Spring beauty: Erythroniums (Trout Lilies)

Posted on Sunday, April 5, 2009 by nosleepingdog

These elegant and delicate plants flower for a week or so, set seed (which are carried deep underground by ants, where some germinate) and vanish within weeks, spotted leaves and all, until next year. The leaves are beautiful in themselves, and give several Erythronium species their common names, Trout Lily and Fawn Lily. They may also be called dog’s-tooth violet and adder’s-tongue, for reasons unknown to me. Here we have Erythronium hendersonii, the only purplish species. Others are white, pink, or yellow. Species found in southern Oregon include E. hendersonii, E. oregonum, E. californicum, E. montanum (Avalanche Lily), E. citrinum (Citrus Fawn Lily or Cream Fawn Lily), E. howellii, and E. klamathense/klamathensis.

These pictures were taken April 3 and 4, 2009.

Ribbons of ice emerging from the ground

Posted on Thursday, January 8, 2009 by nosleepingdog

After a night-time low of 20°F, we found these little ribbons of ice growing out of a cut in a slope.

The slope is like a road-cut, made when the place for the barn was bulldozed out before we came here. The exposed soil is so poor (mostly decomposed rock, really), and the summers so hot, that the slope remains raw. It appears that the ice results when water trickles down the hill through the coarse soil and then, under cold conditions, oozes out when it comes to the cut.

In some places, I think the water or ice has forced apart bits of soil producing a filigree-like pattern. The outer surface of the pattern is often frosted with ice.

In the darker areas of the picture above, you can see the sandy soil shadowed by the raised lacy structure. The structure is, I think, made of ice, and of soil pushed up and out by ice expanding as it reaches the cold air (my theory!).

Unusual fungus: in the Cordyceps genus?

Posted on Saturday, January 3, 2009 by nosleepingdog

Late in December we were walking to the mailbox when my sharp-eyed husband spotted some very inconspicuous fungi growing a few feet off the gravel driveway.

They occurred singly, but sometimes several with a square foot or so. In the photo above there are five within the white outline. You can see the approximate size, in comparison to an AA battery, below.

We’d never seen this before, so at home I searched online to identify it, starting with my first thought: it most reminded me of a coral-type fungus popularly known as “dead man’s fingers”. With the common name to search on I easily found a good page with photo and description of Xylaria polymorpha (Dead Man’s Fingers). But no, they don’t have the amber-to-peach color, or the slim shape of what we saw. More searching, through the clubs and corals section of this site. When I found Cordyceps militaris, I thought I had it, and nothing else I turned up on this site or elsewhere came closer to matching the size and appearance of our new fungus. Also it appears aboveground now, rather than in spring.

Both photos from the same page cited above, on Michael Kuo’s mushroomexpert.com site.

It’s always neat to identify things, but this tentative identification came with an added surprise regarding the host of the fungus. Kuo says,

The genus Cordyceps consists of clublike parasites that attack underground puffballs or insects. The puffball-parasitizing species are cool enough (see Cordyceps ophioglossoides for an example, and see the Key to Mycotrophs for a key to 5 North American species), but the bug parasites are astounding. They erupt from insects, bringing to mind the infamous scene in Alien in which John Hurt has a very bad meal.

Cordyceps militaris is the best-known and most frequently collected bug-killing Cordyceps, but there are dozens of “entomogenous” species in North America. The victim for Cordyceps militaris is a pupa or larva (usually of a butterfly or moth). Its mycelium colonizes the living insect and mummifies it, keeping it alive just long enough to generate the biomass it needs to produce the mushroom–a “spore factory” that allows the Cordyceps to reproduce.

With Cordyceps militaris the bug is buried in the ground or in well decayed wood, which means the mushroom collector usually sees only a little orange club with a finely pimply surface.

In the right-hand photo above you can see the pupae from which the mushrooms grew.

In fact, one species of this genus attained a queasy notoriety not long ago as the “mind-control” fungus, because it infects tropical ants and when ready to spread spores, somehow drives the ants upward on plants, where the spore body bursts in an optimal location for dissemination. You can see a YouTube video on this which was drawn from a David Attenborough presentation. The video shows ants behaving oddly, then climbing, then the disturbing progression of the fungus emerging, over time, from the head of an ant while it clings motionless to a stem. Victims of some of the many other Cordyceps species are shown––each specializes on a different insect. However, Attenborough closes with a sop to our human sensibilities: the fungi have a “positive effect” on the overall ecosystem by preventing any one species of insect from becoming disproportionately numerous. [For description and photos of other parasites which manipulate their hosts’ behavior for their own ends, including a worm that causes its terrestrial host insects to leap suicidally into water where it can then proceed to its next stage, see this page.]

After we first spotted the possible Cordyceps mushrooms there was a snow that stayed around, and only today did I get back to look for the underground host. Would it be a puffball, or pupa? I went out with camera, paring knife, ruler, and a kneeling pad to investigate. While I find the photos of the parasitized insects repellent, I was still excited about making a little discovery. Of such inconsistencies are humans composed.

The work had to be done slowly and carefully: the mushrooms are brittle, and they have grown up through one or two inches of loosely packed pine needle bunches. Moving away the needles can break a mushroom that has emerged between the needles of a single bunch. Once the mushroom had broken off, either above or below ground, with the naked eye I could not detect any path to follow downward, no stem-like structure, no path of mycelia leading to the nutrient source. The brown things at the base on the picture below are not roots but bits of decayed pine needle, as far as I can tell.

Also, the mushrooms may angle through the ground on their way up, and whatever connexions lie underground are apparently very delicate and fragile. Digging around one with the knife and attempting to raise it along with a small clump of its surroundings did not succeed. The mushroom still came away with no visible source. The brown things at the base on the picture below are not roots but bits of decayed pine needle, as far as I can tell.

I dug deeper under where the mushroom had been, and pulled out the crumbly earth, thinking I might find the remains of puffball or insect, but I didn’t. There were little chunks of bark spiderwebbed with mycelia, and at one spot a small mass of mycelia but no way for me to link this with the aboveground mushroom.

Finally I gave up, feeling bad that I had dug up 5 of these little guys before they had dispersed their spores and I hadn’t answered my question or evolved a better technique. The host body––puffball or pupa––may be consumed, gone. Or, I might find it if I took a shovel, dug up one mushroom surrounded by a spadeful of earth, and then used archaeological delicacy to remove the soil a bit at a time. Then again, it may be another of the many Cordyceps species, growing from something completely different. Maybe another day.

In the meantime, perhaps someone else has an idea what these fungi might be: popping up in late December, near conifers in open mixed forest, recent growth, at the 2000′-2500′ level in the Siskiyous of Southern Oregon. Any suggestions?

What bees do in the winter

Posted on Friday, December 26, 2008 by nosleepingdog

This summer we found out that a swarm of bees had moved into a cavity in a dead tree on our place.

I had to be quick to get this closeup (below) before the bees began to let me know I was not welcome.

When the weather cooled they became a little less active and I could get even closer, briefly.

As winter came on, I wondered if the bees would wall off part of the opening, to keep warmer. I asked our local librarian, who is also a beekeeper, and she told me that this wasn’t typical bee behavior (although they may seal small cracks), and that they’d be fine in our climate. Somewhere further north, I assume they choose more protected locations.

Bees stay warm by clustering together and doing the bee equivalent of shivering to generate a little warmth. They live on stored honey during this time. Some individuals will die over the winter and their bodies will be hauled out of the hive in spring. But the majority, and the queen, will survive.

Now that we’ve had some snow, and 18°F days, I went to check on the bees. None were visible and I got closer and closer until my head was right at the opening. And I could hear this wonderful sound of the bees buzzing deep within their tree! I listened for a few minutes until the bees became aware of me and one flew up to send me on my way.

There are, according to Wikipedia, no honey bees native to North America, so this lot or their ancestors must have originated in a swarm of honey bees from a beekeeper’s hive. We are delighted to have them, and our librarian-beekeeper told me that many beekeepers are looking to honeybees who’ve survived on their own, for resistance to whatever is causing the colony collapse disorder that has wiped out so many bees in man-made hives. But “our” bees can just stay where they are as long as they like.