We always enjoy finding a beautiful fungus when we hike….yes, I said beautiful. They come in such interesting shapes and colors. There is no denying that thebracket fungus above is beautiful in its design.
Now identifying fungus with a specific name is not always easy for me so when I do learn a name it usually sticks. This fungus is called Witches’ Butter.
This one was truly unusual and I don’t think we have seen it before on our hikes. It only lasted a few days and I am really glad we stopped to take some photos so we can remember the way it grows.
Here it is on another stump. At the bottom of the image you can see that something has knocked part of it off the stump and you can take a good look at the gills.
This one was just an interesting shape….don’t have any idea what it is exactly but I can still appreciate the way it is part of the habitat and that it is just fun to look at as we stopped to observe it along our trail.
Here is a link to another fungus entry I wrote last year: The Joy of Fungus. In this entry I share some of notebook pages and a couple of interesting links for you to check out.
Also, you can check out two of the Outdoor Hour Challenges featuring mushrooms in the Handbook of Nature Study:
We had a break in our rainy weather so that meant we seized the opportunity to get out and walk with the dog on the walking trail. Our surprise nature study subject of the day was “mushrooms”. They were in abundance on this trip down the trail.
After looking at all the photos when we got home, I decided the theme of the day was “texture”.
Must be something rotting underneath the debris….makes for a great photo.
Lots of things going on in this photo…reds and greens make a nice contrast to each other.
This is my favorite image of the day….wow! Look all those textures and colors and layers.
Someone or something had knocked a bunch of mushrooms loose along another section of the trail. Love the gills in this mushroom image.
Last one for today….mushrooms and brown grass make an interesting composition for this image.
We are enjoying our winter break and spending lots of time outdoors, both in the yard and out on walks. I haven’t had any nature study subjects in mind except to enjoy the pleasures that December has offered. I am sort of itching to get started on a more focused nature study plan again in January.
I am off to San Francisco today to spend the day looking at some great art….Post-Impressionists! Of course the museum is in Golden Gate Park so we will more than likely be taking a walk to see what we can find.
I love having a “familiar trail”. The subtle changes that take place from week to week sometimes escape my notice until I look at them through the lens of my camera. The light is different this time of year and the colors so very different. This trail that is bursting with wildflowers in the spring and early summer is now just a palette of browns and greens, with an occasional splash of color if you really look for it along the edges.
Although this may sound like a complaint, it really isn’t. I love having the contrasts between seasons, anticipating the next progression of growing. It is something at the core of me that knows this is the natural way to keep time. Thinking about it…perhaps this is why I don’t wear a watch or carry my phone with me at all times. I just like to feel the natural rhythm of the day and the seasons without fussing too much with the minute by minute ticking of time. It’s cloudy, rainy, cold, the oaks have lost their leaves, the buckeyes are sprouting on the ground, the ferns are unfurling…..it must be close to the first day of winter.
Guess I’m feeling sort of reflective on this cold, gray afternoon. 🙂
What to see a few images from our walk? Enjoy!
It was still wet from the melted frost we had overnight and the mood was very somber.
It is a steep hike back up the canyon after we hike down. Great exercise for humans and canines. (If you want to see what this place on the trail looks like in the spring, you can click HERE.
Dried up blackberries still hanging on the vines next to the trail. This is near the mushy part of the trail and soon we will have a little creek to hop over at this point.
Wet wintery weeds are everywhere….I can visualize what the spring will bring but for now the landscape is pretty sad.
The most colorful spot we found on our hike was right near the top where the ferns, mosses, and fungus are all bursting out.
So there you have it….a December day on our familiar trail. We are now facing ten forecasted days of rain so we may not make it back for another week or so down this trail. If the weather clears, we will jump on the chance to get out and hike again on this path so close to home.
We started our cattail study last fall with this entry: Cattails in Autumn.
We had two locations to visit for this study….one within walking distance and another up on our regular walking trail on the other side of town.
Here are the cattails near our house.
Our cattails are starting to look a little ragged. The water that was there in the fall has now completely dried up. The stalks of the cattails are dry, stiff, and hard. The leaves are stiff as well.
Here is our cattail area that is along our walking trail. I think that someone came and cut a lot of the actual cattails. Even thought they are still growing in water, the leaves and stems are all brown and stiff.
There is still a little water in this area that flows down to a creek. We all noticed that the water was a little smelly this time of year….hmmmm. We enjoyed having a purpose to our walk today and it was nice to focus on something other than the cold air. 🙂
The other interesting thing that we noted on this walk was that there were lots of mushrooms growing. Here are three different kinds that we stopped and looked at.
There were lots of this kind pushing up through the leaves.
There were some that were really white.
Then we saw this cute little yellow mushroom.
We are off to another hike today but this time down to the river. We will keep our eyes out for anything interesting.
We haven’t had much of a chance to study mushrooms up close in the last few weeks but we did over our summer break. Our trip to Oregon gave us plenty to look at and identify. Identifying mushrooms is really a difficult task.
As part of our biology course, we studied the mushroom’s life cycle and my boys made nature journal entries using some of the photos we had collected of mushrooms in our area.
“Fungi, as a whole, are a great boon to the world. Without them our forests would be choked out with dead wood. Decay is simply the process by which fungi and other organisms break down dead material, so that the major part of it returns to the air in gaseous form, and the remainder, now mostly humus, mingles with the soil.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 715
I think if that is the only thing we learn about fungus/mushrooms from our study we will have accomplished a greater understanding of how the forest ecosystem works. There is great beauty in these living things and a wonderful purpose to their creation.
Our mushroom season will soon be upon us and we will be out and enjoying a whole array of fungus to observe. We will be using the diagram on page 717 to categorize the mushrooms we see as we go along. I am totally inspired by Casey’s study: Extraordinary World: Mushrooms.
Here is a set of our mushroom photos from the last year that I gathered on Flickr if you would like to see what we have in our area of California: Mushrooms
Mushrooms! Fungus! Molds! Ask my children and they will tell you that I am fascinated with these things when we find them during our outdoor time. They even call me very affectionately the “Fungus Lady”.
I found this video during our last study of mushrooms and I would love for you to watch it in order to prepare you for your study of mushrooms. This video is very well done and will help your children understand how a mushroom grows.
You will need to click over to YouTube.com to view this video. Please note: Turn down the sound if the music is too much for you. As always, please preview the video on YouTube and I do not endorse any other video that may come up after this one. There are some questionable videos about mushrooms.
If you do not think you will observe any mushrooms during your Outdoor Time, you can still complete the Inside Preparation work as a way to be ready the next time you do see a mushroom.
Outdoor Hour Challenge
Autumn Series #9 Mushrooms
(See Also Challenge #41)
Inside Preparation Work
Mushrooms and Other Fungi-read the overview starting on page 714 and continuing to page 719. Page 719 shows the parts of a mushroom with labels.
Outdoor Hour Time The ideal study of ferns, mushrooms, and fungi would be to experience them outdoors in their natural habitat. Use your 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor time this week to enjoy a search for some kind of mushroom. Your particular area may not have these subjects readily at hand but let your friends, family, and neighbors know that you are studying mushrooms and with more pairs of eyes looking you may be able to find something to study up close.
Enjoy your time outdoors whether you can find this week’s subject or not. Remember to look at the sky and comment on the weather. Take time to notice your tree from your year long tree study. Collect a few items to take inside to sketch into your nature journal. Just because the topic of this challenge is mushrooms, you do not have to limit yourself to that narrow focus during your 15 to 20 minutes of outdoor time.
Follow-Up Activity
Spend a few minutes once inside to discuss your experiences from your nature walk.Are there questions that need to be answered or items that need to be identified? Make a note of any topics that come up that you can research further in the Handbook of Nature Study or at your local library.
Make an opportunity for a nature journal entry. The diagrams on pages 695 and 719 could be sketched into the nature journal. I have created a notebook page for you to use in your nature journal to record your mushroom observations and it is listed in the free downloads section of the sidebar of my blog.
“Since mushrooms are especially good subjects for watercolor and pencil studies, it would add much to the interest of the work if each pupil, or the school as a whole, should make a portfolio of sketches of all the species found. With each drawing there should be made on a supplementary sheet a spore print of the species.” Handbook of Nature Study, page 718
Spore prints are another idea for an activity following up the mushroom study. I would only do this activity with older students who truly understand that mushrooms can be poisonous.
Here are some instructions you can download: Mushroom Spore Prints or this blog entry.
You can use the provided notebook page to sketch a mushroom that you observed during your Outdoor Time or you can use it to copy the sketch from page 719 in the Handbook of Nature Study, labeling the different parts of a mushroom.
We haven’t completed Outdoor Hour Challenge 43 yet but I wanted to give some additional ideas for options to the original challenge.
Here are some additional ideas to get you started with observing molds for Outdoor Hour Challenge 43.
Here is a YouTube video that shows mold growing on bread and then an orange. It is a short and sweet video. Please remember to preview.
How about some clipart for your notebook?
This diagram shows the parts of bread mold.
Label for this one:
“Showing One of the More Common Molds found on Fruits and Bread. The tiny stalks grow vertically into the air. The end of each thread swells into a small round knob, from the inside of which hundreds of minute bodies, called spores, burst. As a is seen a large knob filled with spores.” — Blaisedell, 1904
Here is a link to a whole list of information about puffballs and there are fantastic images to view as well. Puffballs at MushroomExpert.com
If you are brave, you can grow mold in your own Mold Terrarium. I would love to see your results. We have conducted this experiment before and we found the best place to put our jar was in our laundry room cupboard where it was usually warm and dark.
Here is a complete booklet on fungus/mushrooms for you to look at using with your child. Preview it before printing the whole packet out since there are a lot of pages. I especially like page 17, 18, 21, 22, and 25 to print out and put in your nature journal. How the Mushroom Got Its Spots
Hope you found something here to spark your interest.
As we finish up our mini focus on flowerless plants, I need to say that I have personally learned more than I ever anticipated. I hope that you have learned something too or that you are better prepared to study flowerless plants as you will eventually come into contact with them in the near future. At the very least, I hope that you have gained confidence in knowing a few facts, gleaned from the Handbook of Nature Study.
Edit to Add: Here is a link to another post with additional ideas to get you started with growing molds: Additional Help with Challenge 43Outdoor Hour Challenge #43 Molds, Puffballs, and Morels
1. Read pages 727-729 in the Handbook of Nature Study. Included in the reading are instructions for growing your own mold on bread so you will have some mold of your own to observe. I highly recommend this activity and your children will be amazed at the results. Although some might find mold repulsive, try to keep a positive outlook as you grow and then observe your very own mold.
2. Read pages 720-725 in the Handbook of Nature Study and learn about puffballs and bracket fungi. Read pages 726-727 in the Handbook of Nature Study about Morels. You can underline and highlight any sections you find in these pages that you find interesting. File away the facts until you come across some of these interesting subjects during your nature study.
3. Do your best to spend 10-15 minutes outdoors this week with your children. View this time as the opportunity to enjoy whatever you have available for nature study this week. If you find some mushrooms, ferns, moss, lichen, mold, bracket fungus, morels, or puffballs, you are equipped to observe these subjects more closely. If you have snow or ice to deal with, why not review challenge #39 on water forms and spend a few minutes talking about the water cycle?
4. After your outdoor time, spend a few minutes reviewing your outdoor experience. This step will help you identify any additional interests your children have so you can answer any questions or help identify any objects they observed outdoors. Are they curious about clouds or a bird they saw? Did you find any flowerless plants at all during your outdoor time? Use this time to follow up with the Handbook of Nature Study and don’t forget that you can look things up in the index.
5. Give an opportunity for a nature journal entry or provide a notebook page to complete together. Remember that a nature journal should be the child’s expression of something they found interesting during their outdoor time. You are helping them make a memory.
In our part of the world it is the perfect time to be looking for and observing closely the mosses and lichens in our yard. Last week I posted an entry sharing one of our favorite local hikes that has literally come alive with mosses.
After reading the Handbook of Nature Study, we were on the lookout for some haircap moss. I looked it up in our field guide and it showed that we have it here in California so we were determined to find some to look at in person.
Last week on our hike we noticed the “little parts that stick up” and those are actually the spore capsules as shown in the diagram on page 710. Here is a photo of them as well.
These are about three inches high.
This is a close-up of the moss and lichen we saw growing on so many of the trees. In the top photo of this blog entry, you can see how it grows all the way up the tree trunks in this part of the forest. The greens of the mosses and ferns really show up in the forest as you walk along at this time of year when most of the green leaves have fallen from the deciduous trees.
We found some fungus growing on this fallen tree branch…new to us.
It had such a vivid color and look at the green growing on the branch as well….not sure what it is but it is pretty.
Then as we looked closely, we saw this part of a wasp’s nest on the ground right next to us. It was very delicate and soft.
We found this pretty fern growing all along the trail’s edge on the little embankment. It has a black stem and pretty bright green leaves. I think it is a California Maidenhair fern. I realize now that there are really three different kinds of ferns in the photo…I’m not sure what kind they are but I will update when I find out.
Can you tell we have enjoyed our week of exploring and looking for moss and lichen? We have been out three times on the trail and each time we have found something new to learn about. No nature journals this week yet but I am hoping to add at least an entry showing the parts of the haircap moss or something showing the life cycle. I know that we covered this in biology last year but I want to make it more real for the boys by viewing these things in real life and then making a nature journal entry to show what we learned.
We have been on the lookout for mushrooms and ferns for the last few weeks in anticipation of this challenge. I am overwhelmed with how much I don’t know about mushrooms at this point but I am determined to document the mushrooms and other fungus that we see so that when I have a cold winter day and I want to spend some time with a field guide, I will be able to flip through the photos and hopefully come up with names for them.
I decided that there are so many photos that I would make a slideshow on Flickr.com to share with you. The fungi are from three different places but the majority are from my own yard or from a hike within three miles of my house. The others are from the Calaveras Big Trees State Park.
Mushroom Slideshow– Don’t miss viewing this page with all my fungus images
As we hiked yesterday, I noticed that the boys were catching sight of more and more varieties of mushrooms than ever before. They even spotted some that I didn’t see and directed me to go back to the spot and take a photo. 🙂
This particular hike they were having a good time in the cool fresh air together.
If you look carefully up over the trail where the boys are hiking, you will notice a tree that broke off and is just barely hanging in place. The boys thought they should try to throw rocks at it to see if they could get it to come down but my husband explained that he didn’t think that was a really great idea. I noticed that I was getting into quite a few sticker type seeds as we walked along.
We hiked back to the top and noticed that the moon was up over the oaks. What a great blue sky, don’t you think?
So I am still getting used to my new little camera but I think I will like it in the long run. It has a better zoom and the viewing screen is much bigger.
Here are the last of the photos for today.
Backside of a fern
Big ferns along the path.
Ferns along the side of a gully that will have a creek running in it once it rains again around here. 🙂
Here is my son’s mushroom diagram for his nature journal. We copied this out of the Handbook of Nature Study, page 719.
This was a great challenge for our family and we never dreamed we would find so many different kinds of mushrooms and other fungi to study.
I encourage you all to give the challenge a try either now or when your weather is cooperating.
