not bring home a sample. While wet-rots can be damaging to wooden structures and are not something you'd want to find on the pillars holding up your house, they are an important decomposer in forest ecology. Not only do they assist in breaking down forest debris, they provide food sources for insects and even small mammals.

Hericium Coralloides

Day 6: Walking through the forest, I disconnect from most conscious thought processes in favour of enhancing other senses. Trying to solve the world's woes or dwelling on things over which I have no control is counter-productive when striving to experience Nature at its fullest. Far better is it to simply live in the moment, letting sights and sounds chart the path. So it was that a Hericium caught the tail of my eye where it was set amid a tangle of salmonberry vines several feet off the trail, and I had gone past it a good ten steps before a detail registered subliminally. Abruptly snapped from reverie and into the strictures of science, I said aloud, "Hang on a mo'...that was the OTHER one." What exactly had keyed that conclusion? I couldn't have said at the time, but I walked backwards quite literally, step by step until the fungus was again in my field of vision. Then presented with the challenge of bulling my way through the thorns for an unobstructed photograph, I pulled down my sleeves, dropped my pack and inched my way toward the goal. In squatting down to take the picture, it was a given that I would pinch at least one salmonberry branch between the calf of my leg and the back of my thigh; this is just one of the hazards of my task as a botanist. Even as I knelt there, I could not have told you why I knew this was not Hericium abietis, our most common Hericium, although I studied the arrangement of its branches, the lacination of the tips and so on. It was not until I dragged out the field guides at home that I found I had been too narrowly focused, and that it was the fact that it was growing on Red Alder (Alnus rubra) which separated it from its morphologically identical cousin. Hericium coralloides grows on hardwood, not conifer. That was what had pushed the subconscious button, and only because my mind was free of life's daily detritus was the mental directory activated.

Warts And All

Day 4: I have to admit that when I went out for my walk on Wednesday, this is what I was looking for: a textbook specimen of the most widely recognized mushroom in the world, Amanita muscaria. Its warty red cap graces the pages of illustrated children's stories, shows up in video games and cartoons, sets old hippies into thinking with some regret about their younger years and how they had no regard for their potential longevity at the time. Like other Amanitas, muscaria bears a toxin in its tissues, one which causes hallucination in the short term, organ damage over time because it is not excreted. It accumulates in the liver where, in the long run, it's likely to take a few days, weeks, months or years off a person's life. I could veer off on a tangent here to talk about how drug abuse may have led to our present political situation given that a large percentage of voters are of an age which suggests they might have indulged in experimentation during their early 20s, wreaking havoc not only on their organs but on their minds, but that's another story. Suffice to say that my love of Amanita muscaria, warts and all, lies exclusively with its potential as a natural-history subject and in its photogenic properties.

A Favourite Autumn Walk

Day 4: Nisqually-Mashell State Park affords recreational opportunities to a variety of users including dog-walkers, horseback riders, bicyclists and hikers. None of its trails is particularly demanding insofar as altitude gain is concerned, but many are brushy and overgrown and not frequently used. One of my favourite autumn walks takes me down an old dirt road, first through a mixed forest of evergreen and deciduous trees, then opening out into stands of young alder and eventually returning to the mix as the "trail" debouches onto the Nisqually River. The changes of colour are rung through deep greens and golds with occasional accent notes in red when the vine maples are of a mind to put on their best performance. Regardless of the season, it is at this point, roughly halfway to the river, that I invariably pause and say aloud, "...stopping by the woods on a snowy evening..." because it speaks to me of the eastern forests I visited a decade ago. The play of light and shadow changes quickly here, in one moment concealing and in the next revealing the bright caps of mushrooms in their season, or the jewels of salmonberry flowers and fruit in the burgeoning spring. It is not a country whose interior one would care to attempt to penetrate. It is too tangled, too wild, too full of angry sticks and crotchety thorns to offer welcome to a well-intentioned visitor. Yet still, my eyes wander beyond the margins of the road in search of botanical bounty, my adventuresome spirit wondering if a balance could be struck 'twixt pain and gain were I to spot a treasure beyond the reach of my fingers or lens. Not even deer go aside here, passage through the twiggy maze restricted to agile squirrels, nimble bunnies and other small scurrying mammals, a habitat in which they may revel in safety from predators. The human, casual interloper, is contained by Nature.

Get Hip

Day 354: I may have mentioned my love of words somewhere along the line in these posts, and indeed etymology runs right alongside botany in the race for which science I most enjoy. The two feed off each other, so to speak, additions to my lexicon from the descriptive vocabulary of botany always welcome and generally sending me on a hunt for roots of a verbal nature even as I admire the hispidulous foliage of a plant or the obdiplostemonous beauty of its flowers. Okay, most of you won't even try to wrap your lips around all those syllables (and frankly, neither will I unless the need arises), so here's a simpler word for you: hip.

Every autumn, the question arises in my mind again: why "hip" for the false fruit of the rose? Invariably, by the time I've returned to the house, I've forgotten that I intended to look up the origin of the vernacular term, so I took a photo to remind me while out on my Manke Mt. hike. It turns out that the word comes from an entirely different root than "hip" as it applies to the body or to roof construction. In fact, it derives from Old English "heope," a bramble, itself drawn from the deeper well of Scandinavian languages. On the other hand, the Old English word "hype" gives us our physical hips, mutating through "hepe" and "hippe" to arrive at its present angular form. You might wish to gather the "heope" for vitamin-C rich tea as people hip/hep to its benefits may do (be warned that too much may cause kidney issues), but that "hip" (becoming wise to something) unfortunately leads down an etymological blind alley. You can't have everything.

Lichens And Morris Dancers

Day 152: You'd think it would be pretty hard to make a connection between lichens and Morris dancers in a single post, but here you have it. Sound & Fury observes a winter holiday tradition we call "the Mistletoe Faerie." You probably have something similar in your workplace. Some time before Christmas, names are drawn for a gift exchange, no person to know exactly who their representative from the Mistletoe Fey is until Twelfth Night (or the nearest practice date) when the gifts are delivered. Several factors caused me to miss six weeks of practice, including the critical gift exchange. When I returned this past Monday, my Mistletoe Faerie delivered her gift. I'd forgotten about the plea I'd put out on Facebook for Daphnie Stone's "aide memoire" to the Usneas of the area and was surprised and overjoyed when I unwrapped it. Yesterday, I gave it a field test. I needed a walk and decided to take an overgrown side trail of Nisqually-Mashel State Park, an Usnea-rich area if ever there was one. Field guide in hand, I was able to put a name to a species which has puzzled me in the past. Usnea flavocardia is identified by its fibril, pinched at the base like the tip of a cigar, as well as the presence of little red dots on the thallus. Thank you, Mistletoe Faerie, and thank you, Mistletoe Fey for...well, you know, that other thing.

Lichenized!

Day 143: Contrary to popular belief, most lichens do not damage the trees on which they live. The fact is, trees under stress from disease or climatological influences are more likely to provide physical niches in which lichens may grow. Organic material and dust particles collect in the cracks of damaged bark, and over time, become the medium in which lichens may take hold. The association between dying trees and the presence of lichens is clear, but the relationship is often misinterpreted. The lichens are misconstrued as the cause of the tree's declining health instead of being a symptom of it. Why, then, do some types of lichen grow on one type of tree and not on another? Lichens' preferences for certain types of tree are due to a number of different factors: acidity, persistence of light/shade, bark porosity, etc. When the species' requirements are met in the proper combination, lichenization will occur.