This week in the woods, we encountered a cup lichen in the genus Cladonia, which includes reindeer moss and British soldiers as well as difficult-to-determine species like this one, with common names including sulphur cup, goblet, pixie cup, and trumpet lichen. Like all lichens, they are composites of a fungus and either an alga or a photosynthetic bacterium. When they fuse their bodies and intertwine cell membranes, both partners transform and contribute: the fungus pulls moisture and spreads out into a protective structure for hosting the alga or bacterium, which forfeits its cell walls and provides carbohydrates and other nutrition through photosynthesis.
Birch polypore mushrooms would have emerged from this mossy, lichen-covered birch in the spring or summer and, like some other polypores we observed this week, has lingered through the winter. With age, the pores on birch polypores’ undersides can become toothlike and brown, and their domed tan tops split to reveal white inner flesh. Ötzi, the Tyrolean Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummified body discovered in 1991 frozen in a glacier in the Alps, had on his person pieces of this mushroom species, likely for its medicinal uses. He is also said to have had tinder polypore, another common species in our area and across the northern hemisphere. Stored in a container and wrapped in green leaves, the mushroom likely harbored a slow-burning flame for use at a campsite Ötzi never arrived at. Like tinder polypore, red-belted polypore adds banded growth at its outer edge each year, producing a ridged texture. An orange or red layer between the lower, most recent white layer and tough top dark layer should make this species readily identifiable. (For more on persistent winter mushrooms, see Frank Kaczmarek’s Outside Story article from 2022.)
A peek into a promising rocky crevice this week yielded a sought-after find: porcupine quills and scat. As many as a dozen porcupines might share these uninsulated dens this time of year, and they emerge at night to feed on their winter diet of buds, twigs, bark, and cambium. An area at the beginning of their large intestine called the cecum helps them deal with these high-fiber foods by slowing digestion and allowing more time for microbes and enzymes to break down the fiber. The quills are hairs that harden within hours of a porcupette’s birth into easily detachable, tapering, barb-tipped spines. While the oft-cited number of quills per porcupine is 30,000, a 2017 study by John G. Shokeir published in the Journal of Dairy & Veterinary Sciences (“Getting to the Point: How Many Quills Does a North American Porcupine Have?”) found a 21-year-old female to have 44,006 quills.
What have you noticed in the woods this week? Submit a recent photo for possible inclusion in our monthly online Reader Photo Gallery.