fungi
I joke that with all this wet weather, I’ll have moss growing between my toes. No joke is that this has been the wettest month in history, or so reports the weather guy on VPR. I believe it, everything is soggy. There is standing water in my field. The sugarbush looks like April with pools of running water. One friend reported that her husband hung the laundry out and eight days later it was still wet. A few days ago, I began noticing fungi sprouting up. The woods are the stuff from which both dreams and nightmares spring.
When I was small, my Grandmother would walk with us in the woods and name the growing things we’d find. She taught me that these are “Indian Pipes”, delicate and ethereal. I’ve always loved finding them. They are commonplace, easy to spot.
My culinary friends taught me to look for gold scattered like nuggets on the woods floor. Chanterelles. Try buying them, they are golden in more ways than one. Sauteed and served with a cream base..
In a particularly dark part of the woods, I passed through a small grove of these dark creatures. I don’t know them, but like many fungi, they were grouped as a community. Imagination, go wild.
When I got back from my walk, C asked if I’d seen the ones behind the barn. The strangest of all were closest to home. Oh my!
My Grandmother never told me the name for these. Neither did I find it in my Audubon Field Guide.
Spielberg..watch out!
Comments
15 responses to “walk with me wednesday.. fungi”
I could come up with a name for them, but I think your grandmother would wash my mouth out with soap.
I’m thinking the same thing Carrie is!
And ghost pipes may be commonplace, but they require a very precise environment in which to grow. I first saw them when I sat on the AT to retie my boot, glanced down and there was the freakiest plant I’d ever seen! Stayed for about 20 minutes taking pictures.
Very cool post – I love fungi!
Yeah. Ummm. Those last ones? A bit pornographic.
I agree with Carrie.
Those Indian Pipes are cool! I’ve never seen them before. And the ones behind your house….a-hem…. I never knew mushrooms could be so, ah, um, dirty. http://americanmushrooms.com/coolest.htm
I’m clearing my throat and changing the topic of conversation…
Wow…C took you behind the barn and showed you that!!
My grandfather was the mushroom king in our family…he swore that you could cook any shroom with a copper penny and it would neutralize any harmful effects…(I wouldn’t recommend it)
Hardy-har-har. Someone landed on my blog the other day doing a Google search for “penis-shaped mushrooms.” That weren’t you, were it? 😀
Ahem…just goes to show you that God has a sense of humor!
Yep, all the ladies are in the same gutter. Me too.
Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one to see those behind-the-barn mushrooms for what they are. The deep dark woodsy ones are very interesting.
Splendid post. Around here, people get shot for poaching on chanterelle sites. Mushrooms are big business in the woods.
I’m late as usual, but so happy. I was walking in the woods in Vermont a day or two before you posted this and saw a clump of Indian Pipes. No idea what they were…some kind of deranged un-chlorophylled flower? a mushroom? There was discussion.
Now I know.
This mushroom posting is fascinating, we have such a small amount of rain in Southern California, every few years there might pop up a white mushroom or two in the lawn and that’s about it. It’s been so dry for a few years now that the rain sounds really inviting, I can only dream of rain, and the clean air it provides, instead of dust and smog.
Before I knew what they were called, I called Indian Pipes “ghostie mushrooms”. I have had a collection of your “oh my’s” in my bark mulch before. They are rather alarming to run across for the first time. Only mine have pointier and darker tops and usually attract tiny black flies- maybe that’s why they are called stink horns. They are pretty true to size too.