nature

The Giant Puffball Mushroom

~ thedailydish ~ 14 Comments

Nature is FASCINATING. Especially for someone like me who loves food. Although I’ve never been daring enough to collect and consume wild mushrooms – mostly b/c I have no idea what I’m doing and would likely wind up dead or whacked out of my mind – I still enjoy discovering the abundance of fungi out there. Just look at this one I found in Vermont, which looks quite egg-y to me:

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Or this one, also from VT, which resembles a giant puffy pancake.

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My husband recently introduced me to this online program – a mushroom catalog, detailing which are edible and which lethal. I particularly like the little emoticon faces – from happy to ill, and worse.

I visit a local nature refuge several times a week.  This fall has brought forth several remarkable mushrooms, each the size of a soccer ball.  I was FLOORED the first time I saw one. WOW! Look at the SIZE OF THAT THING!  Of course my husband and I – being the way we are – immediately grabbed one and began kicking it back and forth to each other.  After a few kicks…BAM! it exploded, and we were left with large white chunks.  We realized the whole mushroom had been solid, rather than hollow.  It struck me as so remarkable that I decided to take a few photographs and do a little research.

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When I got home, I googled “GIANT PUFFBALL” and Whaddaya know?! CHA-CHING! The Giant Puffball Mushroom, or Calvatia gigantea

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Giant puffballs resemble the white button mushrooms you find in every supermarket, but are smooth solid white globes, lacking gills of any sort. The ones we’ve found have been no more than 12 inches in diameter, but puffballs can be as small as golf balls or as large as medicine balls – some weighing up to 40 POUNDS. The young, all-white mushrooms are edible and said to be quite tasty, w/ a flavor akin to tofu or melted cheese. For more detailed information on consuming giant puffballs, see the following RecipeTips entry.

As the Giant Puffballs age, they eventually split and turn yellow, and then brown, as they begin to spore.  I found a specimen at Tinicum which had opened and begun the process.

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Once they reach this stage, giants puffballs are INEDIBLE. (Not that anyone in their right mind would be interested in gobbling that mess up.. But still. I offer the warning.)

For more information on Giant Puffballs, check out the following websites:

Tom Volk’s entry w/ FUNNY PHOTOS is definitely worth a click.
Wikipedia entry on Calvatia gigantea
Wildman Steve Brill’s entry on the Giant Puffball
David Fischer’s American Mushrooms entry on BEST EDIBLE WILD MUSHROOMS: Giant Puffball

Mantid Love.

~ thedailydish ~ 12 Comments

We have a large butterfly bush in our front yard which attracts a huge variety of insects.  Butterflies (of course), as well as all types of bees, flies, – this year we even had a hummingbird!  Pretty darn rare in the city.  Anyway. b/c of the number of butterflies, this bush is also home to a large cadre of praying mantises.  Mantids LOVE butterflies.  Their tender juicy middles in particular.  After gobbling them up, they drop the butterflies’ colorful but otherwise unappealing wings to the floor below.  So all summer long, while I’m weeding the garden, my daughters are gathering up the wings like so many discarded petals.

When I was a kid I never saw a praying mantis.  But I clearly remember people saying they were endangered, and telling me never to kill one.  I believe it was illegal at the time (the 1980s), but I haven’t been able to confirm or deny that.  All I know for certain is that mantids are thriving in 2008 – at least in our yard.  If a postage-sized stamp of a garden in the middle of a city is any indication of the greater picture, I’d say they’re doing fine.

And yet each time we find a praying mantis, you’d think it was the very first time.  We drop everything.  Holla to each other.  COME QUICK!  B/c we all want to see.  Their thoughtful eyes and slender grace are fascinating.  My daughters found a small one several weeks ago – of all places, beneath a checkout in Trader Joes.  They scooped him up, and carried him out of the store.  He seemed happy to be free.  But rather than hop off outside the exit, he rode for blocks on my older daughter’s hand.  Only once we reached the Market Street bridge did he fly off, soaring stories into the sky.

We’ve been fortunate enough to capture several others over the years.  Not in any box, but on film.  My skillful husband took these photos a couple weeks ago of a pair mating, and I just had to share them.  They are beautiful.  The text is excerpted from the North Forty News.  Many thanks for sharing.

PS: We now have a large egg case on one of the branches.  Here’s to next year’s offspring!

This brings us to the delicate subject of mantid love – or, more precisely, mantid sexual behavior.

Slender adult male mantids, smaller than the female, usually feature brown tones in contrast to the female’s greens. They display rather slow, deliberate care around prospective mates, often approaching from the rear and leaping on the female’s ample back when close enough. Females warrant this caution, even though their substantial weight keeps them grounded while males can fly, because a female may hunger for a substantial meal more than sex.

Sometimes she wants both.

Even attached and fully engaged, a male may literally lose his head servicing his chosen female. The female can swivel her head in a disconcertingly human-like gesture and decapitate her suitor. This may not even interrupt the act at hand. One author states that “removal of the male’s head, the bit which the female eats first, releases the male’s genitalia from nervous inhibition from the brain and leads to incessant copulatory movements.”

The smartest–or the luckiest–males avoid this circumstance, however, leap off their temporarily groggy paramour and run quickly away. Such mortal danger may insure that only the smartest males live to mate again.

Once inseminated, a female searches for a plant stem or fence post suitable for making an egg case and laying her eggs. Usually she selects a location 1 to 4 feet off the ground and constructs a case that resembles tan foam with the texture of a roasted marshmallow. Chinese mantids build round cases; the Europeans flatten theirs on one side.

Differences between butterflies and moths

~ thedailydish ~ 7 Comments

I took the ladies to the Academy of Natural Sciences last week, and one of our very favorite exhibits there is called BUTTERFLIES! I like it almost as much as the stuffed bird room on the third floor, and the super sweet Cowbird in the Children’s room who absolutely loves my older daughter and always talks to her when we visit. Cowie, Cowie, he calls, and puts his head down for a scratch. ANYWAY. At the Buttterflies! exhibit, we spoke w/ a friendly & highly knowledgeable staff person who explained to us the difference between moths & butterflies, something I had always wondered about but never quite knew.

Three easy ways of identifying a MOTH vs. BUTTERFLY:

1) Moths are mostly nocturnal, i.e., they’re active at night and rest during the day. Butterflies are the opposite – awake during the day, at rest during the night.

2) Moths, when they rest, spread their wings out to each side, wide open. Butterflies, on the other hand, close their wings together & keep them upright. They may gently beat them up and down while feeding, but mostly keep them closed rather than spread to each side.

3) Moths have short, feathery antennae, while butterflies have long, thin antennae w/ a “club” (nub-like doo-da) at the tip.

Some other interesting facts (excerpted from National Geographic Kids magazine):

Atlas Moths are the largest moths in the world, some w/ a wingspan of 12 inches. But they live for only three days. Sad.

Monarch Butterflies eat poisonous milkweed plants, rendering them toxic to other animals. Other types of Butterflies, such as the Viceroy, mimic the Monarchs coloring to fool predators into avoiding them as well.

Butterflies have sensory organs on their legs which act as tastebuds — so they can literally “taste” how ripe fruit is just by landing on it. PRETTY COOL.

When butterflies emerge from their chrysalis cocoons, their wings are crumpled and wet. If they don’t unfurl them properly and let them dry, their wings will stay wrinkled and they won’t be able to fly.

Caterpillars are eating machines. Some may grow to 100 times their original size.

Click HERE to read about the Four Stages of Butterfly & Moth Metamorphosis: Egg, Larva (Caterpillar), Pupa and Adult.

Lastly, my younger daughter & I very much enjoyed a picture book about Butterflies called Gotta Go! Gotta Go! by Sam Swope & Sue Riddle. I dare you to read it and NOT have the catchline stuck in your head for weeks.

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Back to reality.

~ thedailydish ~ 8 Comments

Vacation. Where does it GO?? You spend weeks and weeks looking forward to it, THEN FINALLY it’s here and – POOF! it’s gone.

We spent all last week in Sandbridge Beach, Virginia, a part of Virginia Beach. We’d never been there before, and when I first suggested the location to my parents, my mother was MORE THAN A LITTLE SKEPTICAL. I had no idea, but apparently Virginia Beach has a reputation as a party town. Color me surprised.

Sandbridge Beach may technically be part of Virginia Beach, but it is another world altogether. Quiet. Residential. Family-oriented. A haven for wildlife. No party animals in sight. My parents rented a HOUSE ON THE BEACH. I had never spent a week living on the beach before, but now I cannot look back. I’ve officially been spoiled for all other accommodation. Being able to roll out of bed onto the sand – MAN there’s simply nothing like it. And when you have to go to the bathroom, rather than pee in the water like everyone else (YES I SAW YOU), you can simply excuse yourself to the house, and whilst you’re at it, help yourself to an ice cold beverage and snack. WOW. Too hot? Chill out in the AC. That’s LIFE.

And b/c our house was ON THE BEACH, it was – by necessity – built up on stilts. If there’s a hurricane or bad tropical storm and the basement floods, you don’t want your downstairs destined for ruin. So pretty much everything was upstairs on the second floor. Smart. Except that the house – b/c it was mostly up on these stilts, would shake. And by shake I mean it would MOVE. I don’t know about where you live, but for me this was a little weird. I am not accustomed to a house that shimmies. Maybe if I lived in California where it’s earthquake central, but not in PHILLY. No way. SO. I was sitting up on the roof deck one day (3 stories up). just lying there on a chaise lounge, reading my book. when all of a sudden, I look down and my legs are ROCKING from side to side. HOLY CRAP! Later we had a pretty severe thunderstorm, and even the toilet water was sloshing from side to side. I kept thinking WHO THE HELL BUILDS THEIR HOUSE ON SAND??? SAND!!! I kept half-waiting to wake up out in the yard.

But enough about THAT. Onto the wildlife! Sandbridge Beach has crabs. Adorable fiddler crabs, which look like this:

Isn’t he a cutie pie? In that “I can pinch the heck out of you but I am JUST so cute” way?? YES! We spent a lot of time this week watching these little guys. All day long, they pop in and out of their holes in the sand, scurrying about, doing their crabbie business. And then POW! John would be on top of one, scooping him/her into a bucket for the girls & I to ogle. At night, we would take our flashlight to the beach for “crab hunting” – really the same thing we did all day, but more fun b/c it was DARK! In addition to this truly fun & fascinating pastime, we also counted pelicans. They would fly in a line over the the houses, or skim just over the surface of the water. Sometimes one or two, but often a DOZEN at a time. If you have not seen a pelican up close and personal, these are some BIG BIRDS. The girls also very much enjoyed collecting buckets of tentacle-less jellyfish. Which look and feel remarkably like breast implants (NOT THAT I REALLY KNOW). By the end of the week, the water was really percolating w/ them. Making swimming more of a contact sport. We would run in and out of the surf, shrieking, dodging all of the purplish blobs. John got stung badly on our last day and has a hideously nasty bruise on his arm from the encounter.

We also dolphin watched. B/c Sandbridge Beach is DOLPHIN PARADISE. These dolphins know a darn good thing when they find it and they simply don’t want to leave. Nope. They just swim up and down the beach all day long. Probably all night long too, but our flashlight was not powerful enough to observe that. These amazing creatures are so close to shore, they’re practically skimming the surfers. John swam out to them one day, but by the time he got out there, they’d gone. He said he could hear them underwater clear as day, chirping and whistling to each other. WATCH OUT! THERE HE IS!!

Speaking of “clear as day” – that is one thing that Virginia Beach and Sandbridge Beach were not this past week. At least part of the time. Several mornings we awoke to a distinctly hazy world filled w/ the smell of burning wood. The Great Dismal Swamp, in fact. Located on the border of Virginia and North Carolina, the swamp fire has been smoking out large parts of Virginia Beach. I cannot imagine how bad it must be near the park.

We went to Virginia Beach one evening. SO WAS IT GIRLS GONE WILD? I can hear you asking. Well, not quite. The beach itself is lovely, wide and clean, and portions are sectioned off for surfers only or for beach volleyball. Along the beach is a long “boardwalk” – really a wide cement sidewalk, lined w/ hotels, restaurants and bars. At night there are venues for loud outdoor music, most of which wasn’t my taste, but seemed to appeal to the crowds. The block adjacent to the beach, “The Strip,” is lined w/ more hotels, restaurants, and lots of (mostly cheesy) stores hocking overpriced t-shirts, YOUR NAME ON A GRAIN OF RICE jewelry, and other beach-themed sundries. All par for the course. Overall, the whole place has a very convivial atmosphere. Tacky, but fun. The ladies LOVED the fact that there were some carnival rides. And I liked the fact that there was a Kohr Bros custard. Just like home.

Saturday we bid adieu to Sandbridge Beach. Over & under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel , past stands selling CHEAP CIGS, FIREWORKS and HAM, and back home to Philly.