Also known as Maitake mushroom, grifola fondosa, sheep’s head or ram’s head. It is an edible mushroom, that I hear is quite tasty. I would love to try it sometime. They grow at the base of oak trees or stumps and are a pore fungus (polypore) and lack gills.
This is a wooly bear caterpillar. I grew up calling them wooly worms. This is the larval form of the Isabella Tiger Moth. This caterpillar, according to legend, forecasts the coming winter weather. Again I defer to the Old Farmers Almanac, (http://www.almanac.com/content/predicting-winter-weather-woolly-bear-caterpillars), “the wider that middle brown section is (i.e., the more brown segments there are), the milder the coming winter will be. Conversely, a narrow brown band is said to predict a harsh winter. ” So, it is the wooly worm vs the persimmon seed in weather prediction. I am voting for the wooly worm 🙂
Yep, another day of fungus. As I said, we saw a ton of different mushrooms on our hike last Friday. This is a fawn mushroom….I think. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation the fawn mushroom is edible, but eater beware, it has many lookalikes that are poisonous.
I believe this is a puffball, but I am not sure what kind exactly. Being in a state park we weren’t able to pick the mushroom to investigate it further, and I can’t find anything that looks like it on Missouri Department of conservation website.
As Glen and I hiked though the woods last Friday we came upon several varieties of fungus. This is the jack-o-lantern mushroom, also known as false chanterelle. The jack-o-lantern is poisonous and can cause moderate to severe stomach upset for several days after eating it.
One way to tell the two mushrooms apart is that chanterelles grow singularly and the jack-o-lantern grows in clusters.
Another way to tell them apart is that the jack-o-lantern have gills that descend the stalk. Chanterelles are similar in color but their undersides are smooth with blunt ridges, not gills.
While Glen and I were at Knob Noster State Park hiking the trails we saw lots of neat things. There were a lot of oak trees that have dropped a lot of acorns. This one particular acorn caught our eye. It was cracked open so we could see the nut inside, which was reddish in color. I have never seen an acorn with red meat and I am not able to find anywhere on the “all knowing internet” as to why it would be red. We did get a lot of rain last week and maybe it had been soaking in some muddy water and the tannins in the nut made it turn red…..that is my best guess.
Last Friday Glen and I had one of our rare days off together. After eating a wonderful lunch at a cafe in Warrensburg, (Cafe Blackadder), we decided to head over to Knob Noster State Park to walk off our sandwiches. It was a beautiful day to be out walking trails in the woods.
This is Lake Buteo. We were hoping the trees would have more color, but it is still a bit early.
Another shot of Lake Buteo.
Some places were a bit muddy, and as you can see I clearly was not watching where I was walking. Glen said I was extremely talented to manage to splash all the mud on the interior of my pant leg without getting it all over my leg.
We have a few persimmon trees and they are all loaded with fruit. We are still waiting for them to ripen. If they aren’t ripe and you eat them, your mouth will feel like it is turning wrong side out. They are so very sour. I have never had anything made with persimmons. Last year a friend shared a recipe for persimmon pie cupcakes. Maybe this year is the year to give it a try.
This year we have a lot of hegeapples that have dropped in our yard. The hedgeapple is the fruit of the osage orange tree. As I was reading up on them I was shocked to discover that they are not poisonous. I was always told that they were. One of the common myths about hedgeapples is they will repel insects….more specifically spiders. If that were true I wouldn’t have spiders anywhere near my house.
Like Mother Teresa, only better.
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