Dark, green, damp. Just the ticket!

 These hot days there's nothing better than a walk in a shady forest. Like down the trail to Roberts' Lake.

Ancient stump, new trees, moss and ferns and green algae.

A rich assortment of mosses on a burnt stump.

Banana slugs love this damp, cool hillside.

Moss and lichen on a fallen tree.

A tree full of turkey tail polypores.

Study in contrasts.

Another stump with its mossy coat.

Tomorrow's another hot day, but rain is coming soon.  The slugs, the moss, and I will be happy.

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En estos dias calurosos, no hay nada mejor que caminar en un bosque verde y sombreado. Como por ejemplo, en el sendero que baja hasta el lago Roberts.

1. Tronco antiguo, cortado a la manera de antaño, por dos hombres con una sierra de mano. Y  árboles nuevos, musgos, helechos, y algas verdes.
2. Otro tronco con una variedad de musgos.
3. A las babosas banana, Ariolimax columbianus, les encanta este bosque, siempre húmedo, siempre en sombra.
4. Musgos y líquenes en un árbol caído.
5. Un árbol colonizado por los hongos  "cola de pavo", Trametes versicolor.
6. Texturas en contraste.
7. Otro tronco viejo con su abrigo de musgos.

Y mañana será otro dia de color, pero pronto vienen las lluvias. Las babosas, los musgos, y yo, estaremos felices.

Pie crusts and green peas

I think these are my favourite mushrooms: delicate, creamy, gilled mushrooms with pie-crust edges and a "navel". 

Except that they're not really mushrooms; they're the fungal component, the fruiting body, of a lichen. They never grow alone, but always in a symbiotic relationship with a green alga, Coccomyxa sp.

I usually find them in deep, dark woods, growing in old wet logs. Here, in the little wood at Oyster Bay, they have extended their patch this year to the more open area on the edge of the dunes, finding shelter inside mossy logs.

Lichen agaric, Lichenomphalia umbellifera.

Look closely at the photo; see that dark green coating on the old wood? That is the single-celled blue-green alga, Coccomyxa sp. Seen close-up, it forms nearly microscopic green balls or bubbles. I found another name for these today; the green-pea mushroom lichen. That's exactly what the alga looks like. Here it is, under my home microscope:

Coccomyxa sp., with moss and Cladonia lichen, April 2021

View of the gills.

Here's another view, another log.

Lichen agarics, against a dark background of the green alga. With Cladonia lichens and some moss.

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Creo que estos hongos son mis favoritos; honguitos delicados, cremosos, con un borde ondulado como el de un pastel de frutas, y además un "ombligo".

Pero es que no son hongos, sino el cuerpo fructífero de un líquen. Nunca aparece el "hongo" solo, sino que existe siempre en una relación simbiótica con un alga verde, Coccomyxa sp..

Normalmente los encuentro en bosques oscuros y húmedos, creciendo dentro o encima de troncones bien podridos, y mojados. Estos, creciendo en el bosquecito de Oyster Bay, han extendido su zona este año, apareciendo al borde de las dunas, pero siempre refugiándose dentro de troncos cubiertos de musgos.

1. El hongo liquenizado, Lichenomphalia umbellifera. Examina con cuidado la foto; ¿ves esa capa verde oscura sobre la madera? Es el alga verde unicelular, Coccomyxa sp. Vista de cerca, se nota que forma pelotitas o globos verdes casi microscópicos. Hoy descubrí otro nombre; el hongo liquenizado "chícharos" (guisantes). Y eso es precisamente lo que parecen.
2. Aquí están esas algas vistas bajo mi microscopio, con musgo y líquenes Cladonia sp. en abril de 2021.
3. Vistos desde abajo, mostrando las laminillas.
4. Otro grupo, en otro troncón. Lo verde oscuro en el fondo es el alga.

Fuzzy log fungi

 A fallen tree in the open forest is covered, top to roots, in crowded split-gill mushrooms, all well coated with blue-green algae.

Schizophyllum commune, with moss, salal, and a shoot of trailing blackberry.

The bulk of the mushroom, the mycelium, is inside the wood. It may have been there before the tree fell.

Green algae grows best in the deep shade at the bottom of the log.

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Un árbol caído en bosque abierto, se encuentra cubierto casi por completo de los hongos Schizophyllum commune, y éstos, por su parte, llevan una capa de algas azul-verde.

En la primera foto, en la parte superior (ahora, caído como está) se ven los hongos, unos musguitos, y una rama del arbusto "salal', Gualtheria shallon, y otra, apenas abriendo sus primeras hojas, de la mora silvestre indígena.

La mayor parte del hongo, el micelio, está fuera de la vista, en el interior de la madera. Puede ser que haya invadido el árbol antes de que éste cayera.

El alga azul-verde crece mejor en la sombra.

Inside the breakwater

The breakwater at Oyster Bay is a line of large rocks, barely underwater at high tide, fully exposed only at the lowest tides. The rocks are clean, scoured by currents and wind-blown waves; barnacles crust a few of the more protected ones; here and there along the landward end patches of lichen grow on top.

At the lower tides, at the outer tip of the breakwater, I find anemones nestling in the cracks at the base. And in between rocks, in the blackest corners, there are barnacles.

I tried squinting down one of the cracks between rocks; too dark, too narrow, too hard even to get my head in position. My hand fitted, with the little pocket camera. I set it on flash and took photos blind. Here's what the camera saw.

Mussels, barnacles, limpets, green and reddish algae.

Barnacles and algae. Tar spot (Ralfsia sp. maybe?)

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El rompeolas en Oyster Bay consiste en una linea de rocas grandes amontonadas, apenas cubiertas con las mareas más altas, totalmente expuestas en las mareas bajísimas de verano. Las rocas están desnudas; las corrientes y las olas impulsadas por el viento las mantienen limpias. En algunas, más protegidas, crecen unos pocos bálanos; en el extremo más cercano a la tierra, hay manchas de líquenes.

Cuando la marea está baja, encajonadas a los pies de las rocas en el extremo exterior, encuentro anémonas. Y en las grietas aquí, se ven los bálanos.

Quise ver lo que había en las grietas oscuras entre estas rocas. Pero allí no hay luz, el sitio es demasiado angosto, no logré acercarme suficientemente. Pero cabía mi mano, llevando la cámara chica, la de bolsillo; armé el flash, y saqué fotos a ciegas. Esto es lo que vió la cámara.

Fotos: 

1. Bálanos, lapas, mejillones, con algas rojas y verdes.
2. Más bálanos, y algas. El alga negra tal vez puede ser Ralfsia sp. (mancha de chapopote).

Little green balls

The rainforest floor is a living thing. Here, on a base of decaying wood, old, crumbly leaves, last year's evergreen needles and cones, broken twigs and scraps of bark, fungi and mosses intertwine, their roots and hyphal threads digging deep, binding the fragile soil together. Slime molds hide in crevices; lichens colonize surfaces from rocks to wood living and dead. Scurrying through the inch-high forests, busy springtails, mites, and spiders search for food; slugs and snails slide over the surface, eating algae and mushrooms.

It's a complex world down there. Nothing is ever just one thing.

Small stump (under a foot tall), with grass, moss, mushrooms, lichen, and green algae.

Mushrooms, moss, dark green algae and well-rotted wood.

Mushrooms, Cladonia pixie-cup lichen, moss, and algae. The leaves are red sorrel.

I was curious about that dark green coating on the oldest, dampest, most sheltered wood, and zoomed in on it.

Tiny green balls, from yellow-green to a deep blue-green.

This grows only in the darkest, most protected areas of the forest floor; at the bottom of stumps, on the shady side, on the underside of mushy logs, deep under overhanging evergreen branches. On an old log, half buried, half turned into soil, moss covers the exposed top, mushrooms and lichen grow down the sides, and under it all, where the sun never shines, there's this coating of damp, slimy green stuff.

In the photos, zooming in (and I took a hand microscope to the woods to double-check) it looks like it's made up of tiny balls. Just in case it was really miniature leaves, I brought a bunch of sticks home and looked at them all under the microscope.

Looks like balls. I can't see stems. The white spots are reflections of the lights of the microscope.

I'm assuming its a variety of algae. I can't find it on the web, possibly because I don't know what to look for.

What else was down there. tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

El suelo de un bosque pluvial es un ser vivo. Aquí, sobre un base de madera podrida, hojas viejas, desbaratadas, los conos y agujas de árboles de hoja perenne caídos hace un año, ramitas rotas y fragmentos de corteza de árbol, una variedad de hongos y musgos se entrelazan, sus raices y hilos de hifa enterrándose hondamente, fusionando los elementos frágiles del suelo. Los mohos mucilaginosos se esconden en las grietas; los líquenes colonizan superficies desde piedra hasta madera, viva o muerta. En estos bosquecitos de unos cuantos centímetros de altura, animalitos corren de un lado para otro; colémbolos (brincacolas o saltadores), arañitas y garrapatas muy ocupados en buscar comida; babosas y caracoles deslizándose por encima, comiendo algas y hongos.

Es un mundo muy complicado. Nada existe por sí solo. 

Las fotos: 1. un tronquito, con musgos, hongos, líquenes, pastos, algas verdes.

2. Musgos, hongos, y algas verdes.

3. Y ahora con líquenes Cladonia "taza de duendecillo".

4. Más de cerca. Ese alga verde; pelotitas verdes.

Me llamó la atención ese organismo verde que se ve solamente en las partes más protegidas, más húmedas, más escondidas de la madera podrida. En un tronco caído, ya viejo, medio enterrado, bien suavizado, la parte superior, expuesta a la luz, llevará su bosque de musgos; en los lados y las grietas, crecen una variedad de líquenes. Y abajo, donde nunca pega el sol, donde las ramas de los árboles de hoja perenne lo mantiene en sombra perpetua, aquí crecen estas bolitas verdes.

5. Me traje varios pedazos de esa madera a casa para mirarlos bajo el microscopio. Sí, parecen pelotitas. No veo ningún tallo ni raices. (Las manchas blancas en la foto son reflejos de las luces del microscopio.)

Creo que es alguna especie de alga. Pero no lo encuentro en mis libros, ni en la red.

Que más vi allí, queda para mañana.

Snowbirds and turkey tails

I thought at first it was a flock of birds. But then again, maybe not. Unless they're white-headed penguins. Is there such a thing? Ducks? Geese?

Snowbirds, anyhow.

Frozen eagles?

Ok, I'll be sensible. Here's a plain old fence.

The greenish patches on the tree are lichen. The green on the fence are algae.

And some log ends.

With polypore fungi. And snow.

And on this one, there are turkey tail fungi, an orange jelly fungi, lichens, and moss.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Primera foto. Parecen pájaros. Pinguinos de cabeza blanca, tal vez. ¿Existe tal cosa? Bueno, si no, serán patos. O gansos. ¿O águilas congeladas? ¿Los famosos pájaros invernales canadienses?

OK, dejando a un lado las tonterías. Segunda foto: una cerca con algas verdes. Lo verde claro en el tronco del árbol son líquenes. El alga verde siempre tiene un color verde fuerte.

Tercera: un tronco caído con hongos poliporos.

Cuarta: otro tronco; este lleva hongos "cola de guajolote", hongos de gelatina anaranjada, líquenes, y un poco de musgo.

Burst of colour

In my tank yesterday, enjoying the fresh, cool water from the boat launch. And waiting to be fed.

Pink-tipped green anemone family. With assorted encrusting algae, pink, green, yellow.

They've taken over the remains of a moon snail shell; crabs usually hide in the bottom. I don't know what is there in this photo; something yellowish/greenish, maybe a hermit crab.

On the bottom right, on the empty snail shell, a few orange-striped green anemones have taken up residence. These, and the pink-tipped, are extremely prolific and are gradually taking over the available territory.

Of stones and crabs

When I go out without a fixed end point, I usually go north or west, away from the cities and the noise, the road crews and the traffic. This Wednesday I decided to break the pattern and head south. I didn't know where I was going; somewhere beyond Comox, 45 minutes to the south of my place; somewhere between the Comox valley and Union Bay, probably.

I'd barely gotten to Royston when I saw the sign: Royston Seaside Trail. Destination found. I drove to several spots along the trail, going down to the shore in each spot. The tide was low and going out; I walked to the water's edge in each location.

The setting. Royston is on the far side of a bay with Comox and Courtenay on the other two sides.

The shore is flat and stony; there was no sand, some mud. Very slippery mud. After three steps, it slithered away underfoot and almost threw me. I moved back to the rocks.

The stones here are hard, angular, sharp-edged, firmly glued to the underlying mud. And everywhere I looked, tiny crabs were scuttling about, sometimes stopping to threaten me.

It was low tide, and the sun was hot, so I was surprised to see so many crabs out in the heat; usually they find shelter under stones or seaweed when the water goes away. Not here; maybe because the stones are so solidly embedded, maybe because there was almost no seaweed, except for a few patches of bright green stringy algae and the occasional lonely rockweed.

In an area with rounder rocks, a green shore crab finds a bit of shade.

This poisonous-green algae formed mats here and there. Possibly Urospora pencilliformis.

I collected a stone with barnacles for my snails at home, and wrapped it in some of the green algae; the crabs and hermits would appreciate it. Before I wrapped it, though, I shook out the seaweed, scattering tiny snails and crabs. Still, a dozen miniature shore crabs somehow made it home unobserved. They're in my tank now; I'll have to return some of them (the ones I can catch) back to the shore.

There were crabs everywhere. In this patch, I can see at least 6 crabs; more will be hidden under the rockweed and hair algae.

The other residents of the shore seem to be mostly barnacles and snails, and a few oysters. I looked, but found no worms, no anemones, no tiny swimmers. And surprisingly, no hermit crabs, which are usually in abundance where there are many snails to provide shells.

This crab molt probably came from lower in the intertidal zone. A young Dungeness crab, Cancer magister.

Another Dungeness crab, this one underwater. So clear the water!

There were a few patches of sandstone like what we find around Campbell River.

The trail website suggests that many of the rocks on this beach are not original to the site.

Starting in 1911, steam locomotives hauled logs from logging camps throughout the Comox Valley to the Royston log dump. ... Where it approaches Hilton Road, the railway grade was constructed in the intertidal area. From the end of Chinook Road, a mile long wharf extended into the water.  Logs were tipped off the wharf until the early 1950s when the railway stopped running. ... The wharf was taken down and replaced by a breakwater in the 1950s. ... The rocks that can be seen within the intertidal area during low tides most likely originate from the fill material placed to construct the railway grade. (Royston Seaside Trail website)

More rocks, the breakwater, and - what's that?

About those rusting hulks, tomorrow.

In a snowy underwater jungle

Every few days I pull up a stool and aim the camera at the community in my little aquarium. Yesterday, I took over 100 shots; two were usable, with a possible third to be processed. Par for the course.

I love it when one hermit goes for a walk on a blade of eelgrass, above the jungle below.

Small hermit, running, on waving eelgrass, halfway across the tank, but near the light. And the water is nearly clear up here. Auto lighting, auto noise filter. Piece of cake!

Most of the crab and hermit crab activity, however, goes on down on the floor, amid scraps of seaweeds, worms, copepods, amphipods, snails, waving antennae, limpet poop, dancing sand grains, rolling stones, broken shells, waving anemone and barnacle tentacles.

And algae. Algae covers everything, including the glass I'm shooting through. No matter how I scrub it, there's always some there, caught in the scratches on the glass. The hermits and crabs are responsible for these scratches; they're always banging about with the sharp edges of their shells, or piling up sand against the glass, and then scraping it away, or trying to climb the unclimbable.

And the water is full of blowing "snow", the crumbs of food tossed out by the crabs, (messy eaters), copepods and air bubbles, bits of torn seaweed, shreds of discarded hermit molts, more limpet poop, oyster spits, more fragments of algae. The crabs and hermits are happy in clear water, but the anemones (orange-striped green, burrowing, pink-tipped green, and plumose in this tank) love this nutritious snow soup.

The camera doesn't. I can train my eye not to see it, but the camera notices every little copepod antenna and every rotting spot on the seaweed.

So here's a hermit (and a bit of a second hermit) in her usual habitat, just the way she likes it, the way I would find their community on the shore (except there, if I get down to their level, they all up and leave):

Grainy hand hermit, Pagurus granosimanus, with a shell she's rolling around. It's too small for a new outfit, so maybe she's just playing. She has lost most of one red antenna; probably in an argument over a scrap of food.

I had to clean up the background, delete quite a bit of glass algae and a blurry anemone, and adjust the light just to make the hermit visible in the mess. Imagine algae spots and swimming tinies all over.

Down in the left corner is a swarm of copepods. The snail shell at the right is vacant; soon one of the growing hermits will claim it. Some of the limpet poop is visible to the right of that blue stone.

The seaweeds are green sea lettuce, well used, a dark red blade algae, some holey kelp blades; the hermits have been chomping on this all week. The yellow edges are where the red algae is dead and flaking off. I could remove this, for the look of it, but the hermits love to eat it, so it stays. Both the hermit's shell and the empty snail shell are coated with thick green algae. The yellow stuff in back is the kelp that came with its holdfast last week. I just checked; there are four hermits working on this at the moment.

One of my crabs is very pregnant. I've been trying to get a photo: she's not cooperating. One of these days; now that the days outside are so short, I'll have more time to wait for her.

For St. Pat's Day

A pink-tipped green anemone.

On a green, pink, and orange-algae coated moon snail shell.

Food on the way! Opening an eager mouth. With a young grainy-hand hermit's pincer tip.

Miniature water garden

No matter how often I scrub the inside walls of my aquarium, it usually has a haze of green and red algae growing back. And a school of copepods browsing among the plants.

I usually scrub it all off, just before I take photos. This time, I left things as they were.

Yellow-green and red algae start off with circular spots, becoming splotches. Green-green algae start off as blobs, become bigger blobs. Sand grains (regular fine beach sand) show the comparative sizes.

The copepods have one eye each. The ones carrying a round trailer are females; look closely at the one on the left: you can see the egg cases.

In the sand below, miniature polychaete worms scoot up and down their tunnels, waving twin tentacles to capture today's lunch, bits of detritus, scraps of the algae.

Here, the tentacles extend up into the water column. Food particles travel down a groove to the hungry mouth below.

My flash disturbed the worm and he shrunk back into his tunnel. But he soon forgot about it, and pushed back up to the surface to keep on fishing.

Today, I also saw a two-inch long green ribbon worm, out looking for prey. He's an active predator who likes barnacles. He hid in the sand before I collected the camera.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

While I've been poking around weedy fields and stony beaches, life goes on apace in my aquarium. Snails are laying eggs, the amphipods are pairing up, and the anemones splitting up. (That's fine; that's how they multiply.) I counted 39 hermit crabs tonight, when I changed their water. About a third are youngsters; some are barely pinhead size - a small pinhead, at that. And there are two new crabs, a couple of millimetres across the carapace.

I've begun to bring in water from the shores at high tide again, instead of using the commercial aquarium salt and filtered water, since I learned that the local aquarium is using water from their doorstep. And my animals are much happier! Their colours are brighter, they're more active, a few that were damaged by the marauding crabs have recovered. The commercial salt has (probably) all the minerals and trace elements sea creatures need, but it's all dead stuff. Sea water is alive; it's swarming with planktonic plants and animals, the base of all marine food webs. And so is my aquarium, now.

Limpet on the glass, scraping away at spots of green algae. The pointed extension is its gill. And the bright green tube just inside the shell is limpet poop, digested algae.

A small chiton, about an inch long. It arrived on a rock with barnacles for my snails.

Another recent addition. The crabs ate his companion before they were deported.

Several small anemones have appeared in the tank. This one, I think, is an orange-striped green anemone, well to the back of the tank on the old abalone shell.

That limpet again, still eating, with its antennae extended; celebrating that wonderful feed coming up!

Down at the beach, looking for water, I took this next photo. The incoming tide usually is carrying something: driftwood, ripped up eelgrass, long kelp whips, scraps of sea lettuce, and this last week, hundreds of lions' mane and moon jellies. This time, the algae was the colour of yellowed sea lettuce, but instead of sheets, it was a thick paste, with thicker blobs.

Green scum, unidentified algae.

I waded in and collected my two gallons of water, pushing aside the algae. It was fine; my anemones received it with enthusiastically waving tentacles.

Designer wear for the discriminating hermit

Hermit watching again, I noticed the textures of the shells they use for clothing. And the shabby chic look goes well on their gym equipment, too.

Abalone shell, much pitted, and (I think) turban shell on hairy hermit. This one is eroded, and then, after I'd scrubbed it clean to donate it to the hermits' wardrobes, it's been populated by green algae, and something that fills the pits with chocolate drops.

More shells coming: I'm following a couple of hermits bearing slipper snails.

Tangled greens

Wading the eelgrass beds; I love the play of light on the water and sand, the swirling colours of the seaweeds underwater.

Eelgrass, brown and green, and silky green algae.

What looks like grass seed heads is probably hydroid "fur" on eelgrass.

Try to pick up one of these green masses; it feels like a spring fog, and is almost as hard to grasp. Most of it floats away, leaving tenuous green threads around your fingers.