Under the Microscope - Archive
European Fruit Lecanium, Parthenolecanium corni
March 01, 2006
Many people in the Northeast were puzzled last July to find a shiny, sticky goo coating the leaves of all kinds of trees. When the cause was discovered, it just made the situation more baffling. An astounding number of tiny insects riddled the undersides of tree leaves. What were they, and how could there suddenly be so many of them?
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Tinder Polypore, Fomes fomentarius
December 01, 2005
The fruiting structures of the tinder polypore are not hard to recognize, especially if you can remember that it has another common name, which is “hoof fungus.” Shaped like a horse’s hoof, its outer surface is gray or gray-brown and smooth except when marked by the occasional wrinkle and horizontal lines laid down each year as the fungus resumes growth …
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Velvet Top Fungus, Phaeolus schweinitzii
September 01, 2005
The fungi that attack heartwood in living trees are grouped according to what part of the tree they attack – roots, butt, trunk, or branches – and by what component of the wood they consume. Some species consume more lignin than cellulose, leaving stringy, whitish, rotten wood, and these are called white rotters. Brown rotters, in contrast, degrade cellulose, leaving …
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Birch Leafminer, Fenusa pusilla
June 01, 2005
Sometimes by midsummer you can identify stands of paper birch from far away: they are the tan patches on otherwise green hillsides. Identifying the cause of the discoloration is more difficult – even up close. Most of the time, it’s one of the many insects called leafminers, whose tiny larvae feed between the top and bottom epidermal layers of a …
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Porcupine, Erethizon dorsatum
March 01, 2005
Most of us have been at least annoyed, if not infuriated, by porcupines from time to time. Their desperate need for salt in the summer months gets them in big trouble around the house. They spend the night chewing on tool handles, sap lines, electrical cables, tires, brake lines, canoe paddles, and the house itself. We once put out a …
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Gypsy Moth, Lymantria dispar
December 01, 2004
On a June day in 1986, you could have driven for 50 miles through oak-dominated forests in Pennsylvania and not seen a single leaf, except on a black walnut or tulip tree, which are just about the only species that gypsy moths turn their noses up at. Having seen devastating gypsy moth defoliation on a smaller scale in Connecticut, I …
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