Gyromitra Infula, Possibly

Day 18: The subject of this article is possibly Gyromitra infula. I say "possibly" not because of my recent misidentification of another 'shroom, but because of this qualifier in Steve Trudell's field guide: "Gyromitra infula and G. ambigua typically occur in late summer and fall with conifers and hardwoods on soil and wood. Although G. ambigua normally as stronger purple tones on the stipe base and somewhat darker caps, determining which of these species you have usually requires checking spore size (mostly 20-23 microns long in G. infula and 22-30 microns long in G. ambigua) and, even then, the answer might not be clear." He goes on to note that "both species are very poisonous." All things considered, I will err on the side of caution, definitely not collecting them for the table and holding out on proposing a solid identification. Of an impressive size (that's Oxalis at the base, not clover), the species presents 6-7" of plain ugly, and one 50' diameter circle in a nearby sunfleck forest environment held a dozen or more convoluted, roughly saddle-shaped caps in shades of purplish-tan and brown. I could imagine that someone stumbling across them in a Hallowe'en frame of mind might liken them to the hands of corpses upthrust from the forest floor. Whodathunk it? My very own neighbourhood zombie apocalypse!

Hericium Abietis

Day 17: On October 19, I posted a photo of Hericium coralloides, a species I had probably observed on many occasions, although I never took the time to investigate its substrate. Had I done so and found it growing on hardwood, I would have known that it was not Hericium abietis (shown here), a morphologically identical species which grows only on conifer wood. Many fungi are substrate-specific, genetically encoded to release particular enzymes which will allow them to break down the substrate material into the nutrients which sustain them. In turn, the fungi may then be consumed by insects whose nutritional requirements match what the fungus has absorbed and carries in its tissues. Thus, one species of fungus may grow only on one substrate and may only be consumed by one type of insect, although in actuality the range is generally wider than 1:1:1. Mushroom rarity may be influenced by a number of different factors including plant associations, substrate availability, and so on. This specificity puts a whole new dimension on the phrase, "You are what you eat." Just ask a fungus.

Xylaria Hypoxylon

Day 16: I find myself in the position of needing to revise much of this post since discovering that I made not one but TWO misidentifications of the subject at hand. I thought I'd found a new species of fungus for the Park when I pulled the photos off the camera after yesterday's walk. Admittedly, they had been taken in poor light, were somewhat out of focus, and the colour was less than true, all factors which sent me back up the road today with a tripod. I'd also read up on the species, finding some clues which seeded a touch of doubt as to my proposed identification. There was nothing for it. I needed to go back to make a more thorough examination of the specimens. Once on site, I became even less certain of the ID, but given the size of the growth (under 3/4"), I couldn't imagine what else it might be. And then ten minutes later, I stepped over another log further along the route (a term I use without any inference that there is even a vestige of trail present) and...on, hang on a mo'...there was a more mature grouping. I took better photos, but even so, I drew the wrong conclusion. I was given a gentle nudge in the right direction by our Park Plant Ecologist, and would like to apologize to my readers. This in fact is Xylaria hypoxylon, aka "Carbon-antlers" or "Stag's horn fungus," a common PNW species which occurs on rotting wood.

The Perhaps Bag

Day 15: You have probably seen me refer to my "perhaps bag" several times now without knowing the origin of the term or perhaps simply chalked it up to a Crow peculiarity. In fact, it comes from the Soviet era and the Russian word is "avoska," and generally is accepted to refer to a string bag, the precursor of today's reusable shopping bags. Russians carried their perhaps-bags with them when they went out, in the hopes that fortuitous circumstances might allow them to obtain a few groceries in a time of scarcity. In the autumn, I do not go out without a perhaps-bag, although perforce, mine must take the character of a baggie. Mushrooms would fall through the holes of a net bag. I wasn't anticipating chanterelles when I went out for a walk today, but I am glad I had my perhaps-bag with me.

More Botanical Art

Day 14: The vining hydrangea (Japanese climbing hydrangea, Hydrangea anomala) doesn't provide much visual interest during spring and summer, but its few white flowers and lush green foliage fill the gap between the House of Chirp and Pussywillow Cottage nicely and give me something to look at through the kitchen window while I'm washing dishes. That said, when autumn delivers its Midas touch and the foliage turns to gold, it is utterly spectacular. For the better part of two weeks, it's been asking to sit for a portrait, so with a cold snap threatening to shatter the leaves' tenuous hold on their stems, I snipped a small spray, flattened it against the paper and traced around the edge. I have a very limited palette of watercolours and an even more limited stock of artistic talent, and was not quite sure I wasn't biting off more than I could chew with four (count them!) leaves instead of one, but here you see the result.

Stick with me, people. It's hard to find blog material in the winter months even without a pandemic and political turmoil. Hopefully, I'll be able to return to informative natural history posts at some future date.

The Greatest Thing Since...

Day 13: Over fifty years. That's how long I've been making my own bread: over fifty years. Bread-making is part of my household routine, just like washing the dishes, putting on a new bog roll, vacuuming and dusting (well, maybe not vacuuming and dusting...I have better things to do than vacuum and dust). "Bread Day tomorrow," I say to myself as I pull the second half loaf from last week's baking out of the freezer, or "Gotta put sourdough start down tonight" as I set out a pan to remind myself to do it before bed. Why, then, have I never bought a bread slicer? I've struggled with lopsided slices forever, and although I've never actually sliced a finger, I've come way too close for comfort. Now by "bread slicer," I do not mean some fancy gadget which does the slicing for you. I suppose to be semantically correct, this simple non-mechanical device should be called a "bread slice gauge," but that's too much work to say. Even Amazon refers to it as a "bread slicer" despite its notable absence of a blade. Yes, I finally took the plunge, and with even slices falling like dominoes from each cut, I have to say that it's the greatest thing...well, you know the phrase...the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Winter Clothes

Day 12: Yep, it's time to break out the winter clothes. A few light frosts had already touched my garden, not enough to knock the raspberries entirely out of commission, but I could tell by mid-afternoon yesterday that the overnight temperature was going to take a plunge, if perhaps not all the way to 22 degrees as has been forecast. It didn't miss by much. My weather station recorded 26 for the low, and I was glad I'd dug out my fleece nightgown and put an extra blanket on the bed. But I am not the only one changing into my winter garb. The Goldfinches have lost their summer glow and only their white wing-bars make them instantly recognizable among the other LBJs in the yard (that's "Little Brown Jobs" in birder parlance). A close encounter yesterday when one nearly landed on me as I was filling the feeders inspired me to wonder what triggers the change in some birds and not in others. I did a fair bit of information-mining, and the consensus is that we don't really know for sure. It is believed to be keyed by photoperiod insofar as timing is concerned, i.e., length/strength of daylight, but schools of thought are divided as to whether it is related to camouflage and/or thermal efficiency. There simply hasn't been much research done on the subject. Oh, if only I were fifty years younger! There are so many questions I want answered, so many "whys and wherefors" without adequate explanations. This, my dear readers, is why I write these natural-history posts: to inspire you to guide your children into pursuing education in the sciences and perhaps even to become the scientists of the future. Maybe one of them will find out why the vivid Goldfinch puts on such drab winter clothes.

Attention Span

Day 11: I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but presently, my attention span is equivalent to that of a nervous gerbil. I can't focus, can't stick with any project more than five minutes, am flitting from craft to craft like a butterfly in a summer meadow. A twenty-throw sequence on the loom seems interminable, two full rotations of the kumihimo disk almost more than I can manage before I feel I can no longer sit still and dart out to feed the birds. Fortunately, I'm not a nail-biter or I'd have them chewed to the bone. That said, I want to feel I've accomplished something, completed a project, finished a task to reassure myself that I have some marginal control over the pattern of my life instead of feeling like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up the hill only to have it roll back down again. To keep from tearing out my remaining hair, I turn the disk again, draw the weft across the warp, finding little of the comfort I once took in watching fabric grow beneath my hands.

Botanical Art

Day 10: I'm not kidding myself. I know that I don't have an artistic bone in my body. I couldn't draw a square square if you paid me, and to try to get the proportions and perspective right on something as simple as an egg is as far beyond my skill as trying to recreate the work of one of the Old Masters. However, I do think I have a good eye for colour, which is probably the product of years of doing needlework. I never need to carry a fabric sample to the store to match thread. I simply commit it to memory before I go shopping. Lack of artistic talent aside, I have long desired to be able to do botanical illustrations in some medium or another, so when a friend began taking watercolour classes, I thought I'd give it a try. I bought a cheapo kit: several brushes, some paints in tubes and some in "tablet" form. The tubes struck me as likely to waste a lot of paint, so I haven't cracked them yet, but I seem to be doing okay with the hard sort. After my first few attempts turned out rather too light (the vine maple, for example), Patty advised me to allow the paint to dry and then add a second layer to make the colour stronger. While I don't think I'm there yet, I'm not unhappy with the results either. That said, I have to admit to a certain cheat: I know I can't draw, so I traced around real leaves and then laid in the colour. Hey, at least I stay within the lines.

A New Old Loom

Day 9: Earlier this year, one of the members of our Morris-dance side offered me an old loom she thought she'd never use. Never one to pass up a fiber-arts tool, I masked up and went to collect it. She'd stacked the pieces on her porch so that we could maintain social distance while I loaded it into my car, but to my way of thinking, there was a lot more wood in the pile than could be accounted for in the structure of a single loom. Once I got home, I began sorting parts and in the end, found that they went together to make a simple frame loom, one large and two smaller rigid heddle looms. The mid-size rigid heddle is shown here with its first project half-loaded. It came with one heddle, the dents much too large for any of my preferred weaving fibers, so I started looking for smaller gauge reeds with very little success. The manufacturer was unknown and the dimensions didn't seem to correspond with any name brand, so I got on the horn to the nice people at Halcyon Yarns to see what they could recommend. In the end, I bought two Schacht reeds and cut them down to fit the blocks. As engineering projects go, it wasn't a difficult task, and the end result was that I now have a fully functional 21-inch rigid heddle loom, perfect for those larger short-term projects like this shawl.

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.

A Natural Blue

Day 7: When you think of mushrooms, you probably imagine them in woodsy, earthy shades: warm browns, dusky greys, red, cream, but certainly not vivid aqua blue. Nevertheless, Chlorociboria aeruginascens is exactly that, and as blue in life as it is in this photo. When my botany partner found it on the property he patrols and referred it to me for identification, I admitted to a sizeable jealousy saying, as I recall, "I'd give my eye teeth to see that in real life." Not one to disappoint, he brought me a piece of the wood hosting it, although by the time it arrived, the cups had disappeared and the only thing giving evidence to their former occupancy was a faint blue smear. After one false start, I found a suitable habitat for the "Joe Log," as it has come to be known, and since cups started appearing a month or so ago, I've been checking its development weekly. I do not want to disturb it too much because the fungus seems to be quite content in its new home, and since it grows on the underside of the wood, it is necessary to move it to make any observations. It has multiplied substantially in four weeks, and the largest cups measure roughly half a centimeter in diameter.

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.

Himself, The Documentation

Day 5: Aye, an' tha' wuild be Himself a-takin' o' 'is wee mid-day meal, th' dear wee lad. Far from the best photo, it is at least documentation of the male Anna's Hummingbird who is a frequent, if very brief visitor to the feeder. His colour is extremely difficult to catch, his throat and crown black in most lights, affording only a glint of red as he turns his head. Since he seemed to be more hungry than usual yesterday, I set the camera up on the tripod in the middle of the living room, determined to capture his full red glory. "Himself" I call him, the Scottish term of respect for the lord and master of the manor, although I do not believe that there is only this one individual. He is very territorial, and frequently leaves the restaurant in hot pursuit of interlopers. I have only seen him share the feeder once, and that with a female. I have it on report from a friend that Anna's is a year-'round species, at least in Eatonville, but this year marks the first time I have confirmed them in my yard at any season. And as another friend remarked, "Nature has been very kind to you during the pandemic." That she has: Anna's Hummingbirds by the hundred, Chickadees of both species eating from my hand, Scrub Jay and friend at the feeder, the Nuthatch, even my very own Corallorhiza maculata ("Mac"), all within the bounds of my yard.

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.

She Scores!

Day 2: As a hunter-gatherer ("hunting" what I gather, you understand), I am keenly aware that timing is critical. Nevertheless, I very nearly missed the window for this score, although I was at this exact spot on September 29. That's fourteen days ago, and there was not a single Shaggymane in evidence at that time, not even a button. Today, there were at least a hundred, 75% of which were in some phase of turning to ink, many already long gone. The top left image shows the scene as I first perceived it with a heavy heart. How could I have possibly missed them? And then as I attempted to assess whether any of them were salvageable for soup, I realized that I was surrounded by younger, healthier specimens. I pulled my perhaps-bag out of my pack, grabbed my 'shroom knife and began severing stipes. Eventually, I said, "Okay, that's enough. The rest of you stay there and make lots more Shaggies for me for next year." To date, it was the heaviest yield I've seen at this particular location. It's almost as if they're benefiting from being harvested. End of story? I've just polished off an enormous bowl of Shaggymane soup: thick, rich and seasoned with salt, pepper and a light touch of garlic. You gotta love autumn.

The Eleven Rock

Day 1: This image is intended to serve two purposes, the first of which is to launch the 11th year of daily posts covering a variety of subjects, but largely in the field of natural history and expressly in botany. It is my way of engaging my readership in the sciences, and I hope they find my presentations informative and entertaining. Secondly, it serves to lead into a discussion of human nature, specifically regarding our compulsion to collect. The photo shows the "Eleven Rock," which followed me home from Maine a decade ago, along with a handful of shells which left my luggage smelling decidedly marine. Y'see, it is in our very nature to collect things and transport them from one site to another, hence the archaeological discoveries of shell middens hundreds of miles from the waters of an ocean, or glassy, volcanic rocks in areas known to be of sedimentary geology. These collections give clues into the story of humanity, its discovery and its advances. Mankind travels from place to place in search of new and better things. Sometimes he stays where he finds them, but like as not, he takes them home and employs them in more familiar surroundings. Working in a National Park, I frequently have to tell people that they must leave their intended memorabilia behind: walking sticks, rocks, seed pods, but as I do so, I wonder silently if I am interfering with nature in a way most people don't consider. In denying people their collections, am I somehow changing what might have been a different history? Admittedly, I am of two minds on this subject and toe the official line when in areas where collecting is prohibited, but there are also those times when some allowable object like the Eleven Rock slips into my pocket. It's my nature.

Hexagons And Me

Day 366: The top of the hexagon (Flower Garden) quilt is done but for adding white around the three remaining sides. The next step will be to batt and back it before settling in to the serious work of hand-quilting. Each hexagon will be shadow-quilted (i.e., outlined with a row of stitching) and the gold solids will each have a simple six-petalled flower in their centers. This has been one of the most enjoyable quilting projects I've undertaken in the last fifty years, although machine-piecing it wastes an astonishing amount of thread. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to making another one, perhaps from the surfeit of prints left over from the Kitty Quilt. "Cats and Kittens"....hmmmm, that concept has promise.

Nicknames

Day 365: You may have noticed that many of the visitors to my yard have been given generic or individual nicknames. There's Nut, the 'Dee-dees, Little Blue Snot (the Lazuli Bunting), Snowflake (a junco with a single white feather on its head) and so on. This is GC, short for Golden-Crowned Sparrow. If you think back to an earlier post this year, I had what I believed to be a dozen or so juvenile Chipping Sparrows foraging on the ground below the feeders. I realize now that my identification was in error. Birds exhibiting the same behaviour have now coloured up, and the patch on their heads is noticeably yellow. This species is more common to my yard, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't immediately recognize GC when he was younger. Now that he is nicknamed, this episode of Backyard Birding will jog my memory when the juveniles show up next year.

Beaded Tatting

Day 364: I'm on a tatting jag again. I think my love of this form of needlework dates back to early childhood when I was first learning that you could do things with string. My grandmother had started me on embroidery when I was only three or four, moving on to crochet and knitting before I started kindergarten. If I had no tool handy and found a stray piece of string or thread, whether it was caught on my clothing or picked up from the ground, I would almost always begin tying it in knots. When I reached the end, I'd start knotting the knotted strand until finally, I had a compact knot of knots which I could drop in the trash. It seemed to me even then that something useful should have come from all that knotting, but it wasn't until I reached adulthood and began one of my first jobs as an art-needlework consultant that I learned how to tat using a shuttle. Only in the last few years have I discovered needle-tatting and find it much easier and faster. Adding single beads to a piece of work is a breeze using the needle. Simply string your beads on the ball thread and slide each one into place when it comes time to have it appear in the pattern. Here, I have taken a "snowflake" motif and have replaced most of the picots not used for joining with beads. These "mini-doilies" go in my lace box for use as thank-yous and small gifts.

False Lily-Of-The-Valley Berries

Day 363: The berries of False Lily-of-the-Valley (Maianthemum dilatatum) are attractive in a native-plant garden, especially in the early stages of ripening when they are creamy white mottled with dark red. While not considered toxic to humans unless consumed in large quantities, these small fruits are an important food source for ground-foraging birds such as grouse as well as for small mammals. Humans find them relatively unpalatable in any event, although they were used medicinally by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. The plant can monopolize its space under ideal circumstances where shaded and moisture meet its requirements, but is not difficult to keep within bounds or to thin to manageable proportions. In spring, it bears a raceme of small white flowers.

Worth Every Prickle

Day 362: Gooseberries are not commonly seen in stores these days, nor at roadside stands. Few people grow them even for home use in pies or as jam. Given my fondness for gooseberry jam, it's hard for me to imagine that a few prickles would be a major deterrent, but on the other hand, they require a lot of meticulous preparation before they're serviceable. In the jargon of gooseberry cultivation, the process is known as "topping and tailing." Using a sharp knife, both the stem and blossom ends must be trimmed from each berry individually, a time-consuming but not altogether unpleasant task if you occupy yourself with thinking of the tart/sweet taste of the jam on a future muffin. Their general unavailability led me to plant a couple of bushes several years ago, but they did not do well in the location I chose. I decided to try Alternate Plan B: purchase new ones and bed them in huge flower pots in the Berry Pen where my blueberries flourish. Then, in an attempt to make the best of a bad deal, I also moved the old plants to the Berry Pen. The relocation and new plantings were successful and I harvested a pound and a half of tangy gooseberries this last summer. Concurrently, I planted two red-currant bushes and got enough fruit this year to make a quarter-cup of juice which I added to the gooseberries, turning the whole lot into six half-pints of one of my favourite bread-spreads. That said, potential gooseberry farmers should be aware that the plants are armed and dangerous, but to my way of thinking, worth every prickle for the yield.

Guttation

Day 361: "Why is that plant/fungus sweating?" Particularly while hiking in the early morning hours, you may have noticed someting resembling dew on the margins of leaves, at the tips of blades of grass or sometimes on flower petals even though dew is not otherwise in evidence. In plants, this occurs when soil moisture is high and the plant's uptake of water exceeds its rate of traspiration due to its stomata ("breathing pores") being closed at night. Root pressure forces the excess out through specialized sructures called hydathodes. The process is less fully understood as it applies to fungi, but some theorize that it is the mushroom's way of protecting itself against rot, expelling excess moisture from its internal tissues. The photo above shows guttation droplets on a crust fungus.

Lycoperdon Perlatum, Puffballs

Day 360: It's been a long time since I found enough puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum) for a bowl of soup, and that status remains unchanged. However, I did find a nice little cluster, all but one of which are shown in the photo above, and I was sorely tempted to gather them to add to the few chanterelles I had in my bag but did not. With puffballs, timing is everything and usually when I find them, they are too far gone to collect. Once the interior begins to turn brown (even faintly), they take on a bitter taste. There are a number of different edible puffballs, but Lycoperdon perlatum is the most common here in the Pacific Northwest. You can find them almost anywhere: deep in the forest, in your lawn, even poking up through hard-packed gravel along road edges or in your driveway. Lycoperdon perlatum is relatively easy to identify by the small warts on its surface, but with any puffball, it is always advisable to section one vertically and examine it for any evidence of gill formation. If it is marshmallow-like throughout, it's not an Amanita. That said, Lycoperdon is bothersome to prepare. Each puffball must be peeled like a hard-boiled egg, a process which often means sacrificing some of the flesh. A handful as small as this one might have yielded a whole tablespoon, so I left them to make more puffballs and made a mental note of the location for future reference.

Fuchsia Flowers And Fruit

Day 359: Would it surprise you to learn that the fruit of hardy fuchsias is edible? Once again, I will remind my readers that the words "edible" and "desirable as food" have two entirely different meanings, but they're not as widely separated in this case as in many other instances. Fuchsia berries (the maroon lobes in the upper right of the image) are mildly sweet and bear a slight perfume to the palate. Oddly, I have never noticed any particular scent to the flowers of any of the ones I cultivate; the berries seem to be borne solely by the smaller-flowered varieties (Genii and Riccarotonii, presumably more closely related to the wild plant). I had planned to experiment with adding them to jelly this year, possibly using apple as the carrier as some people do when making mint or rose jelly, but despite the hummingbirds' best efforts (and they were very active), the plants have produced very little fruit when compared to past years. It was an experiment I was greatly anticipating, but unless the prodigious flowers still on the shrubs are fertilized and ripen quickly, it will have to wait until next autumn.

'Dee-deelightful!

Day 358: These are not all photos of the same individual bird. It might be hard to tell chickadees apart from one another, but there was strong competition for that handful of seed, one landing on my fingers in a flutter of feathers which knocked another one off my palm and into flight. I had accidentally let the feeders go almost empty (the little critters are gobbling as much as two full large coffee cans every day!), so I made a personal offer before loading it up again. They practically swarmed me as the hummingbirds do when I'm trying to replace their sugar-nectar. If there is one good thing to say about 2020, it's that I've made new friends...LOTS of new friends!

American Robin

Day 357: The American Robin (Turdus migratorius) is so very different from what residents of England and Europe know as a robin or robin redbreast. The European Robin (Erithacus rubecula) is not even related to the thrushes, but rather to the family of Old World flycatchers and chats. You Aussies add another level of complication to the issue of common names. Attempts to introduce the European Robin down under were unsuccessful, and your "robin redbreast" (Scarlet Robin, Petroica boodang) is more closely akin to crows and jays. Yeah, that surprised me, too. Let's do some comparisons to put the three species into perspective for my readers who are separated from me by sizeable bodies of water.

Facts about Turdus migratorius:
Weight, 2-3 ounces (75-90 gm)
Wingspan, 12-16 inches (30-40 cm)
Length, 9-11 inches (23-28 cm)
Males and females are similar

Facts about Erithacus rubecula:
Weight, 0.7-0.8 ounces (16-22 gm)
Wingspan, 8-9 inches (20-22 cm)
Length, 5-5.5 inches (12-14 cm)
Males and females are similar

Facts about Petroica boodang:
Weight, 0.4-0.5 ounces (12-14 gm)
Wingspan, 8 inches (20.5 cm)
Length, 4.5-5.5 inches (12-13 cm)
Males more brightly coloured than females

So y'see, when we're talking about robins, we could be talking about apples and tomatoes, or even apples, tomatoes and blueberries here. This is why I use Latin names whenever possible.

Reprod

Day 356: My readers will have seen me use the term "reprod" when I'm writing about hiking in Pack Forest or other multiple-use forests, and although some may have figured out what it means by inference, others may be wondering. It's shorthand for "reproduction forest," known also as "artifical regeneration," and refers to groups or stands of young trees which were created either by direct seeding or by planting of seedlings. Here in the Pacific Northwest, reprod is most likely to be Douglas-fir or Western Hemlock (our two big timber crops), or less commonly Red Alder. Here you see a fairly open stand. Areas like this can be a treasure-trove for mushroomers, easy to walk through as long as you stay alert for broken, poky branches, but most of the time, reprod is difficult to penetrate even when you're as short as I am. Eventually, these trees will be cut for pulp wood or selectively thinned so that the strongest, straightest and tallest can mature into "lumber on the hoof."

An Acquired Taste

Day 355: This marks the fourth year my Akebia vines have borne fruit as a result of hand-pollination. I have only been successful in fertilizing the purple-flowered female from the white-flowered male, although this spring I thought I might have succeeded in going the other direction. However, the ovaries of the white-flowered vine only swelled slightly and then dropped, leading me to conclude that one or the other (male or female) is sterile. My success gave rise to an even greater puzzle: what to do with the fruit itself. Purportedly edible and even enjoyed by the Japanese, the "sea-slug" in the interior of the pod is a mass of sizeable black seeds surrounded by a thin translucent white goo. To eat an Akebia, you scoop out the slug, pop a portion of it in your mouth, roll it around with your tongue to get the sticky bits off the seeds, and at that point, you can spit the seeds back into the rind for easy disposal. You might be left wondering why you'd bothered. Each year, I've dutifully experimented with eating the fruit and until today, dismissed it as a pointless venture, but when I brought in the pod which had split overnight, I found it rather sweet and enjoyable. Perhaps it was because this pod was perfectly ripe, neither too green nor too mature, or perhaps I have finally acquired a taste for Akebia fruit. I'm looking forward to the next one, and there are 14 yet to come.

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.