...GILLS ON UNDERSIDE OF CAP
Sunday, 9;00 AM. Temperature 46 degrees F, up from 41degrees earlier. Wind SSE, calm to light. The sky is clear and sunny, the humidity down some to 75%. The barometer is up, at 30.11". The Farmers' Almanac predicts cool weather with some shower activity for the Midwest today and tomorrow. No showers here, I think. We cut some more firewood yesterday afternoon. A few more loads and I will call it quits for a while, but we won't work on Sunday.
I used to think I knew some mushrooms, but I now only approach them as things of natural beauty. I do not pretend to know any but a very few and would personally never eat wild mushrooms, many of which are highly poisonous. But I can appreciate them as interesting and beautiful living things. The mushroom cap is only the above ground, reproductive structure of the organism, the vast majority of its living cells being underground. I recently read that what is thought to be the largest living thing in the world is a morel mycelium which resides underground throughout several thousand acres of forest in the state of Washington.
Mushrooms reproduce by spores which in most species are dispersed from the underside of the cap of the mushroom. A major identification characteristic is whether the spores are released from pores or gills, as seen above.
The wet weather we have had recently has encouraged mushrooms to sprout everywhere in the Bayfield area, and they add beauty and a sense of mystery to the fall landscape, often competing with or complementing the fallen leaves in color and form.
Use the blog search engine for previous blogs about Bayfield mushrooms.
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