Goo Day

Happy Goo Day!



I was mistaken in thinking that I'd already missed Orange Goo Day this year... That is, the day the Cedar-Apple Rust and Cedar-Qunice Rust make their outlandish annual appearances.



Hooray! I hate to miss it. This year the appendages seem more noodly than ever, don't they? I wonder if that's because it's rained so much in the past year.

Well, if you aren't hip to the whole orange goo phenomenon, don't fret. I wasn't either, until we moved out to the country. You can read my past posts (with slightly more scientific explanations) here.

So, was it Goo Day with you too? Did you have fun shouting sporulation and heteroecious and gelatinous telial spore horns?

Bird's Nest fungus

I know I'm living up to the most common descriptive written in my old yearbooks ("weird") when my first reaction to finding Bird's Nest fungus is, "Oh, I've been wanting to see those!"



But it's true. If I'd had a Most Wanted list for fungi, this one would've been near the top. I should have prepped myself a bit better though - I didn't realize that they were so tiny. (That green towering thing on the left is an onion.)

It's apparently very much a fungus of bark or wood mulch. The "eggs" contain the spores, which are splashed out by rain. So I'm thinking that our mulch probably already contained the spores when we bought it.

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Key to the Bird's Nest fungi. I believe this one is Cyathus striatus.

Other Most Wanted?
Dead Man's fingers!
Any variety of Stinkhorn fungus!

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Hmm, there's a blog carnival/festival/circus for everything else in the world, but not one for fungi? Or am I just missing it?

Long weekend

'Tis the season for baby toads.


Everywhere a nest, nest.


Woodpecker playground.


Top of the previous tree, now on the ground.


Somewhere behind these leaves, many warblers were cheerfully singing.
(Kentucky, Blue-winged, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Parula, Louisiana Waterthrush.)


Happy with "just clover".


Black Knot & the Cherry Tree.

Stumpery

Squirrels have their own ideas about what makes a good stumpery. "Feeding platforms, a must-have!"



This is what remains of our old falling tree problem.



Turkey-tailish fungi march up one side and down the next.



Flamboyant fungus.

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I only learned about stumperies earlier this week, when a friend sent me an article about the one on Vashon Island. (Pat Riehl, the owner of that one, will be speaking at the B'ham Fern Society lecture in May.)

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Trying to google images of stumperies brought me to an interesting blog, the Folly Fancier, who had featured this stumpish superstructure.

I saw that FF had also written about the Lupercale grotto, another coincidence, since of course Lupercalia starts tomorrow.

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And a dog nicknamed Stump just won the Westminster dog show.

Spongy black fungus

What the heck is that thing?



I don't know, but it sure looks weird.



Back home at the computer, it's Tom Volk to the rescue again.

This is a specialized type of Sooty mold, Scorias spongiosa, that appears only on Beech trees.

Here's another page about it.

I first learned about sooty mold when I took the Master Gardener course. Certain plant-sucking insects excrete honeydew, a delightful name for what really amounts to sugary poop. The sooty mold lives off of it, and that's the black stuff you see on leaves (and other things).

I hadn't realized they came in such specialized varieties, though.

Fungophile (or not)

I thought this fungus would be fairly easy to identify, but not being a true fungophile (or at least not an educated one), I apparently neglected to perform important field tests.



I didn't touch it, so I'm not sure if it was tough, brittle, or pliable. Was the surface felty, soapy, smooth, or otherwise? I don't have a clue.



I didn't sniff it - did it smell typically mushroomy, or more like newly-dug potatoes? Or perhaps like beans? I'm not even sure how "mealy" smells.



I sure as heck wasn't about to taste it. So it may or may not be bitter. Or peppery.



I didn't try to collect spores. I didn't cut a sample to see if it dried a different color.

So all I had to go by were visual clues and a knowledge of the habitat.

I thought it might possibly be Clavicorona pyxidata, but that one grows on rotting logs, and this one didn't appear to... though the log could have been beneath the leaf litter. I should have checked.

Clavaria fumosa was another possibility, but the habitat does not seem to fit. That one grows in open places, and mine was in the woods.

I briefly felt certain that it was Ramaria acrisiccescens, but that one's only in the northwest US.

Then I found Lentaria micheneri. The only description that lists "salmon" as a color possibility. Plus it mentions oak and beech and leaf litter, which was spot-on for the habitat. So that's my best guess.

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So, what's the word meaning "mushroom lover"? I thought fungiphile, but Google kept asking me if I meant fungophile. Online dictionaries don't recognize either, and all my real dictionaries are still packed up in boxes somewhere.

Cedar-apple rust

Extension agents probably hear it a lot this time of year: What the heck is that alien orange thingy in my cedar tree?!



Check out those gelatinous telial spore horns (noodly appendages).

It's Cedar-apple rust, and it's caused by the fungus Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae.

If yours doesn't look quite like this, it might be one of the similar (related) rusts: Cedar-hawthorne rust or Cedar-quince rust. Check the chart of rust differences.

Basically, the Cedar-hawthorne rust's noodly appendages are short and stubby (as opposed to the long and thin ones on the Cedar-apple rust gall shown here). And Cedar-quince rust is mainly just orange goo on bark and twigs. You can see pictures of the latter on my previous posts on the subject here and here. The photos at the first link also show how the rusts appear when they're not quite so wet.

I can't seem to stop writing about these rusts when they make themselves so obvious in the spring. The way they alternate hosts, and of course their appearance, is so unusual.

Fungi expert Tom Volk has written about Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae too, in a much more scientific fashion, here.

Fire in the woods

British Soldiers (Cladonia cristatella), my favorite lichen.



Two very small salamanders. Either Southern Red-backed (Plethodon serratus), Southern Zigzag (Plethodon ventralis), or Webster’s (Plethodon websteri).

According to Salamanders in Alabama, they're "easily confused".



These tiny... things... were growing on a limb rotting on the ground. I can't even tell if they are a type of mushroom, slime mold, lichen, or what. Possibly an immature version of Peniophora rufa...?

The whole line there was about the width of a blade of grass. I could definitely use a macro lens. And of course that portable DNA analyzer that they are being so slow to invent.



An easy one, finally: Truckus plasticus.

And there's always this:

The muscovy duck who thinks he's my boyfriend.



He follows me into the woods, if I'm moving slowly enough.

I'll be hunkered down, minding my own business, trying to take a photo of something low to the ground, when I hear a coarse hissing from behind.

That's my cue to stand up fast, unless I'm in the mood to be nibbled, stabbed, and pinched by a duck.

I'm not sure how he carries bread crumbs, but he's always there waiting when we get back home.

More fun with fungi

Fungi are one of the more frustrating things to try to identify. I thought bugs were bad, but at least BugGuide is pretty dang inclusive. No such comprehensive reference exists for mushrooms, so far as I know.



You'd think this sweet little cup-type would be easy to identify. I was thinking, well it looks like a bird's nest fungus, only without the "eggs". But I can't seem to find any reference to anything like that, not to one that isn't "densely hairy" anyway. Maybe its hairs are all repressed, what with the drought...?



Sometimes it helps to just google what something looks like. (The top search term that finds this blog has been "yellow fuzzy caterpillar" for over 2 years now.)

But trying to find "yellow sandwich fungus" didn't do me much good.



I do believe it's the same fungus as this one, which he calls Stacka hydnum (which you'd think would be the scientific name, but isn't). But other pictures of Climacodon septentrionalis (the real scientific name) look completely different to me.

Then there's this black stuff.



If you look at this site, you'd be pretty convinced that it's Diatrype stigma, common tarcrust.



But if you went by this image, or this one, you might not.



And is this even the same black stuff? It seemed thin and crusty, whereas the others were thicker and sort of... puffed.

I do think, after looking at several images for common tarcrust, that it's what I've been seeing when it seems like there are several old burned branches in an area with no other signs of fire.

MMMushrooms

I had a feeling that the rain last week would make a few fungi shout for joy. I think these are oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus).



But I'm not sure enough to try to eat them.



Even though there are so many.



And they look so tasty.

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Everything I know about mushrooms is from books. The only one I'd be confident enough to eat would be a morel. And I never seem to find more than one of those at a time, so I just leave them and hope they'll make more.

People in Europe gather wild mushrooms all the time, but I've never had anyone here (in the south) tell me that they do.

Cup Fungus

A couple of pictures of a cup fungus from earlier this spring.



Gaze into the inky depths...

You are feeling sleepy, very sleepy...



I believe this is The Devil's Urn, Urnula craterium. At least according to the most entertaining key you'll ever see.

So, The Devil's Urn... the Stephen King of fungi?

There are possibly more suitable candidates for that title:
Death Cap
The Sickener
Destroying Angel
Bleeding Heart Mycena
Poison Pie
Trumpet of Death
Dead Man's Fingers

I found this link about mushroom poisoning in general and the Death Cap mushroom in particular.

The page itself is interesting, but so are the google ads. The first one fits: Morel mushroom hunting. Sure. The next one though, is Hats and Caps for Men. Hmm. Then you have Death Indemnity Coverage. Kind of drives home the whole "world's most dangerous mushroom" idea.

Scenes from dry woods

No time.




We'll talk later.

Maybe by then the Mockingbird will have tired of taunting me, repeating midnight tales of Scarlet Tanagers.

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Turtle shell.
Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum). My husband calls these Germamiums, partly (I believe) because he knows I think it's cute.
Morel mushroom.

Orange goo

Me: Did you see this wierd orange fungus stuff all over the grass?! What is it?

Hubby: Isn't it from that cedar tree right over your head?

Me: D'oh!



I shouldn't be surprised -- I have a hard enough time recognizing people when I see them out of context.^* So I guess not recognizing the cedar-quince rust I wrote about last year when it was in the grass (instead of on a tree) is not so surprising.

This is near a bird feeder, so I'm not sure if the birds knocked it off, or if it just fell off.

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^* If I normally see Ms. XYZ only in a certain place, then I'm not guaranteed to recognize her if I see her somewhere else. For example, I might not recognize my librarian if I run into her at the grocery store. This has gotten worse since we started doing craft shows and see a LOT of people. It probably also has to do with age. (I just realized that this doesn't usually happen if I know the person's name. But since I'm so bad at remembering names that revelation is probably not going to help me much.)

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If it had been cedar-apple rust (see last year's post) I think I would have remembered those alien-invasion-looking things, even in the grass!

Eastern Gall Rust

I took this picture in April 2005 but only recently figured out what it was. When looking up something else I ran across a photo of Eastern Gall Rust (Cronartium quercuum). It's similar to the Cedar Apple Rust that I wrote about last year. They are both heteroecious, which means that they require two unrelated hosts to complete the life cycle.

I learned that $10 word from the Rust page on James Worrall's excellent Forest Pathology site, where you can also learn about cankers and wilts and so many other problems that you'll be amazed that trees can survive at all.

According to one site, the portion of the tree beyond the gall normally dies, which I suppose explains why I haven't noticed this gall since the spring I took this picture.

Black Fungi

I took a couple of exceedingly bad photos of a small black fungus growing in the grass.



It's possibly Craterellus fallax, or Black Trumpet, a type of Chanterelle.



A black jelly fungus:



Looks like the same type that's in many Chinese soups.

I'm not sure enough about either ID to try to eat them, though.