Thursday, January 8, 2015

Goodies for YOU, Patient Reader, and a new year for us all

So, a few low-resolution resolutions floating around in my head, including:

Share more of the wonders of the world with you, here.
More frequently. Starting now. =)

Today's feature: earthstar fungus (shot in November).

I actually think I saw it last year,
but it was kind of like a celebrity sighting:
 "It CAN'T be something as exciting as that earthstar fungus.
It MUST be just some sort of exploded acorn, right?!?"


They do look a lot like exploded acorns.
I actually searched for "germinating acorn" images to be sure.
Nope, not germinating acorns.

Freakin' cool fungus.
Maybe the hygroscopic earthstar, Astraeus hygrometricus.

Measuring up (shot in December):

Hygroscopic refers to how their form changes with the humidity.
Their little rays curl back up when it gets dry,
some all the way into a dark, tough ball that can roll around.

Went back to the site today (January), and they looked like this:

I found another that was an even tidier little brown ball
(no leaf had gotten tangled up in it, like the lower one).

So, that's one of the coolest things I discovered & learned about in 2014.


WICKED COOL COINCIDENCE

Oh, and while I was JUST on the east coast,
gazing at Nauset Lighthouse on Cape Cod, MA,


What did I see at my feet, right about there?
Earthstars!

The 4 in a row are really easy to see in the photo, but there's more than that in this frame.
They were significantly smaller than ours,
but, HOW COOL IS THAT?!?

I was pumped.

'Course back home, now, I can't expect to hear any of those amazing accents,
eat spectacular clam chowder,
or wander about in a frozen swamp (future post).

But, we do get to be with our kitties & hen, again.
And my beloved garden.

'Course I had to WATER a few things in my garden AGAIN today.
It basically didn't rain the 2 weeks we were gone;
and winter is our rainy season.

We really need more rain to counter this drought.

Plus, more rain --> more fungus, woo-hoo!! =)

xoxoxobb

5 comments:

  1. I love a good fungus! These are really cool. I'll have to keep my eye out for these. Surely there must be some in Oregon, too. With all this rain here, we haven't been checking out fungi as much as we should, so that should change.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually when I looked at that first picture I thought it was of a cross between a spider and a snail. A spail, or a snider. If you like fungus you might like my back yard as I had a big old silver maple taken down but then left the stump in, to the delight of various wild mushrooms. Though I doubt any of them are rare. Unfortunately my fungi knowledge is almost non-existent so I can't really tell.

    ReplyDelete

Cool people write inside rectangles....