Mid-June yellow Amanita, ephemeral Coprinus comatus and other Earth items

Warning: a spider and swarms of fat red bugs below!

More blah blah catching up blah blah, while emotionally gearing up for the stinkhorn post! Just you wait!

Saw this handsome yellow-capped Amanita right next to the trail, a spot of lemon through some leaves. The first image is after I’d had my way with it (gently)--taken many shots, cleared away some leaves to see the base (but not enough to nail down the ID, apparently), and moved some branches so they were held out of the way around that little tree. The next person on the trail would have seen it presented like this.





I don’t know what species it is. There are several yellow Amanitas, and this one didn't have all the identifying features of any of them. Well, maybe it did, but it was so pretty I didn't check things that would have helped me ID it because it would have damaged it. Like roughing it up to see if it changed color, or digging it up to get a better look at the base. Or cutting it in half. I just couldn't.


There’s a yellow species with lighter patches on the cap, there’s a yellow one with a yellow stem, and there’s a yellow one with a bulbous base. Not this one.

I swear I’ll start paying more attention, if I really want to know what’s going on out there. I keep overlooking important identity details because I'm too caught up in the visuals. I know that sounds corny but it's true.

Mourning cloak butterfly, Nymphalis antiopa

I came upon a spot with many of these butterflies hanging around. The description says the wings have a bright yellow border, but this was absolutely gold. Shiny, metallic, 24-karat gold. I read the males sit around in sunny spots waiting for females. That seemed to be what was going on here, in a little clearing in the forest. They also overwinter in Missouri. Not the kind of thing I'd think a butterfly would do, but they do. They're much tougher than I realized.

It took major sneaking to get this close.

Here comes the other kinds of bugs, the kind some people might not like. Take your leave now if you need to.

I found a wolf spider carrying her babies on her back, like they do. First time I saw this in real life!



She wouldn't slow down, so this is the best shot I have.

Next is a non-forest phenomenon I saw in a college courtyard planted with goldenrain trees.



Swarms of red-shouldered bug nymphs. They love goldenrain trees. I think they were congregating like this because they had been displaced by recent heavy rains, and hadn't found their way back to the tree or fallen seedpods yet.

Jadera haematoloma

I know what they are because I found them before and figured it out.



Skeletonized goldenrain tree seedpod in rain. See golden flowers strewn about. There were red-shouldered bugs on the seedpods themselves but they scattered when I got this close.

One day I went somewhere and when I came home a couple hours later these mushrooms were right in front of where I park. Did I miss them when I left, or did they pop up while I was gone? They could have.

Coprinus comatus, “shaggy mane”

I was going to visit them again in the morning, but it rained hard overnight, and there was not a single trace of them the next day. Not even the disturbed soil!

The Audubon guide says “Fragile as this mushroom is, it has the remarkable ability to push up through asphalt.”

What a world, what a world!

Summer/fall 2011, yet another drought, but still: Red-shouldered bugs!

I know it’s considered bad blogging form to apologize for a lapse in posts, but there was yet another summer/fall drought, and I kept waiting for it to end but it never did. It stopped raining. No rain = hardly any mushrooms. I lost my momentum. I kept hiking anyhow...

I even got a message from a Flickr mushroom/nature contact in Australia who noticed I hadn’t been uploading anything—she thought something had happened to me! I only know her from Flickr!

“Hello, I hope you don't mind me sending you this flickrmail... actually I'm just wondering where you are? You haven't posted anything since last October, and I hope you're ok and not terribly ill or anything. So anyway, happy new year, I hope we see you back again soon.”
                                              
Well, the past is the past, so let’s just jump back in the game! Get a load of THIS!

Red-shouldered bug on goldenrain tree seed, late August

I was working on campus, and these bugs were all over the building and walkways for days and days. Tiny fat nymphs, breeding pairs, and everything in between, all around some goldenrain trees. At first I thought they were “just” box elder bugs, but it finally sunk in that they didn’t quite match. So I started bringing my camera in, got some photos, and did a proper ID check.

(Hi—there’s a lot of fun detail that shows up when you view these images larger, by clicking on them...)

Above, Jadera haematoloma, nymphs and instars, all over Koelreuteria paniculata, just like they say they do.

They were crazy for the seeds, very active, and when disturbed (like when I suddenly loomed over them with my camera), they only ran off for a few seconds before hurrying back to eat more.

So, in the course of learning about these bugs, I found out about goldenrain trees too, because just about every reference mentioned them in relation to the red-shouldered bugs, and I didn't know what tree it was anyway when I was picking up the 3-lobed seed pods and saying, “What the heck are these.” The trees are not native, they’re from Northern China, Japan & Korea, have “invasive potential”, introduced in the early 1800’s, Thomas Jefferson, blah blah.

Anyway these Red-shouldered bugs really go for goldenrain trees, and even though there can be seemingly-huge populations of them, no sources mentioned they do much actual damage. They feed on the fruits of lots of other trees, too.

Incidentally, I saw tiny white spikes on some of the seeds, which I would guess was some type of fungus...


Above, a whole bunch of plump little nymphs on a goldenrain tree seed.

Below, more and more. I just thought they were awfully photogenic, creating really great compositions as they went about their lives.

If there’s tons of them around somebody’s house and there's little kids running around, and some of the bugs get squished, it can alarm parents who wonder what the heck all that red stuff is all over their kids! But they are harmless.


I like the image above because you can see the insides of that one on the left! No idea what organ that is. If there’s any entomologists out there, please speak up! Really, click to view large, it's worth it.

Below, fat little nymphs and a breeding pair! Everything at once!



And finally, below, a Magritte-like composition, moody and surreal.



All this just goes to show that there are fascinating tiny things everywhere.
And I will find them, and eventually show you.