The competition. And a banana slug recipe

I went looking for mushrooms and found slugs looking for dinner. Chef's special: mushrooms on the stalk, with fresh rain dressing.

Black slug, Arion ater.

Everywhere I went yesterday, there were black slugs, all dressed in blue-black finery, partying in the wet moss and mud.

If you encounter one and are feeling bold, poke it gently. It will tighten into a ball and start wobbling side to side, very slowly. It is one of nature's most inexplicable and strangely mesmerizing performances, worth watching if you have a lot of time to kill. (E-fauna, article by Hugh Griffith)

I didn't know that, or I'd have been poking slugs until dark. Next time.

Banana slug, Ariolimax columbianus. Our native slug.

This was a small specimen, in a hurry to leave while I tromped around him, trying to find firm footing on a wet slope. I like the striped border of his foot.

Another banana slug, in a spotted coat, eating a mushroom.

Banana slugs, like the bananas they're named for, can be any colour from green to yellow to spotty brown to black. They are the most commonly met slugs in this area, and can grow up to 25 cm (10 inches) long, like the big cooking bananas (plantains) in the produce section at the store.  And yes, you can cook and eat a banana slug.

I had the slugs with ketchup and they were oh-so-good. I was very surprised. The texture was like a cross between mushrooms and calamari. It was hard to pick out a specific “slug” flavor; they tasted deep-fried, oily, and subtle. (From a recipe for Deep Fried Banana Slugs.)

Interesting, but I think I'll stick to the plant variety.

The slugs were eating mushrooms at Echo Lake.

Mushrooms tomorrow, some not even chewed yet!

Green bananas

In Mazatlan, I was staying in a hostel about 15 minutes walk from the main hotel zone, where my daughter and her friends were staying. I walked out several times a day, varying my route so as to see as much as possible, sometimes stretching the 15 minutes into an hour while I kept stopping to take photos.

This banana tree was growing out of the sidewalk; a small tree, no taller than I am, but already busy producing fruit.

Wayside fruit stand?

I'm still processing street photos: trees, flowers, painted walls, and more birds.

While the sun still shone

It has been raining, desultorily, without enthusiasm; too damp for gardening, too cool for bugs, too grey for photos. Most of my flowers are gone anyhow. Even the begonias and winter pansies are hanging their heads under the weight of rainwater.

It's good, then, that I'm still sorting September photos, full of bright, warm, sunshiny flowers and critters.

Our neighbour's sunflowers.

Banana flower and green fruit. Beach Grove.

Flies and a beetle on goldenrod. Mud Bay Station.

Unidentified seed pods. Possibly peppergrass* (a Mustard). Mud Bay, growing through the  rip-rap.

Gumweed and Cabbage white butterfly. Mud Bay.

Tiny succulent, Beach Grove.

Orange-brown sandhill skipper* on sea rocket. Centennial Beach.

Pickleweed, Salicornia pacifica. The white "spines" are salt crystals. Salicornia gets rid of excess salt by moving it up to the tips of the stems, which turn red and eventually drop off. Mud Bay tide flats. 

Another pickleweed plant. This one is just starting to accumulate salt at the tips.

It's raining harder now. I wonder if it's going to rain all month long, to make up for our warm September.

*Thanks to biobabbler, Katie and Jodi for the IDs. (See discussion in comments.)

Banana belt

Bananas grow and produce fruit in BC. Outside. Who knew?

Banana flower, with clumps of developing green bananas, in a front yard in Tsawwassen.

Front view of flower.

The big bud contains the beginnings of many small flowers, such as the ones under the lifted sepal. Each flower develops into one banana; behind the fresh blooms are a clump of baby bananas with drying flowers at the tip. The next clump up the stem has dropped most of the blooms, except for a few black threads.

They're still a long way from ripening, but now the days are cool, the nights chilly. Even in Tsawwassen. I don't think they'll make it, at least on the tree.