Curly

The most commonly-seen ferns in our local forests are the evergreen sword ferns, and the bracken ferns, which die down in the fall and sprout again in the spring from their rhizomes underground. Maybe a better word for it is "unroll". The first to appear is a tight coil at the tip of the growing stalk. I posted photos of the coils of the evergreen ferns a while ago.

These are the growing tips of the deciduous bracken fern, Pteridium aquilinum:

New tip. Covered with dark reddish hairs. These will remain on the underside of the mature leaves.

The varieties most common in BC belong to the subspecies Pteridium aquilinum ssp. lanuginosum. Translating that: Pteris, from the Greek, means fern or feathery; aquilinum, "like an eagle" (maybe because of its wing-like structure when full grown); lanuginosum, "hairy".

And each new branch and each new leaf unrolls from its own tight coil.

Another, with a red-eyed fly as a topper.

The First Nations peoples, up and down the coast, cooked and ate the rhizomes. And the fresh, still tightly-rolled tips are a spring delicacy. Mom harvested them and served them boiled, as a green vegetable, very welcome after a winter eating canned veggies. I learned to eat the tips raw; they have a delicious, nutty flavour.

Everything in moderation. Bracken fern is toxic to many animals, and contains a toxin, ptalquiloside, a carcinogen. (But what isn't?) However it is largely destroyed by cooking.

What this means is that a very normal cooking process for fiddleheads—blanching in salty water, then shocking in ice water, then sauteeing—renders the fiddlehead close to harmless. (The Atlantic)

And then, it is habitual eating that seems to cause the problem. My once or twice a year nibble on fern tips, even raw, is safe enough.

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Los helechos más comunes en nuestros bosques son los helechos perennes, Polystichum munitum, y el helecho deciduo, helecho águila, Pteridium aquilinum. Estos últimos desaparecen en el otoño y saltan desde sus rizomas en la primavera. O mejor dicho, se desenrollan. Lo primero que sale es un espiral bien enroscado, el cual, al crecer, da raiz al tallo. Subí fotos de las roscas del helecho perenne, hace poco.

Las que siguen son fotos de las rosquitas del helecho águila.

Al principio, están cubiertos de pelos rojizos; al abrirse, este pelaje se situará en la parte inferior de las hojas.

Las variedades más comunes en Colombia Británica son las Pteridium aquilinum ssp. lanuginosum. Traduciendo eso, tenemos: Pteris, del Griego,  "helecho" o "plumoso"; aquilinum, "águila", tal vez referiendo la forma, como una ala, de las hojas; y lanuginosum, "peludo".

Las naciones indígenas en nuestras costas, comían las rizomas, resecadas y tostadas. Y las puntas de los brotes nuevos, todavía bien enrolladas, son una delicia de la primavera. Mi mamá las cosechaba y las servía hervidas como una verdura, muy apreciada después del invierno, estación en la cual, en esos tiempos, estábamos limitados a comer verduras enlatadas. Yo aprendí a comer las puntas crudas, tal como las encontraba; tienen un sabor delicioso a nueces.

Todo con medida. El helecho águila resulta tóxico para muchos animales, y contiene una toxina, ptalquilosida, que es un carcinógeno. (Pero en estos dias, ¿qué cosa no lo es?) Sin embargo, la toxina se destruye, en gran parte, con el proceso de cocinar.

"Lo que esto significa es que un proceso normal de cocinar para los "fiddleheads" (puntas enroscadas de los helechos) — escaldado en aqua salada, imersión en agua helada, y luego sofriéndolas — deja el "fiddlehead" casi inocuo. (The Atlantic)

Y al fin de cuentas, parece que es el comerlos habitualmente lo que causa el problema. Mis bocadillos primaverales, saboreados una o dos veces por año, aun en crudo, no trae peligro.

Cap full of holes

 Polypores. The name says it all; many pores.

The fungi we call polypores produce their spores on the inside walls of tiny tubes that open on the underside of the cap. Up top, they're tough and woody, harder than the wood they grow on and recycle.

Three red-belted polypores, Fomitopsis pinicola. On a fallen log.

Pore openings on the underside of a dried red-belted polypore, under a microscope.

On the cut end of a log. Probably the red-belted again; these are extremely variable.

Under the duff, there's a log. Unidentified polypore species. Could still be red-belted.

The red-belted polypore is the most commonly found polypore in the Pacific Northwest. It can grow on over 100 host trees, dead or alive, deciduous or evergreen. E-Flora mentions that it tastes slightly acid or bitter; I can't imagine trying to eat it; it's solid and tough. May as well chew the trees it grows on.

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Poliporo: el nombre  lo dice todo. El polipore tiene muchos poros.

"Los poliporos son un grupo de hongos que forman grandes cuerpos fructíferos con poros o tubos en la parte inferior." (Wikipedia)

Las esporas se forman en las paredes de estos tubos, saliendo al aire por medio de los poros. En la parte superior, estos hongos son duros, fuertes, más densos que los árboles que habitan y reciclan.

Las tres fotos son del poliporo "de cinta roja", Fomitopsis pinicola, que se presenta con muchos colores. 

La segunda foto muestra los poros en uno de estos hongos, ya seco, bajo mi microscopio.

Es el poliporo que más comunmente se halla en esta región. Puede crecer en más de cien árboles, vivos o muertos, coníferos o deciduos. E-Flora comenta que tiene un sabor levemente ácido o amargo. No me puedo imaginar tratando de comerlo; es sumamente sólido y fuerte. Más bien sería tratar de comer la madera de los árboles donde crece.

Caution required

And a few more mushrooms ...

Alcohol inkies, inky cap, tippler's bane. Coprinus atramentarius.

Like shaggy manes, they turn black and oozy as they mature, but these have relatively smooth caps. These are buttons. They're edible, as long as you stay away from alcohol for two days after eating them. They deactivate a human enzyme that protects us from the effects of alcohol, so that the alcohol, not the innocent mushroom, gives us a batch of nasty symptoms; a hangover amplified.

More inkies, maturing.

An amanita button, possibly Amanita muscaria, as found, ripped up and left to die on fallen leaves.

Don't try eating these! Hallucinogenic, poisonous, sometimes lethal. They do look tasty, though!

Two flat brown shelves on a old stump. Artist's conk, Ganoderma applanatum, I think.

From my mushroom guide: "It has been calculated that a single large specimen of artist's conk can produce 30 billion spores a day during the summer months, for a total of 4.5 trillion spores annually! This is the source of the brown dust-like coating that often covers the surface of this conk.

You can try to eat these; I hear that the flavour is "mild", but really, they're tough as old-growth lumber.

Specialty diet

In a shadowed Douglas fir copse near Salmon Point, where the moss lies 6 inches thick over downed logs and up-turned roots, filtered sunlight highlights mounds of reindeer lichen.

In spite of the recent rains, the moss is dry to the touch. Sit on it, though (it feels like the softest cushion), and soon water squeezes upwards from the wet logs underneath.

Individual mound. Away from direct sunlight, the lichen is pale green.

It's called reindeer lichen, because it is a main part of a reindeer's diet. Here in Canada,our reindeer are called caribou. They eat the reindeer lichen, too.

But down this far south, we have no caribou. Does anything eat this lichen? Elk, moose, deer, maybe? The deer that roam our forests, backyards and roadsides? Oh, Google!

No, they don't.

Although other boreal ungulates (including mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, moose and mountain goat) eat lichens, only Rangifer tarandus eat the reindeer lichens. (Hiker's Notebook)

But, but, but ... Everything gets eaten, doesn't it? Well, yes.

Red-backed voles eat horsehair lichen and reindeer lichens. These rodents do not have the complex stomachs found in deer and goats, but they must have a good community of bacterial to help digest all the lichen that they eat. (Juneau Empire)

And, yes, we have red-backed voles here; E-Fauna records them scattered all over BC.

Many other animals eat lichens, but they skip the reindeer lichen. Humans can eat it, but only after it is boiled to remove the toxic acids.