NH Outside: Fall Archives

These are the days to drink in the precious gold of autumn. As the sun slants low in the sky, the golden hues dazzle us in their brilliance. The black-eyed Susans in the garden flaunt their yellow petals at the wind, which replies by swinging them jauntily in the sunshine. Behind them, tall golden sunflowers nod their huge heads. Each day, the centers expand outward, enveloping the yellow petals until all that’s left are the seeds.

The chipmunks race up the tall stalks to stuff their cheeks with seeds. The chickadees are there too, often hanging upside down as they peck away. A bird releases one seed from its cradle then flies away to crack it open and feast. Are they the birds that have been here all summer long? Or have our birds flown south already and these are migrants from further north, happy to have found a feast to sustain them on their long journey?

Other birds are busy gathering seeds, too. Another flash of gold announces the goldfinch, and soon a small flock of finches is busy eating seedheads around the garden. I watch one bird land on a grass blade nearby and the light stalk sways nearly to the ground. Undeterred, the bird moves along to the very end of the stalk and nibbles on the seed.

The sun dazzles today. It lights up the fading black-eyed Susans and the heavily blooming sunflower stalks, and behind them, the pale gold of clumps of Karl Foerster ornamental grasses. A light breeze is music to the grass, which seems to dance with wild joy.

The goldenrod is buzzing as the bees cover the surface of each cluster of blooms. The bees seem to know that the oncoming cold will soon take the flowers, so they hurry from blossom to blossom. The bees themselves are a golden hue, as are the pouches of pollen on their legs. From sun to flower to bee to pollen, the circle of life itself is represented in the colors of this pigment we humans value so much.

I pick up a fallen maple leaf. The outer edges are a rich, deep red which subtly melds into orange and then gold. In the low sunshine, the colors speak of many things: of spring showers and slowly lengthening days, of the warmth of summer; of cool fall evenings with bright full moons.

On one edge of the leaf, a little grey spider eyes me, then hops to another part of the leaf further away. “Where will you spend the winter?” I ask him. He doesn’t answer, so I put the leaf down where I found it and hope he will survive until spring.

By Susan M. Poirier, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

The fall precipitation has gotten me to thinking of puffballs and bird’s nest fungus. Autumn weather in New England is always a catalyst for mushrooms, and water may be the most important ingredient.

Fungi are neither plant nor animal, but ancient beings that have made up their own rules. This causes abrupt name changes whenever a mycologist discovers some new chemical contortion or connection. Any habitat with even a dribble of moisture has been colonized by some fungal form and there seems no reproductive method that they haven’t tried.

Hardly a matrix remains unchallenged by the astonishing array of fungal enzymes, and many plants over the millennia have made symbiotic alliances with fungi; some plants, including many orchids, can’t live without them. In trees, wood-decay fungi play a key role in producing beautiful, multicolored patterns in the wood called “spalting,” an embellishment especially prized by woodworkers.

Water may be the only commonality agreed upon by all species of fungi. Water awakens the microscopic, thready hyhpae, which comprise the main body of a fungus. This tangle of threads perforates what we persist in believing is solid ground. In industrious self-employment, these hyphae transform larger things into smaller things. These larger things are as varied as granite, trees, leaves, feathers, insects, shower curtains, and the contents of my refrigerator. The foam in brooks is most often a by-product of aquatic fungi.

Dampness finalizes a fungus’s plan to organize and send forth the familiar mushroom. A particle of evaporated water in an intentionally self-cooled mushroom cap catapults a spore on its journey out of the gill or pore off to a suitably damp new beginning or a desiccated and sorry death. The design is so precise that with all our apparatus we could not duplicate it. Even the shape of a mushroom cap is adapted to allow an appropriate air current to move the spore along its way.

I am thinking in tonight’s rain about more unusual forms of fungus though. The bird’s nest fungi are easy to overlook. Very small, but quite common, they look like groups of quarter-inch cups, leftover dinnerware from some Lilliputian gathering. Each contains a few lentil-shaped “eggs.” These capsules contain the spores, and they are waiting for rain. A well-placed raindrop can propel one of these carriers a surprising distance—up to several yards—which is the point. Offspring must be sent off to fresh food supplies.

Some species of these miniscule nests eject “eggs” trailing sticky threads, which cause these reproductive structures to adhere to any surface they strike. With luck, one of these eggs, called peridioles, will accidentally become part of some herbivore’s meal, eventually left behind somewhere, complete with a ready-to-eat lunch.

Rain is also crucial for the continuation of many kinds of puffballs. Unlike the commonly depicted children’s-book mushroom, puffballs have neither gills nor pores to send their spores aloft. Instead, their reproductive dust matures within the protective sphere, a system that prevents premature drying. Expecting rain, a pre-ordained pore enlarges and opens on the upper surface. A few good smacks of a downpour and puffs of spore erupt into a stiff, damp breeze—perfect for starting more puffball mycelium to continue the process of decay beneath a lawn.

The deluges of this past month have caused puffballs galore on a baseball field I know. They glow in the moonlight like little Halloween ghouls arisen mysteriously from barren turf. Some are large enough for late-season myopic outfielders to prematurely explode them. Enough will have escaped intact, awaiting the rain.

By J. Ann Eldridge, UNH Cooperative Extension Wildlife Coverts Cooperator