Death throes, or hibernation?

 For context, scroll back through my several recent blogs dealing with the impressive Shaggy Mane fungus.  As promised, I checked the patch on Jackson Street this morning, and they has both grown and disintegrated!  The stems are around 3: taller than they were yesterday, yet the caps are further along in their self-digestion.  I suspect there will be no sign of caps remaining tomorrow.

I should add that neither "death throes" nor "hibernation" are technically correct descriptions of this scene.  If I could use time-lapse photography and show what happened to these caps over 24 hours in a one-minute clip, it might look like "throes,"  but it wouldn't be death because the fungus will continue to live below ground.  Then we can think of each "mushroom" like a wart - a wart the comes and goes, but happens to carry all the DNA of the whole organism.  Maybe I'm stretching my poetic license a bit too far.  It's also not really hibernation, even though the fungus is getting ready for winter.

Even faster!

 My previous post was about a 9-day look at the life of a Shaggy Mane fungus on the FRC campus.  These photos are from my other favorite viewing spot for Shaggy Manes.  On Thursday evening, the 15th, there was no sign of any Shaggy Manes where I had seen them in previous years.  By Friday morning, they had appeared and were around 5 inches tall.  (First two photos)

 By this morning, just 24 hours later, the process of self-digestion was well underway as shown in the next three photos.

 I drove by the same spot around 4:30 this afternoon, without my camera, and the caps had shrunk further and the stems were around an inch taller.  I'm wondering if there will be any remains tomorrow morning.  The most obvious differences between the two settings:  at the FRC campus, the spot caught early morning sun and was frequently the recipient of little rainstorms from the sprinklers watering the adjacent soccer practice field.  The spot on Jackson Street where today's photos were taken is always in shade and is not watered - that is, until today's rain.  THere may be other factors, but a whole week's difference in their life cycle!  Very impressive.

Here's a view from above.  That nasty black stuff almost looks pretty from this angle.  It is hard to shake off the notion that we're really looking at a single fungus here, the caps being united beneath the surface by a very thin membrane called the mycelium.

Worn out. Self-destruction.

 The above photo is the same Shaggy Mane cap that occupies the top photo in my previous post.  This photo was taken five days later, so you can see that from "birth" to total disappearance takes about a week.  My next post will show what has happened at another site.  Meanwhile, the pancake-like mushroom caps in the below photo look relatively unchanged since the day they first appeared.  A total of two weeks so far.  We've had an intense rain last night and most of the day today, so I'll drive out to this spot for another look tomorrow morning.

Life in the fast lane

 Photographed nine days ago by the paved path that connects the FRC parking lot to the upper campus classrooms.  These can erupt overnight.  The one in the above photo was barely visible as a tiny white dome the day before, then was already 5" tall on this day.   The others in this series were

 from two to five days old, and in the third and fourth photos you can see that the auto-digestive process has made them almost entirely disintegrate.  When I came by this same spot 5 days ago,

 they were all gone.  All that remained were a few small piles of black goop.  The stems had collapsed or been digested totally.  Meanwhile, my other favorite place to observe the Shaggy Manes in the fall, the west end of Jackson Street, showed no signs of their appearance.  I thought that perhaps roadside maintenance had killed them off.

 In this spot at the college, there's another species of fungi growing abundantly that look like pancakes on pedestals.  I don't know the species, but they stay around for many days.  In fact the ones in the photo below looked about the same for over a week, and they are still there, looking only slightly aged.  My next post will reveal some surprises.

The Scene - and then there were none

 This is the first time I've posted to this blog from a coffee shop.  I'm spoiled.  The Internet here is soooo fast.  A couple of days ago I checked on the Oak Treehoppers in my favorite California Black Oak on the FRC campus.  I usually post only close-ups, but today I thought I'd start with a photo that shows the scene where they live.  You can see how easy it would be to enjoy fall colors for years and never know these little beauties exist.  But when you come up close, you see wonders.  They're less

than a half inch long.  Click on each photo for a better idea of what they look like. Turns out the next day they were gone.  Likewise, the little colony on the biggest oak by my driveway disappeared on the same day.  I wonder if they sense the big winter we've been promised.

Nature's Influence?

 Ever since humans could dream, they have probably dreamed of flying.  DaVinci remarkably imagined a future of bicycles and flying machines.  Aeronautical engineers have certainly studied bees, dragonflies, and birds in order to uncover the magic of flight.  I got to wondering about nature's influence on design the other day when i drove by this small plane parked in a hangar at Quincy's airport.  It reminded me a large, motorized version of the Oak Treehoppers I have been photographing recently as I have been doing during this season for several years.

 I wonder if the person who painted the plane was influenced by the design of these bugs.  They really can fly, although most of the times I have disturbed them, they have hopped away - thus their name.

Papa's Trees

 Papa's Trees is not an official name, but the two oaks in front of Papa's Donuts in East Quincy are among the most spectacular in the area when it comes to fall colors.  They haven't peaked yet.  Several trees and groups of trees in downtown Quincy get most of the attention from leaf peepers during this time of year, but I recommend going by Papa's for an early morning doughnut and a

chance to photograph a brilliant sunrise and watch the colors on these oaks change with the rising sun.  These trees appear to me to be California Black Oaks, but not quite.  Maybe they're a hybrid of some sort.  Does anyone out there know?