Oyster Gills

I'd just set out four trail cameras in a new area when I lucked into a small flush of Oyster Mushrooms on a decaying, but still standing, oak trunk. As I photographed their gills I was impressed by how fresh and debris-free they looked. (Click on any image to view it larger.)

But when I got the images home and viewed them on my monitor I cursed the stray strand of miscellaneous nature fragment that I hadn't noticed in the field.

I thought it was a superfine monofilament of lichen until I zoomed in and saw that it was a dewy strand of spider silk.

I also failed to notice the fungus crawlies. I'm going to guess this is a mite since it appears to have six legs and something like palps, but I poked around Google and Google Scholar a little bit without finding another picture like this guy. How does such a tiny creature ever find its way to the gills of a mushroom?!

Pleurotus ostreatus

One thing I learned as I was poking around for information on the crawlies is that oyster mushrooms don't just feed on wood. They also parasitize, i.e., eat, nematodes. To paraphrase The Big Lebowski: Sometimes the nematode eats the fungus. Sometimes the fungus eats the nematode. 

Although some fungi use constricting loops of hyphae to trap nematodes, and others use adhesive hyphae, the oyster mushroom poisons its prey. As we read here: 

"When grown in a nitrogen-poor environment like wood, P. ostreatus will produce a toxin on aerial hyphae. Instead of diffusing into the environment, the toxin remains as a droplet on the hyphae. In this manner, the toxin remains undetected by the unfortunate nematode until contact is made; the nematode is promptly paralyzed by the toxin. Hyphae will then colonize the nematode, and eventually digest it."

[UPDATE]

Interesting story about this in the New York Times (Jan. 2023)

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Atmospherics

Watch on YouTube

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At The Stumps

Gray Fox

Western Gray Squirrel

Raccoon

Blacktail Deer

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Nature's Gifts

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I like a well-ordered, even minimalist image as much as the next guy, but I also like the rumble-tumble of the bumble-scrumble—nature in all her random mathematical chaos. Especially when the image includes flowing water and rocks being colonized by moss.  

I also liked the jaggy emerald forest of the moss and ferns contrasted with the smooth softness of supple water and solid stone.

Back in the dry months I used to enjoy sitting as still as possible on these rocks where I'd face downstream into a spacious glade created by the high canopy of trees. There was a small pool of water that survived at the base of the dry rocks, and birds would land practically at my feet to drink and bathe. 

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Once again I wasn't finding any large fleshy fungi, just little fellas like this weather-worn trio of (I believe) Mycena maculata. After taking a series of photos to be stitched into this single image later on, I reflected on the fact that the forest is my hunting ground, but the quarry is aesthetic sustenance. I get virtually all my food, clothing and shelter through our system of worldwide industrial trade, and I spend almost all my time in a man-made landscape. The aesthetic sustenance I get from my too-brief excursions into nature is much more substantial than simply acquiring a photograph.

Which reminds me that shinrin-yoku, or Japanese forest bathing, is having a moment. I even saw a book about it on the "new non-fiction" shelves at Green Apple the other day. It's hypothesized that the molecules floating in the forest atmosphere have a beneficial effect on us, and savvy marketers will gladly sell us a bottle of essential oils to bring some of forest bathing's benefits into our own home.

Shinrin-yoku is another "ecosystem service" provided freely by nature. Gifts such as clean air and fresh water literally make our lives possible, and our lives are degraded in proportion to how much we degrade those gifts.

Nature is the gift-giver par excellence, the substrate of everything we are and the original giver of life to our small blue planet, our twirling mote in the immensity of space. Nature says Merry Christmas to us every day. 

Here's hoping we learn, very soon, to take better care of what she gives us.

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Solstice Sunrise

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You know you're spoiled rotten when you call a sunrise like this ... a dud! As I looked out the bedroom window this morning I could just make out the waning crescent moon, nearly half-way across the sky, shining dimly through a layer of cloud. I sensed that a colorful sunrise might not be in the cards, or in the clouds, but I was already out from under the covers, maybe twenty-seven-percent awake, and it was just after 6 a.m. Which meant I had about 20 minutes to get dressed, get my gear together, make some coffee, toast a bagel, and get going in time to reach the Mt. Tam gate when it would open at 7 a.m.

I decided to go for it, but I didn't have my hopes up. I was on the road by 6:23 and had great traffic karma all the way up, which made me a tad early. I was actually first in line at about 6:55, and by the time the slightly tardy ranger opened the gate a little past 7, there were four cars behind me. 

I'd seen a deep crimson bar on the horizon earlier which had gotten my hopes up a little bit, but instead of blossoming into a Mt. Tam Winter Wonder Spectacle of a sunrise, the color had likely faded even before the gate opened.

Nevertheless, I am lucky and blessed to have a place like this to enjoy on a Saturday morning. A pair of red-tailed hawks called to each other as they sewed flight lines across the sky, surfing the strong, chilly winds with nary a wingbeat. I needed a jacket as I started down the Cataract Trail, but I had to take it off soon after I entered the woods and got out of the wind. The creek was flowing clear and with authority, but not rushing. The day is short. I'll savor it while it lasts.

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Roots

Trace your roots back far enough and you finally reach... fungi. It's said that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. Though to be fair, not by much. But if you were worried that you might be descended from apes, you can relax. You are actually descended from some kind of proto-fungal flagellate. And of course, before that you were descended from a broad scattering of elements formed in exploding stars.

Scientists have even traced the unfolding of our universe pretty much back to its birth, even to before light came into existence. Somehow, the kernel of what we are today existed even way back then.

As for the mother that birthed that magic kernel, I'm sorry but that is not just unknown but unknowable. I'd like to invent a story to fill in the gaps of how the universe came into being and how a bunch of elements formed in exploding stars came to life, but if I did, it would involve bobcats and coyotes and toyon berries because those are things I kind of understand. So instead of inventing a story like I did in my last post, I'm just going to go along with Iris DeMent and let the mystery be.

I'd hoped to find some nice fruitings of large fungi last weekend, but all I could find were variously sized troops of little Mycena species. But with any luck, Santa will soon bring the Sleeping Maiden a nice variety of chanterelles and things.

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Three-Toed Trunkasaurus

I'd just clomped across a small wooden footbridge after consulting with a bobcat about the proper way to dispose of gopher guts when out of the corner of my eye I saw a sextet of elves marching to the beat of a clapping newt. 

"Watch out! Watch out!" they cried from beneath a flap of flossy moss. "The three-toed trunkasaurus heard your noisy clomping and is coming to eat you up!" 

"Nonsense," I retorted as I snorted in derisive nomenclature. "I have it on good authority—from Granny Gray Fox herself—that in the month of December, T3 eats nothing but chocolate-covered rose hips, and nothing or anything else!"

"Fargenswargen!" said the elves with one voice.

A chill went down my spine.

A creaking of wood did I hear overhead, and a swaying of branch so large that my heartbeat fell into rhythm with the newts: a-CLUMP-a-thumpa, CLUMP-aBOOP-awhumpa. And so on, for what seemed like a few seconds or a few days. I can't be sure. All my certitudes have turned to platitudes, and moss grows upon my knees.

Said I, "I see thee, T3," and a toothy grin did I shine. "Would you like to try my chocolate-covered rose hips? They are fresh from South Lonesome Pine!"

A scarier moment I've never had, not in wood, nor dell, nor hydrothermal vent. But once again, as again and before, I stood on my ground, shouted "Fargenswargen!" with the elves, and made myself  everlasting beneath green Yggdrasil, the Axis of the World—the friend of elves, spelunkers, and footbridge clunkers, of bobcats and foxes, of mosses and lichens—and even of three-toed trunkasauruses.

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Canyon Maple

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As I was absorbed with looking through the viewfinder while making small adjustments to focus the camera and get the ballhead into place in order to compose the scene to taste I suddenly heard a twig snap behind me. It was one of those times where your body is already turning to look before the sound has completely registered in your consciousness, and I kind of jumped a little when a bearded, gnome-like man appeared seemingly out of nowhere on the trail a few feet away. The man pulled up short, perhaps as startled to see me as I was to see him. Not more than a second elapsed before our minds registered the "all clear" and we both said hello and continued about our business. 

I was wondering, where does the yellow go? I placed a mostly yellow hazel leaf on the ground next to "compostable" plastic stuff in my yard, as a sort of benchmark. I poked a tent stake through the leaf so it wouldn't blow away. The very next day the leaf had turned brown, whereas other leaves that had been on the ground much longer were still yellow. I did it again with another leaf and the same thing happened. Poking a hole in the leaf made it turn brown much faster.

I was also wondering, where does the green go? And while I'm at it, how do the green and yellow get in there in the first place? 

It turns out the tree, in this case Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum), has to make the chlorophyll (and the xanthophylls and carotenoids). The fact that a "lowly" plant knows how to put together all the chemical steps necessary to do that is quite impressive, to say the least. "Biosynthesis" is a great word for a magical process. 

I was just checking out online how plants make chlorophyll molecules and was interested to learn that the chemical steps are the same, up to a point, as that needed to make heme. Add magnesium and you get green chlorophyll. Add iron and you get red heme. Both occur in plants, and if you try a web search of plant heme, you will get a jillion hits related to a certain company that makes veggie burgers. Which might annoy you if you just want to know what the difference is between plant heme and animal heme. Because if they are the same molecule, that's pretty interesting. And even if they aren't identical, it's still pretty interesting.

According to Wikipedia, "The enzymatic process that produces heme ... is highly conserved across biology."

Part of the way trees work is the same as part of the way people work. I like to just let that sink in and circulate in a nice bath of neurotransmitters for a minute. Ahh, yes. So relaxing.

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On Time

There was surprisingly little fungi fruiting in the forest today. I roamed down Cataract Creek to see if I could find the same patch of Lipstick Powderhorn lichens I shot last week, expecting that a week's worth of rain would have plumped them up and put a lot more lipstick on. Reality was just the reverse. Time had made the patch look sparse and faded, kinda the way I felt a few mornings last week as I got up for work despite a nagging cold.

Otherwise the forest is greening up nicely, especially the moss. The moss is in a very happy place, in some places almost too green to believe. The Giant Chain Fern above (with an undergrowth of sword fern) reminded me of a line I came across last night as I was reading Nick Neely's Alta California. Neely has been hiking up the coast from San Diego, sort of retracing Gaspar de Portola's 1769 expedition. He wanders around the Ventura County Fair, past funnel cake and deep-fried watermelon, and catches a stray conversation or two: "I also overheard a man say, 'What the fuck's a fern?' walking past some potted greenery. His girlfriend replied, 'It's a little tree.'"

Which reminded me of the time I was down along the Embarcadero, standing at the railing and watching a cormorant paddling around the pilings, when a couple of young women who'd just arrived went OMG excited when they saw the cormorant suddenly arch and dive under the water. "What the heck is that?!" said one. "I think it's a fish!" said the other.

Anyway, I liked the scene above with the gentle riffles on the creek, the grey, olive and ochre cobbles still visible under shallow, clear water, and greenery coming all the way to the water's edge. There are lots of similarly meditative spots along the creek, and I usually take a moment to appreciate a few of them, even if I'm heading for the more attention-grabbing waterfalls (which, today, I was not).

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Lipstick Powderhorn

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I wish I could have set up a timelapse camera on this patch of lichen (which I'm guessing is Cladonia macilenta, or Lipstick Powderhorn) before it rained. I'd love to have seen the progression of growth as desiccated tissues took on water and the bright red spore-producing structures (similar to cup fungi) emerged from the tips of the stalks. 

The Foxelli trail cams actually do have a timelapse function, and last week I looked for a likely placement to capture an eruption of mushrooms. After poking around in the woods awhile I got a better appreciation for how difficult it was going to be to find a good spot! I'll have to try again another time.

I was just refreshing my memory of lichen biology when I read of a discovery in 2016 that the symbiosis of fungus and alga is more complex than previously thought. Instead of a single fungus paired with a single alga, a second fungus was found. And then in 2019, a third fungus was found. I love that we're learning more about these incredible life forms all the time.

The newly found fungi might not be part of the symbiotic relationship, although they don't seem to be harming anything either. It reminds me of our human gut flora, the several pounds of organisms that live inside us yet have their own genomes. We feel like individual creatures, but in fact we're all colonies of organisms. The interloper that recently crashed the gates of my immune system and made me sick was just doing what life does. It pokes around, settling here and there or just passing through as it looks for a connection that makes it safer, more resilient, and part of something larger than its individual self.

If science ever finds the motivating factor that convinces molecules to stop just sitting there, and instead to get off their butts and find something useful to do, such as become a living organism, that will be a mind-blowing day. I wonder if such a motivating factor would be considered a fifth fundamental force of nature, and whether its discovery would make a grand unification theory fall into place so elegantly that we would wonder why it took so long to figure it out.

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