Winter-spring shells

I am about 9 hikes behind on posts. Once I started to get out there, when winter let go, I couldn't stop, and the pictures kept building up, and here I am. Now I see I better get on it, as the woods are bursting with everything! There's no going back now. All the spring wildflowers were on cue, we're actually in the second wave of arrivals. So it's post now, or never get caught up.

We'll talk about morels in a few posts. Yes, they're up here, and yes, I (finally) found some. Haven't found the mother-lode or anything, but I'm finding them, and I actually do feel something like electricity when I spot them. Then I eat them.

The following several days I'll be putting up a series of posts covering the last 6 weeks or so, starting the minute I thought there might be signs of life out there.

A snail shell. I just read that there's 106 species of land snails in Missouri, so no ID from me here...named or not, it stood out nicely against the dead leaves, and when I got my face down on it, there was beauty. Looks good big.

An acorn with a perfectly-drilled hole in it. Faeries up to more nonsense. Why would they need to drill a hole in an acorn?

A sloppy little snail, one of the first forest-floor citizens I saw this spring. I was honored.

Extra-fancy striped acorn on a soft bed of spring moss and lichen.

Ever-marvelous Trametes versicolor, Turkey Tail mushroom--this one in an unusual ribbon-like growth pattern. Fresh, supple new growth. A very happy sign even though the day was cool and the sky was dark and low.

Nothing says "spring" like Sarcoscypha dudleyi!

Scarlet cups are the very first spring fungi to show up here (not including the crazy little ones that try to out-smart winter, and emerge in little protected crevices in fallen logs and then get all jacked-up and frozen), and I am very happy that they are a bright happy scarlet red. They pop out against the carpet of winter fallen leaves.

Sarcoscypha sp.

About 2". There's some old walnut husks next to this one for scale (I didn't put them there--it was probably faeries).

Also, this happened:

Sarcoscypha emerging in woven grass

And here's the whole field, with a happy Sarcoscypha right in the middle of it. Click to view huge so you can see it. They are bright.

Scarlet cup just off center in field

Okay, I was ready to plunk the name Sarcoscypha coccinea on this (from my Audubon Society's field guide) until I read more than one source (hint, hint). Michael Kuo's key says S. coccinea is found in the Pacific Northwest and California, and I am not in either of those places (although I dream of Oregon rainforests, the mecca of mushrooms in the U.S., and I would move there in one minute). So that means that what we find here in Missouri is S. dudleyi, or S. austriaca, and you can't tell them apart except by looking at their spores through a microscope, and as we all know, I don't HAVE a microscope. I'll just call them Sarcoscypha and be done with it.

I've only found these in one spot (well, one more over in this other spot), but this is only my second spring of mushrooms, so they may be all over the place but I haven't found them yet.

Oh, and these puff out spores when you blow on them--seems like there's always little pieces of stuff inside them, and when you blow it out to make them nice for a photo, there's about a 2-second delay and then a wisp of smoke-like spores comes out!

Anyway, now I believe that spring is here. Even if I still have to wear layers. And have the heat on. And can't open the windows yet. But it's here.

Proof of winter

View from back door

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find any mushrooms today.
What I really wanted to title this post was, "Kill me now", but I didn't want to attract the wrong kind of attention.