Time Warp: Watkins Regional Park in Fall of 2009

So, I was prepared to post about Watkins Regional Park last week when my new camera arrived; instead I cheated and posted about the new camera itself. That has worked to my advantage, as I ended up visiting Watkins yesterday, and took snapshots of some of the same things I photographed last time, about a year and a half ago.

I didn't really take any shots at the nature center last time out, so I'll start with the mushrooming this time. Yesterday's trip featured Polyporous squamosus (dryad's saddle), several LBMs, and some additional polypores. What was the Fall mushrooming like?

First, I found Amanita muscaria formosa, the "American" subspecies of the fly mushroom, or fly agaric. There is ongoing discussion about how to separate subspecies, and the nominate subspecies is red rather than yellow, but I am nonetheless very confident in my identification of this specimen. If you see this, please don't eat it.

No matter the season, polypores are gregarious. I rarely try to identify beyond "some polypore" unless I suspect it's something of particular interest.

This hen of the woods mushroom (Grifola frondosa) was enormous but too rotten to eat. The monster was around three feet across.

I thought these sulfur tufts (Naemotoloma fasciculare) were beautiful. They're now my excuse to introduce you to the concept of a synonym as the term is used in biology. It has a specific meaning in the field - a synonym is another binomial name which refers to the same species, usually because there are ongoing arguments as to how the species should be classified. My favorite mushroom site has this in genus Hypholoma.

Ah, food. These oyster mushrooms became one heck of a dinner when we got home. One of my first mycological feasts, in fact. I'll never get tired at looking at this set of photos.

Despite the boring appearance and lackluster picture, I was pumped when I found this fungus. I had hoped this belonged to the genus Termitomyces.  These unusual fungi grow only from termite mounds, and the genus includes the largest mushroom species in the world. They have a strange symbiotic relationship with the termites. Unbeknownst to me until later, the family of termites, and therefore the genus of mushrooms, is not found in this area.

So yeah, fungal life was abundant during both successful Watkins trips. I think the species I've discussed and shown provide a good survey of the way fruiting mushroom species vary with season.  Moving on, I want to share some photos of the beaver pond as we discovered it around 18 months ago. It almost looks like a different pond.

The pond. (Compare to yesterday's photo with the same caption, taken from a similar location)

Here's a shot of the beaver lodge when it seemed to still be in use (well, by beavers). Remember its current occupant?

This is the accompanying dam. Although I didn't shoot it yesterday, it was quite grown over as well. This again leads me to suspect that the beavers are making their current home elsewhere.

This time, instead of a decently-captured boring thing (a big empty field) I'll leave you with a cool but poorly photographed thing (this Araneus marmoreus, or marbled orb-weaver spider).