More Missouri fungi and other spring woodland finds--Polyporus arcularius

Well! It’s turning out to be a good thing I got so far behind in my posts—if I was up to date I would have nothing to post now. It is so dry here I’m not even bothering to hike until we get some good rain. I am frightened.

But here’s a few things from April 2013—when the world was moist…



Polyporus arcularius. According to one source, this mushroom has 31 synonyms! How are we supposed to keep up?



The underside of the cap of this polypore. There is a little smudge just right of center, it’s a Collembola, a springtail. I didn’t see it until this was on my monitor. They’re only about 1/16” long. Springtails are everywhere. One species is the “snow flea” of legend, that is sometimes out on snow on sunny late winter days! I have never seen one of those.

They jump by means of a kind of spring-loaded catapult called a furcula. Springtails are considered indicators of good soil health (not necessarily in your houseplants, though. There can be huge localized populations of them, more than a potted plant can handle).



I had a little side-hobby of confusing these with Polyporus alveolaris because the pore surface is similar. I think I got it now though. These have an obvious stem, and P. alveolaris runs heavy on the orange side.



I peeked inside a dead tree and saw this. Wood rot forms are determined by which kind of rot is working on it (also assorted wood-chewing insects).



These things happen…

I’m not trying to be a tough guy, but I do like bones. Probably gained appreciation of them from an outstanding figure structure drawing class in college. Barry Schactman, wherever you are, thank you for being of the old school!



Gee, those skull sutures look just like a meandering river.



Above, a wet sycamore seed ball, darkened after a nice spring rain. This may seem pretty mundane, but later (in the past) I found something so cool about sycamore seed balls I’m including this as a warm-up.



A tiny wrinkled Hackberry seed pod.

Spring 2013, a few ephemeral Missouri wildflowers

Spring had enough rain (for my purposes, anyway), so it went well. Here begins 2013, still getting caught up, but stick with me, there’s some awesome things coming up in future posts from the past!

Here is some February-March-April, rounding up a few of the usual wildflower suspects, with some surprise extra growing things.


Looks like two different species to me…Missouri has 7 species of trillium.

Need. More. Field guides.

Mertensia virginica (left) and Dicentra cucullaria

Virginia bluebell and Dutchman's breeches, buds and leaves. Not the most compelling image, but I liked how they were right next to each other, and both at around the same bud stage. Perhaps they know each other outside of work.

Dicentra cucullaria buds

Every year now I get carried away with these. I just can’t get over the shape of the buds. If you were to ask most people to describe a flower bud, they would not come up with anything close to this.

They sway in the breeze, and they are tiny, so I have a hard time convincing my point-and-shoot camera to focus on them. Still, they are lovely. They look like watercolors to me.



Their soft feathery leaves are quite nice, too. There is a hint of blue in them.



No idea what that is, above (some kind of bracket polypore), but I know I like the shapes.

Enemion biternatum

That’s false rue anemone. I bet everybody who has a nature blog probably has a picture of those flowers, but I am posting it here to tell you the easy way to tell these apart from real rue anemone. False rue anemone flowers almost always have five petals, and they're mostly white, and how many letters are in the word “false” and "white"? Bam!

Of course there are many other ways to tell them apart when they’re not in bloom, but at least now you have that.


Got mucro?

All those little white dots on the false rue anemone leaf tips are called “mucro.” A mucro is a point on the end of something. Don’t use that word unless referring to something in biology or zoology (or Scrabble).

I wonder what they’re for.


Above are some sweet little bluets, Houstonia caerulea. The whole flower is only about 1/4” across.

I don’t see these every year, I wonder if they’re short-lived and I miss them by not hiking on the right day.

Houstonia caerulea seed pods

Found some seed pods too.

Cladonia! A type of lichen.



I first saw this in February, and two months later it was still there, unchanged as far as I could tell. Lichen is persistent! See text accompanying the jelly lichen for why all I have is the genus for this.