Sharon November 13th, 2008
In early autumn the Dogwood leaves to gold and burgundy to announce that the orange berries are ripe.
It doesn’t take long for the birds of the forest to descend on the dogwoods and squabble over the fruit.
A pair of robins and a catbird in the treetops were snatching the orange berries when suddenly there was a great commotion among the leaves. From their point of view, an invader from the ground was trying to steal their hoard. A wild chattering came from the small invader, an eastern chipmunk.
His brown, striped body was nearly invisable in the shadows under the dogwood leaves. Ignoring the objections of the feathered residents, he filled his ample cheek pouches with the fat berries, scurried down the tree trunk and ran to a nearby bramble covered bank. His underground home there was a network of tunnels and chambers which he was working industriously to fill with food for the coming winter.
Soon he emerged from the undergrowth, a streak of brown movement, racing right up the tree with no regard for gravity. Again the birds made a commotion, the chipmunk chattered at them, and stuffed his cheeks for another trip. The game continued in the autumn afternoon until the dogwood had lost most of its berries to feather and fur.
Sharon November 1st, 2008
In autumn rainstorms soak the forest, mushrooms pop up everywhere. There are hundreds of varieties of these interesting plants near my studio.
Some are bright red or yellow. Several kinds are violet blue. Many mushrooms are soft brown, tan or white. Most of them have a stem and a cap that slowly opens like an umbrella as it matures.
The mushroom we see is only a small part of the actual plant. Look under a pile of damp leaves and you may see a network of white threads, like spiderwebs, spreading through the rotting leaves. This is called the hyphae of a mushroom. These hyphae threads grow and digest the decaying matter, helping to turn it into rich soil.
The hyphae develop small, hard bumps here and there. Usually in late summer or fall these bumps develop into mushrooms and emerge above ground. Although the mushrooms seem to grow overnight, they do not really grow at all. The bump simply expands when damp, like a dry sponge will seem to grow when put into water. The expanding mushroom can be strong enough to move a rock or lift gravel.
Mushrooms begin to decay almost as fast as they appear. Insects are attracted to the smell and burrow into the stem to eat it from the inside. Slugs and snails arrive and begin to eat the mushroom from the outside.
Sharon October 18th, 2008
Many small animals are attracted to mushrooms. I don’t think the deermouse eats the mushrooms themselves but they often poke around the fungi to find the grubs and snails that do eat the mushrooms.
I watched a large box turtle stalk across the woods and stop at a large patch of mushrooms in a clearing. He chose an old mushroom and snapped it off at the base. He slowly began to bite pieces out of first the stem and then the cap of the mushroom. I wondered that he chose such a ragged mushroom for his meal until I realized that it was more likely to be full of the insects and little grubs that he liked best.
Although I know the edible mushrooms that are plentiful in the forest, I never eat them. I have seen too many things crawl out of a seemingly pristine mushroom to be interested. Unlike the turtle, I would rather have my meat separate from my mushrooms!
