Campsite mushrooms

The (free) campsite we stayed in just outside of Tahsis runs alongside the Liener River, in deep rainforest under Douglas firs and cedars. The only amenities offered are picnic tables, one per cleared site, and small fire pits, plus a couple of outhouses. We hadn't brought our own firewood, and soon found that all the fallen wood in the area, even bordering the river and road, where the sun occasionally reaches, is soaked through. We had to go into town to collect fire starter and driftwood.

The far side of the river; a dense wall of boundary plants, ferns, salmonberries, and thimbleberries, and beyond them, old evergreens, standing and fallen, moss-covered.

It's always dusk under the evergreens, and the mosquitoes are enthusiastic morning and evening. There is a distant smell of bear; old fish, ancient urine, leftover meals, stewed together in two-inch deep fur.

It's prime mushroom country, even in midsummer.

Polypore with a thick, whitish lip. On the side of a mossy log.

More shelf fungi on the end of a log. Conifer-base polypore and resinous polypore?

A white, oozy shelf fungus on well-rotted wood.

This tiny one was inside a stump. I couldn't get in to see the underside. Note the grey springtail on the edge, and in the centre of the dried evergreen needle, an even smaller globular springtail.

Lichen or mushroom? On a small twig I brought out into the light, resting on the grey picnic table. The mushroom is about 3/8 of an inch tall.

Looking down into the cup. One side has been knocked out.

Yellow slime mold, scrambled egg slime. On well-rotted log.

These are awkward critters to photograph. They grow in dark places; even though it was 11 AM when I took these photos, it was still twilight under the trees. And they don't respond well to flash; the colours change, even fluoresce. So it's handheld, wobbling on precarious, slippery ground, in the dark. And even so, my camera does better than my eyes. It manages to see texture; I didn't.

Scrambled egg, up close.

These were all taken at the same place as yesterday's lot:

GPS coordinates: 49.91553, -126.62502

Found them!

The toothy yellow zucchini mushrooms, that is.

Former mystery mushroom.

I had moved on to process another batch of mushroom photos from the same campsite, some distance away; quite different mushrooms, I thought.

One of the club mushroom family; looks like a funnel or a vase.

This one was a good 6 inches tall, the tallest of a clump of similar mushrooms. And, looking at the group photos I had, I discovered some of the yellow toothy ones in the background.

See it there, hiding in the centre, by the rotting log? And a slightly bigger one, on the far right?

So the mystery is solved. The yellow zucchini with teeth is a youngster, a Turbinellus floccosus, aka Gomphus floccosus, aka Cantharellus floccosus. (Everyone's agreed on the floccosus, at least.)

I found a photo by Tim Wheeler, identified as T. floccosus and with the young ones present, matching mine, here. And here's a youngster in E-Flora BC. The photographer took a series of photos of the same mushroom; here it is as an adult.

Same group of mushrooms, moving to the right.

These grow up to about 8 inches high. Although they look like the edible Chantarelles and the delicious Clavariadelphus truncatus, they have no distinctive taste, and cause digestive upset and liver damage to some people. We didn't attempt to taste them. Better safe than sorry.

Where we found these.

GPS coordinates: 49.91553, -126.62502

Pink gnomes

This past week's travels were full of surprises. Every day, in almost every place we stopped, I discovered things I'd never seen before. Some, I'd seen in books, pale ghosts of the real thing. These gnome plants were among them.

Gnome plant, Hemitomes congestum.

We were lucky; earlier, it would look like a "small, blackened cauliflower head" (Plants of Coastal BC); when it's dry, it would be brown. As we saw it, the cauliflower heads had opened up to show off the waxy pink flowers inside, still not fully developed. In a few, you can see the yellow stigma in the centre.

The leaves were not visible; the flower heads burst directly out of the wet moss and duff.

The plant is a parasite on fungi associated with trees. It has no chlorophyll, and can't make it's own food from sunlight. Down there in the duff, the sun rarely shines anyhow, but no matter; under the ground, where the sun never shines, fungi tap into the tree. The tree stands tall, reaching for the sunlight hundreds of feet above, and generously makes food for itself, the fungi, and the tiny pink flowers at its roots.

Opening head and buds.

Gnome plants are native to western North America, and grow in mature, wet coniferous forests. These ones were on the shore of Bull Lake, just west of Gold River. GPS coordinates: 49.81314, -126.24737.

No-one knows what insect pollinates these flowers. When they mature, they produce a whitish, fleshy berry. Again, no-one knows what animal will eat the berries and drop the seeds.

I think this map might be helpful as I hop back and forth along this road, posting photos from here and there.

The gnome plants were at Bull Lake.

Looks like yellow zucchini with teeth

I found these mushrooms in the campsite near Tahsis.

Unidentified mushroom, about 2 inches high. 

They were growing in a deep mulch of Douglas fir needles, rotting wood, and mosses. This is true rainforest, and all the ground in the area was wet, even though it is mid-summer.

GPS coordinates: 49.91553, -126.62502

The same mushroom, with a couple of new ones sprouting nearby.

There were about a dozen of these, none taller than 2 inches, most just buttons poking through the duff, all within a circle about a metre across. I looked all around the area and found no more.

I sent the photos in to the Mushroom Identification Forum when I got back from Tahsis a week ago; no-one has attempted to id them yet.

Any ideas?

Roadside snaps

Tahsis. Malaspina Lake. Bull Lake. Oyster River. Quadra Island. Rebecca Spit. Gold River. Leiner River. Roberts Lake. And more; I've been there this past week, on an unexpected vacation with family. And now I'm home and starting to sort photos.

Miner's lettuce, moss, ferns, by the side of the Leiner River trail.

All along the highways there are these signs: Elk, 8 km. Elk, 45 km. Elk, Elk, Elk. I've been watching and have not seen even one. Until last week, along the Tahsis highway, a mother and her calf were crossing the road as we came around a curve. By the time we'd stopped, they were in the bush, but I got a quick photo as they turned to watch us from behind the trees.

A poor photo, but I'm happy.

Unidentified lake beside the highway to Tahsis.

Mushrooms next, I think.

It's summer, after all.

I'm back from Tahsis: an amazing trip, with intriguing plants and mushrooms, wonderful scenery, and many stories to share. And now I have unexpected company for the next four days. We're going low-tide beachcombing in the morning.

So I'll probably not be blogging until Monday.

For now, have an apple. And a bit of lichen.

Ripening apples, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park.

See you next week!

So soft!

The path through the protected area at Oyster Bay Shoreline Park is lined at this time of year with pale, pinkish, fuzzy balls, about the size of beans, held ankle height on stiff stems. Down on my knees, they looked like a clover, but no clover I'd ever seen before.

Mini cotton candy flowers

Yes, definitely a clover.

It isn't in my Plants of Coastal BC, but an image search on Google found it quickly. It's commonly named hare's foot clover or rabbit foot clover, obvious choices for names because of it's soft hairiness. Or stone clover, which seems a misnomer.

It's scientific name is Trifolium arvense, which means "three leaves in the field". It's an introduced plant from Europe, but has spread throughout the world. it likes dry, sandy soil like the Oyster Bay dunes.

Growing, in this field, in close company with wild strawberry. A bit confusing. The leaves of the hare's foot clover are small and narrow.

Wild strawberry, without the clover.

There will be no post tomorrow, I hope: weather permitting, I'll be going to Tahsis for a couple of days. I'll be back with more Oyster Bay plants Thursday. (And another couple hundred photos to sort, I'm sure. I'll never catch up!)

Sticky mud, sticky flowers

The Oyster Bay Shoreline Park stretches along a narrow strip between the highway and the ocean. The beach is stony and steep, difficult to walk on, but a good place to sit on a log and listen to the waves rolling in.

At the northern end, protected from the rush of water in the channel by a rocky spit, is the slough, with its ancient, rotted pilings left over from a long defunct marina; now they hold nest boxes for purple martins. The slough is bare mud at low tide, gluey, foot-swallowing mud. It looks solid enough until you step on it; under the crust, it oozes. A skin of rotting seaweed covers large patches, and the whole area stinks. Shorebirds love it.

The inner end of the slough. Somehow, without the stink, it looks prettier. Assorted peeps are foraging in the shallow water. The pilings with nest boxes are off to the left, in the deepest mud. I tried to walk closer to the birds, but the mud wanted to keep my shoes, so I gave up.

From the pathway above the water line, looking down on a piling housing an adventurous elderberry shrub.

Between the parking lot and the slough is a dry, flat plain covered with dry, often prickly plants. Signs at intervals warn us off; some of these plants are rare, some are sensitive.

I've been spending time recently sitting or kneeling on the moss and stones, looking at plants, some thigh-high, others in mats fingertip deep.

The most obvious at this time of year is the bright-flowered gumweed:

Gumweed, Grindelia stricta. Grows on dry land or sea shores. Salt tolerant.

The white exudate on the buds is really sticky.

Half closed at the end of the day.

Typical gumweed plant, this one among the driftwood lining the beach.

Tomorrow, an unusual clover.

Coffee break drop-in

She waits by the coffee press ...

"None for me, thanks. A juicy fly would hit the spot, though."

I always feel like petting the cheetah-skin back; they look so soft!

Perfect fit

(Catblogging interlude)

Cats always know how to make themselves comfortable.

Chia in her favourite spot.

After the kitten dumped three breakable ornaments off the table, I gave up and put an old basket there. She adopted it right away.

The pink "blanket" is a sweater that I foolishly left draped over a chair back. Chia dragged it up to line her bed.

I had forgotten what it's like to live with a kitten. My last cat adopted me when he was already middle-aged, and lived a good, long life. A good, long, peaceful life. Chia is only peaceful when she's sleeping.

But she's good company when she's awake; we have interesting conversations. For example:

Me: Why are there shreds of something pink all over the carpet I just vacuumed?

Chia: Mrrrow?

Me: Good question, eh? Do you know anything about this?

Chia: Yawns, stretches, wanders off to the next room. Comes back dragging the remains of a sock.

Me: Oh. Good thing I found the other slipper, then, isn't it.

Chia: Mmmmmm. Drags the sock into a safe corner under a chair, shakes it a bit - just a warning to behave - then rushes out to attack the vicious monster lurking behind the mirror. I am well protected.

Sunset over Oyster Bay

9:15 PM

For five minutes, the world is orange and black.

A Skywatch post.

Good camouflage

At the high tide line on Oyster Bay, the ground is mostly gravel or grey sand. Below, there's drying, and stinking, seaweed; above, a wide barrier of driftwood. This afternoon, I was walking along this bare stretch in the middle, and every now and then something flickered in the gravel. When I looked, there was nothing there.

Until the stone I happened to be looking at suddenly up and left, and then landed on a frazzled fir cone. And now I could see it.

Grey and green grasshopper, gravel coloured.

I took photos from where I was, then, moving slowly, sat down on the stones to get a closer view. Of course, it leapt away. And try as I might, knowing it was within a metre or so, I could not see any sign of it.

It was about an inch and a bit long. I haven't been able to identify it. GPS coordinates: 49.897914, -125.149469.

Velvety

A young male deer, one of a pair browsing on a residential street. Both had growing antlers.

He seems to have an injured knee, but was walking without a limp.

Deer grow their first set of antlers when they are approximately one year of age. (IWLA)

The antlers start growing in the spring, as the days are lengthening. At this stage, they are bones covered by a soft, nutrient-rich skin, called velvet. In the fall, the skin will dry and fall off, leaving only the hard bone. Later still, the knobby part at the base will deteriorate, and the antler will fall off. Next year's antlers will probably be bigger than this year's.

A few roadside flowers

Along the seawalk:

Bee on blackberry. With green blackberries.

I never noticed before how the petals have hairy edges.

Bee on beach pea.

Bindweed and red mites.

Bindweed climbing a post. I don't know what made those nice round holes.

Palest pink Queen Anne's lace, Daucus carota.

The central flower of the umbel is commonly purple or pink. (Not seen in this photo, but they were there.) Buds may be white or purplish.

Further inland:

Bird's foot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus. The triple leaf looks sort of bird footish, but the name refers to the seed pods on their stalks.

More bird's foot.

St. John's Wort, Hypericum perforatus. The flowers have little black dots along the edge of the petals. (Click for full size.)