There were heavy rains last week and over the week-end this mushroom emerged in volume. They were coming from the ground and contained the detritus that was above their developing cap. They are funnel
shaped and quite large and rain water has collected in their caps.Our mushroom expert Justina and one of her mentors think this is Lactarius yazooensis. It is inedible as well as unpronounceable.
Making Spore Prints by Michael Kuo While a single mushroom spore can't be seen by the naked eye, a pile of many spores can--and the color of a mushroom's spores, seen en masse, is a crucial identification feature. Obtaining a mushroom's "spore print" is therefore an essential step in the identification process. Before going through the nuts and bolts of making a spore print at home, it is worth noting that mushrooms frequently make their own spore prints, in nature. If you have ever noticed colored dust covering a leaf or the ground beneath a mushroom's gills or pores, you have probably witnessed this phenomenon. Tightly clustered mushrooms, in fact, frequently leave spore prints on one other, since caps overlap. In order to make a spore print at home, you will need to have a relatively mature mushroom. Buttons, young mushrooms, and mushrooms with some kind of a covering over their gills or pores (a partial veil) are not likely to drop spores in order to make a print. Remove the stem from smaller mushrooms and place the cap, gills or pores downward, on a piece of paper or glass. For larger mushrooms, slice off a section of the cap and use only the section. Place a cup or glass upside-down on top of your mushroom, to keep air currents away. While some spore prints can appear within a few hours, it's often best to wait overnight, just to be sure. When you remove the cup and lift the mushroom cap, you should find a "print" like the ones illustrated to the right. If you have been careful not to move the mushroom while the print was developing, you may find that the spore print reflects the pattern of the mushroom's gills or pores, since the spores fell directly downward. Some field guides advocate using black paper for spore prints, since white prints show up more easily. Then again, brown and black prints don't show up on black paper as well as they do on white paper. I have solved this problem for myself by using glass, which can be held against light and dark backgrounds, rather than paper. In fact I usually use a microscope slide, since I will also be examining spores under the microscope--but if you are not going to be using a microscope, any (safe) piece of glass will suffice. The color of the spore print is what you will compare with descriptions from field guides and keys. Interpreting color can be very subjective--and mycologists have tried several times to "standardize" the interpretations, without much success. But while subtle differences (like, between "white" and "creamy") may be perplexing, distinguishing a white spore print from a brown one or a pink one is easy enough, and it will help you enormously in identifying a mushroom. More information on assessing colors, of spore prints and the mushrooms themselves, can be found on the page for the genus Russula. For mushrooms belonging to the Ascomycetes, like the morels and false morels, a spore print is obtained using a similar method. However, since these mushrooms have tiny spore jets that forcibly eject the spores, you will place a piece of the cap on the paper or glass and expect the spore print around the mushroom section (as well as underneath it, if you have placed the spore-producing side downwards). | |
| Cite this page as: Kuo, M. (2006, November). Making spore prints. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/spore_print.html |
I let her garden go.
let it go, let it go
How can I watch the hummingbird
Hover to sip
With its beak's tip
The purple bee balm—whirring as we heard
It years ago?
The weeds rise rank and thick
let it go, let it go
Where annuals grew and burdock grows.
Where standing she
At once could see
The peony, the lily, and the rose
Rise over brick
She'd laid in patterns. Moss
let it go, let it go
Turns the bricks green, softening them
By the gray rocks
Where hollyhocks
That lofted while she lived, stem by tall stem,
Dwindle in loss.
The Selected Poems of Donald Hall
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Ever wonder about one of America's favorite wildflowers? Who was Black-Eyed Susan? Her story is one of the grand romantic tales of the wildflowers. And beyond legend, her name graces several of our most important and popular wildflower species. (By the way, the flower's eye, or center, is not really black; it's dark brown, but that's not important.)
Who was she? Well, no one's sure, but the legend says it all comes from an Old English poem of the post-Elizabethan era entitled simply, "Black-Eyed Susan," written by a very famous poet of the day named John Gay, 1685-1732. (Painting above by Winslow Homer.):
All in the downs, the fleet was moored,
Banners waving in the wind.
When Black-Eyed Susan came aboard,
and eyed the burly men.
"Tell me ye sailors, tell me true
Does my Sweet William sail with you?"
There are several stanzas, explaining that her William was on board, "high upon the yardarm", and quickly scrambled down for a fond farewell with his lady love. It seems he was off to the high seas, but promised ardently to be safe and true:
Though battle call me from thy arms
Let not my pretty Susan mourn;
Though cannons roar, yet safe from harms
William shall to his Dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye.
This charming poem tells one of the great "Legends of Love" in our wildflowers, and every summer even today, it plays out just as the poem describes. Here's how it works:
Even though it's not a native, if you seed wild Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) with common Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), they'll bloom beautifully for you at exactly the same time. Because both are basically biennials, and her gold plus his bright reds and purples blooming together is a sight to gladden any gardener's heart.
Since Susan is a North American native, this tale tells us English colonists must have given the golden beauty her name when they arrived in the New World. However, since most all the Black-Eyed Susan species are native to the Great Plains, plant experts have wondered for years how our colonists on the east coast could have given this wildflower the name it's had for centuries. But some recent research in Maryland (where "Susan" serves as the State Flower) shows that the plant was growing there during the colonial period. So like today, Black-Eyed Susans were probably across the continent from the beginning. Today, they are common in all 50 states and across Canada.
Jan purchased some tiger lilies (Lilium tigrinum) in the early 70's. They have thrived and we have four large stands by the side of the house. We love them but so do the deer. I spray the buds with deer-off which works most of the time.If you look on the upper right side you will see that the deer have eaten off the tips.
A Tiger-Lily
Of life my love a riddle makes,
All sweetness when I please her;
A lily when the whim she takes,
A tiger when I tease her!
With kisses oft of shy surprise,
She smiles in fond love-languor;
Sometimes with frowns and flashing eyes,
She looks superb in anger!
A checkered path of glooms and gleams,
Fate to our feet hath given;
One half our life a jungle seems,
The rest, a little Heaven!
With words as sharp as claws she tears
My heart-strings all unheeding,
Then soothes me with her lily airs,
And music of her pleading.
O lily fair! O tiger pet!
Whatever mood may hold you,
A double love must sway me yet,
And to my bosom fold you!
A whisper of the gentlest sort — A poem about lilies
A whisper of the gentlest sort
The Lilies Whisper Poetry
Poem by: Deborah Amar*
A summer day can never end
Or so it seems each year
The longer cycles of the sun
Make cloudy skies seem clear
Each time the wind begins to chime,
And end begins to near
A whisper of the softest sort
Flows gently to the ear
The scent and sight enough are great
Yet lilies live for more
The lilies whisper poetry
As none have heard before
The lilies whisper to the day
That sends the breeze below
It touches ground that none can see
Where lilies lively grow
Beautifully arrayed in white
And drinking from the soil
Free to whisper their poetry
Without the need to toil
But flowers do not last the year
And newer buds must bloom
So short the span of lily life
To give new blossoms room
The lilies whisper poetry
That none shall ever know
For just as summer cannot last
The lilies cease to grow
But beauty lives from that which dies
And leaves something to last
For lilies whisper poetry
For lilies of the past
*"Reposted with permission by the author, Deborah Amar: http://deborahamar.com/poetry/the-lilies-whisper-poetry"
For more information on the Ozarks Reginal Lily Society visit this link:
http://friendsofthegarden.org/park-partners/ozark-regional-lily-society
From Africa, the Torch Lily came to me, without flower
In seasons, less than winter, green long fronds, wave
In cold winter, wary, small green nobbled stalks upright, bow:
To all, in my native Australian garden, proud, saved.
Before its time of grandeur, my Lily, not yet in shine
Teases me to guess how high its stalks will rise
Day by day, I look for flowers, poking heads in line
The day of grandeur slowly comes, a Red Hot Poker surprise.
A beauty in yellow, below in flower, creeps up cone red hot red
The Yellow Honey Eater grabs in flight, a stalk, drinking nectar
Soon, all in turn, nectar eaters come to drink in the red heads
In time, not long, grandeur fades, back to stalks, seeds, no star.
The last night is always interesting. Everyone is mellowed out and ready for the next adventure.We are emptying the icebox and eating fresh grouper with all the weeks leftovers for sides. We have begun to put away the toys (umbrellas, stunt kites, fish lights, beach quilt)and pack up our swim suits.We walk the beach at dusk. That is Gordon, Adam, and Blake in the foreground. I always want to come back.I wonder if I will.
This mystery started at home and ended as part of the beach scene. Several months ago Jan lost her favorite ring. It was a 14k gold ring from a designer in Palm Beach and she has worn it every day for over 40 years. It was unique with rectangular edges. She had gone to our local jeweler to pick up another ring, replacing her gold ring with it and putting her gold ring into her purse. When she got back to the car she checked in her purse for her gold ring and could not find it even after a thorough search. . She described the moment as feeling that she had been kicked in the stomach.She went back to the jewelers and they remembered that she had put it in her purse. After looking through her purse again with Jan they offered to check their security tape. When she returned home we went through her purse multiple times and carefully searched the car. After several days she even had the Lexus dealer remove both front seats of the car but to no avail. And that was that.Then we are at the beach house and I hear a shrill scream, "Don, you have got to come here and look at this right now." I went into the other room and found that Jan had needed a bite of her special stash of dark chocolate which she usually kept in a baggy in her purse. To keep the chocolate from melting she had put the baggy in the refrigerator. When she opened the baggy she found her chocolate:
And when she opened the wrapper this is what she found:And this:Miracles happen at the beach.
