Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Mushroom Class

Looking at sporesEvery Thursday for the last five weeks or so, I've been taking a mushroom class at the Harris Center in New Hampshire. The class began with some ... well ... classwork, where we learned about mushroom evolution (the first mushrooms appeared about 425 million years ago), how many different species there are (over 110,000), how they reproduce and how they make their living  (either mycorrhizally, saprotrophically or necrotrophically).

While all this is very interesting, what everyone in the class really wanted was to just go outside and actually start identifying some mushrooms!

Our instructor, Rick Van de Poll, was quite animated in the field - walking quickly and stopping abruptly when he spotted an interesting mushroom for us to identify.

Identification exercise

Here he holds up a couple of lactarius...

Pointing out fieldmarks

...and here, he points out the identifying features of the Suillus americanus - the Chicken Fat mushroom.

Lesson in the field

And here, the class watches with suspicion as he pops a bit of another mushroom into his mouth after saying "I think this is the poison variety, let me taste it". One thing we learn is that, even a poisonous mushroom is safe to taste AS LONG AS YOU DON'T SWALLOW!

A bountiful harvest

After every class, Jude and I spent the next weekend looking for mushrooms. They aren't hard to find.

Bondarzewia berkeleyi

Some are quite easy to identify like this Bondarzewia berkeleyi.

Identification

However, others languish on the desk, becoming more un-identifiable each day as they slowly deliquesce into goo or wither into little mushroom sticks.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

Small Snakes

Jude seems to always be finding interesting things in her garden. Four-toed salamanders. Hibernating toads. Oil-can beetles. Snakes. Lots of snakes. Under the boards she lays down for mulch. Milk snakes, garter snakes and ring-necked snakes. The milk snakes are often large and have a rather nasty temperament. The garters are medium sized and move quickly into the grass when uncovered. The ring-necked snakes she found last week were small and plentiful.

Ring-neck snakes

How small? This small:

Ring-neck snakes