Nature Observations – Page 17 – Nature Along the El Camino Real

Mushroom Bucket List Success

April 15, 2024 Sue Ann (Suna) KendallLeave a comment

By Ann Collins

Does anybody besides me have a mushroom bucket list? I don’t need to see a “Death Angel” (might be Angel of Death or one that glows in black light, although that would be really interesting. No, my bucket list is only one deep, a bird’s nest fungi. I’ve seen pictures but figured I’d have to go to eastern Canada or the jungles of Belize to see one.

Well, wouldn’t you know it! I’m wandering around in my wildflower meadow, in my nightgown and robe, in the cool damp morning. I’m doing a bit of “belly botany” getting a picture of the very first winecup of the season. I’ve been keeping a sharp eye out for them. I knew they were coming and wanted to add them to my growing list f flowering plants to satisfy the sweet lady at the appraisal office. I do pollinators, critters, and plants for my wildlife exemption, and I’ll do just about anything to make the folks at the Appraisal District happy. Someday I’ll have to show the Master Naturalists my scrapbooks and journals.

Anyway, I see what I think is a small mushroom cap. But it isn’t! It’s a tiny cup about the size of my little fingernail. Inside the cup is a bunch of little charcoal gray “eggs.” Wow! Is this a fairy’s bird nest? Maybe a lost leprechaun’s? I would have jumped straight up in surprise, delight, and amazement, but at my age I can’t manage that sort of thing anymore!

As I gazed in awe, I realized there were bunches of them all over the place. I dug one out of the ground with a toothpick-sized stick and reverently laid it in my palm. Gosh! Don’t you love your camera phone? There was a kind of bulb or knot at the base of the cup. I tried carefully knocking off the damp soil from the tangle of roots. That wasn’t working out very well, so I took my precious treasure into my potting shed and started washing it. Let me remind you, this thing is the size of my little fingernail – tiny!

I feel like I just discovered Cleopatra’s tomb – really! The detail on this little bit of magic is simply unbelievable.

The world we live in is filled with wonderful, magical, delightful structures if we only take the time and get down on our hands and knees and look.

Don’t forget to take your phone camera!

I looked them up online, of course, and they are used in Chinese medicine. There are lots of benefits: anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial. Treatment for tuberculosis, asthma, skin problems, stomach troubles. It’s even used against aging.

There was a lot of information on how to get rid of them. I can’t even begin to know why. They are very tiny! So much hidden wonder and magic. For a mere $630.00 you can purchase them for home use. 4.8 stars! You can even buy bird’s nest mushroom tea.

Chapter Eclipse Day Gathering a Success

April 10, 2024April 10, 2024 Sue Ann (Suna) KendallLeave a comment

By Carolyn Henderson

Clouds parted and the view was stunning of the Solar Eclipse. El Camino Real chapter members gathered at a member’s place to watch the event together as well as do a few projects – and of course eat.

There were 16 members and 7 guests who met at Jackie Thornton’s Party Barn near Minerva Monday. Jackie had everything ready to go including materials to make bee watering stations and Wren nests.

Debi Harris used gourds to make the Wren nests, and members put a little personalization on them. Jackie told everyone how to create the bee watering stations. Several creative pieces went home with members.

Training was then provided by Carolyn, Connie Anderle, and Linda Jo Conn on the eclipse. Carolyn provided facts, including the one that predicts another total solar eclipse will not occur in our area for 350 years. Connie provided safety information on viewing eclipses, and Linda Jo discussed how animals react to eclipses.

After eating a large lunch, members set up outside in a wildflower-covered field and cheered when the clouds parted, making the eclipse visible. Everyone sat and watched for over an hour as the moon edged its way between the earth and sun.

Everyone stopped all noise, to hear what nature would do as the totality came close. Before it was complete, but it was growing darker, birds, frogs and crickets began to make their noises that they normally do at dawn and dusk. At the darkest point, nearby coyotes howled for a minute or two. It was measurably cooler, too.

Several members were seeing colors – pink and blue – at the most covered point, too. I found out last night that it was solar flares making the colors.

I did not use the correct filter on my camera, so my photos show those colors, among other oddities. It was a once in a lifetime experience – unless you are willing to travel to see another one.

Of course, Linda Jo took some time for iNaturalist observations

Local Texas Master Naturalist Identifies New Wolf Spider

April 7, 2024April 7, 2024 Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall3 Comments

By Carolyn Henderson
ECRTMN President

[This article appeared in the Cameron Herald, Thursday, April 4, 2024]

A local member of the El Camino Real chapter of Texas Master Naturalist is putting Milam County on the scientific map in spider identification. Eric Neubauer, now considered a local Rabid Wolf Spider expert, discovered a kind of Wolf Spider that has never been identified anywhere.

Neubauer discovered the new spider and named it Hogna Incognita while studying the biodiversity of his place out near Davilla in 2019. He had just moved to Texas from Pennsylvania and bought a few acres in that area. When he realized the place was covered in what are commonly called Wolf Spiders, he felt compelled to identify all of them.

There are many kinds of Wolf Spiders, but after two years of trying to identify the Hogna Incognita without success, he believed that he had found a new, unidentified, as yet unnamed spider. “It’s amazing that a spider that big, that common had not been identified already,” said Neubauer.

He started using iNaturalist, an internet vehicle to identify all living things all over the world, in 2019. Only 4 people had an active interest in Wolf Spiders on the site. Neubauer went through 13,000 Wolf Spider observations on several different identification sites. None were his spider. The first identification of Wolf Spiders in Milam County goes back to 1904 when Texas was still a popular place for biologist to study all types of living things.

*Hogna incognita* *– photo by Eric Neubauer*

After extensive studying, he came to strongly believe that he had a new one that had never been mentioned in scientific literature. The Hogna Incognita has a relative that looks similar to it, but it doesn’t look exactly like it. The “cousin” is commonly called the Hogna Antalucana. He believes the incognita was thought to be the antalucana because they had one similar trait.

Neubauer began giving presentations on Wolf Spiders to fellow Master Naturalist. In 2021, convinced it was a new one, He put up a “note” on it on the Bug Guide web site. The curator of the site agreed that it was a new species.

After some statewide presentations by Neubauer in 2023, Tarleton Professor Russell Pfau read the presentations and offered to help Neubauer with definitive evidence of its uniqueness. Pfau did extensive DNA testing on both the incognita and antalucana. Neubauer and Pfau caught some of each type in several stages of development – including all the spiderlings on the mother’s back. Pfau has managed to raise them from infancy to adulthood. The raising of them showed difference between the two from birth to adulthood.

Just weeks ago, Pfau notified Neubauer that the two spiders did indeed have different DNA. He had found an unidentified Wolf Spider.

“Hearing that the DNA test verified what I was sure I’d found – I was more excited than I thought I would be,” said Neubauer, who is normally very stoic.

Neubauer would like to stress that Wolf Spiders are harmless. They may bite, but it’s not poisonous or painful. “I’d rather be bitten by a Wolf Spider than a mosquito,” he said. They offer some benefits out in the blacklands, too. The incognita is mostly in the blacklands and some surrounding areas, so if you’re in Milam County you probably have them.

If you’d like to read the original report, you can find it on the El Camino Real Texas Master Naturalist web site https://txmn.org/elcamino/ . You also can look up Wolf Spiders on www.inaturalist.org.

Bald Cypress and Montezuma Cypress

March 27, 2024 Sue Ann (Suna) KendallLeave a comment

by Alan E. Rudd

The oldest individual bald cypress tree (Taxodium distichum) in North America is likely to be one in North Carolina that has been aged by drilling a core to the center of its trunk to expose the number of annual rings. This specimen growing along the Black River is over 2600 years old and apparently still
looking mighty healthy.

The conifer family Cupressaceae, showed up in the fossil record over 200 million years ago. Bald cypress are modern North American members of this family that has over 130 species occurring across the northern hemisphere They traveled along as blocks of continental plates broke up and moved apart. Cypress trees in the Mediterranean look a good bit different than the bald cypress growing in our southern swamps and along riverside habitats in North America, but they are all related to those that lived on the super-continent Pangea.

In North America tree scientists agree that we have two distinct species, bald cypress and Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum). As with all taxonomists there is skepticism and disagreement. This involves yet another variety dubbed “pond cypress.” We will leave the bickering about pond cypress to the paid professionals.

I have both Montezuma and bald cypress around my pond and have watched them develop differently for years. I observed my bald cypress in Burleson County to be flowering in late January. These trees have male catkins that are about 2 inches long which emerge from the end of last years twigs. Just below those pollen-emitting catkins are small female flower parts that resemble tiny pine cones. The amazing thing to me is that these delicate flowers bloom when it is almost a dead certainty that several hard freezes will arrive before spring. Across North America and as far north as Delaware bald cypress are shown to flower in January. Here in Texas the flowers are exposed for as much as 7 weeks before any new leaves begin to erupt in March.

Contrast that with a Montezuma cypress located on the same pond 70 feet away. It sprouted leaves in early February and is in full-green glory on the same day that my bald cypress trees are still leafless. Montezuma cypress is the National Tree of the Republic of Mexico. In central Mexico and further south these trees never lose their leaves. The one in my yard holds it leaves much later in fall than the bald cypress, but eventually does drop them after hard freezes around Christmas each year. Burleson County, Texas isn’t Mexico City, but these trees have the ability to be either evergreen or deciduous.

It has always fascinated me that bald cypress are present in abundance along swampy acidic streams
in East Texas and yet also along calcareous, alkaline streams in the Texas Hill Country. It is an adaptable plant that can thrive in both pH 4.5 or pH 9.5. I wonder if at one time in the past they extended completely across the south, through Texas and down into Mexico as a solid band? Maybe while we let the tree taxonomists argue we can imagine a scene in deep time when things looked very different on the continent now known as North America. This ancient lineage of trees has survived a roller coaster of changes and thrived during “ice-box earth” and in times when tropical warmth dominated the across the Arctic Circle.