A Good Word, "Resupinate"

Day 109: It's a good word, "resupinate." You ought to be able to pick up a clue to its meaning if you parse it. In everyday language, to be "supine" means "lying face upward." It's the opposite of "prone," which of course you know means "lying face downward," because you are a literate person and appreciate the semantic distinction. A resupinate fungus, therefore, is one which is growing upside down or, if you prefer, pores up. Think of the more familiar shelf fungi. They have a hard upper surface and pores or teeth on the lower portion. Resupinate fungi grow the other way around, as this beautiful specimen of Irpex lacteus demonstrates.

You never know what you may find when you take a closer look at Nature. I'd decided to walk the restored levee trail in Orting from the bridge north, and was rather thinking I'd made a very bad choice after the first mile of barren gravel. Well, it's the top of a levee. What did I expect? It was built to keep Orting safe from flood, so it's raised above the wetland by ten feet or so, essentially a berm of fill which keeps the river on one side and the city on the other. It is singularly ugly, but of course I didn't know that when I started out. The sides are lined with riprap, so there was no way to get within touching distance of anything even remotely vegetative, unless the occasional invasive (Japanese knotweed or buddleia) was to your liking. It was only after I'd reached the end and was coming back that I noticed a lightly lichenized cottonwood next to a short trail leading into a housing complex. Eh, it was worth a look, so I sheared off from the main trail and almost stepped on a small branch bearing a little colony of bright orange Xanthoria. I knelt down to take a photo (desperation!), picked up a second branch harboring an Usnea and a non-sorediate Ramalina and...what in the world? There was the resupinate in all its glory. For what it's worth, Irpex is common worldwide, even if I'd never come across it in my travels. Two inches of a fungus (which to my mind looks rather like a tromped-on slug) really made my day.