Just got back from our short jaunt to Fort Bragg in Northern California where our walks were mostly restricted to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden. Something new since the last time I was there were placards depicting the birds one is apt to see each part of the garden. I thought @klw at least might enjoy these though the birds themselves would have been more desirable. Pretty sure each one can be blown enough to read anything of interest.
In the cottage we stayed in there was a wonderful bird window where feeders of every sort drew in many birds, most of which I didn’t know. When the Jays were there they dominated with their size. The tiny birds weren’t as showy but much more various.
I saw an unusual, flexible, tubelike fungus this morning that I have never seen before. Maybe @SkovandOfMitaze would recognize it. The “Seek” app says it’s in the family of Elf Cups. That’s a nice image.
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SkovandOfMitaze
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To me it looks a lot like some of the stinkhorns. Elegant stink horn is similar. Devils fingers is similar sometimes when just one is fruiting and hollow.
Looks like a wonderful and lush place to hang out, Mark. I recognize many of the typical western bird species on the placards including my favorite…the Northern Flicker!
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SkovandOfMitaze
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Found some Indigo Milkcaps and chanterelles and added them to my dinner as a side. It was Impossible ( veggie ) Beef, the mushrooms and the really red side was beets, carrots, sweet onions, broccoli, cauliflower, rice, white beans, sweet peppers and jalapeños. Lots of stuff mixed into the other side but was delicious. Also lots of kale wilted down too.
Just a reminder if it is clear weather where you live, there is a major meteor shower the next few nights. The Perseid shower supposedly will produce 60 an hour or so. I remember my older brother waking me up for the 1966 Leonid shower, which was most amazing thing I have ever seen in the sky, since Jesus has not returned yet. See how I worked the faith thing into the post? There were literally dozens and maybe hundreds of trails in the sky at any one moment that year.
Chanterelles is one of my favourite mushrooms. When I saw your pictures, I had to search whether North American chanterelles were the same species as the European ones. It seems to be a group of related species, instead of one global species. One or many species, what matters is the taste.
Looks like some sort of yucca or dasylirion or grass tree. Where was this taken, I wonder?
I saw something awe inspiring today, up the hill from where Lia goes for treatment at Stanford is this park with a couple of notable features. One is the Talfoni sandstone formation which required too much of a hike to do on our way to her appointment. But the Methuselah redwood at over 1800 years of age was the greater wonder from my perspective anyhow, and just off of the road. Perfect.
This information was cut into a gate to the enclosure that protects the tree and has some information:
It is the only remaining tree in the area from before Europeans arrived and the only one not cut down. I suspect that the wind that knocked off its crown in the 1950’s wasn’t the first time that had happened. Sequoia sempervirens is a reference to its willingness to keep living even after being felled or damaged. Probably the new growth is too poorly attached to the trunk to withstand high winds. So as a gigantic 100 foot burl ridden trunk it would probably have just been too much trouble to harvest. Lucky us.
They are estimated.to live up to 2200 years so 1850 is getting up there, even for chubby dwarf of a specimen.
You, sir, get the prize for plant identification. I took the photo off the internet.
Click the photo, and read the common names.
It’s a reference to Randy’s post with Lobelia.
Lobelia Sackville-Baggins stole Bilbo’s silverware, when he was on his adventure with the dwarves. Later Bilbo gave her a box of silver spoons as a remembrance of sorts.
The redwood is amazing!
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SkovandOfMitaze
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It does look a lot like the Dasylirion wheeleri. The serration along the leaves. The yuccas that I know of don’t typically have that appearance. The Adam’s needle yucca typically has those wiry strange of “hair” leaf strings. The other hair tree i know
That’s native to USA is the Dasylirion texanum.
But I don’t know enough about their differences.
Also, when I went to click on the the pic to enlarge it just now it took me to a site saying it’s the first Dasylirion.
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SkovandOfMitaze
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A small species of native cucumber. It’s not ripe yet. They don’t get much bigger, but they turn dark purple black when ripe.
I’ve not been hiking much. Been back to working 3am-330pm. M-F and then doing biking for exercise. Back to doing 20-50 miles on Saturday. One Sunday I put on my 40lbs vest and walk about 6-8 miles. In a few more weeks I should be working at another job as well part time on the weekend from 6am-6pm. Trying to learn a bit more about auto mechanics. Was looking at this part time trade school that lasts 4 years, just m-w 230pm-530pm for automotive technicians. Big commitment for something not really career related but will definitely teach me tons and tons on working on my own stuff. Just had to pay someone $3000 to change out oil pan gasket and a few other gaskets. Parts for everything was around $900. A wire was fixed. Handful of things that took the dude 2 days. If I learned it, could have saved $2k and did it over a weekend. I need to fix the transmission also. That’s another $3500. Parts to rebuild it is a few hundred. So it’s to my benefit to learn how to do it. Make money on the side. Mostly doing it because I want to save myself money on the long run and be able to buy broken down auctioned vehicles for $1500 and spend another $1500 to get it up and running and sell for $7k or keep myself. A friend of mine bought a truck for $3k. Its engine was out. He only had to rebuild the bottom of the engine. Took him a week after work to do it. Sold it for $12k within a day of posting it.
Here is an exotic bit of nature you might enjoy seeing. It is a large bulb from South Africa called Brunsvigia josephinae. It is related to Belladonna which is everywhere and better known as Naked Ladies. [No offense.]. I was given mine by a friend when she moved to Oregon a couple years ago. When they were dug up they lost a lot of root but five days ago I spotted its first flower stalk peeking out.
Here for scale is my hand taken yesterday.
It think it will be a couple weeks before I get blooms but here is picture of a friend’s plant after it opened its first flower July 24.
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Yesterday I asked him how large the flower stalk had gotten and he sent me this photo with a yard stick for scale. He said the flower stalk to the point where it branched was four feet tall.
In nature the top of the flower stalk would break off and that spherical flower head would roll all over the fields spreading its seeds (or nowadays more often piling up along fences making a large group of them).
There were literally dozens and maybe hundreds of trails in the sky at any one moment that year.
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