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It was a fruitful year for mushrooms in the Nature Reserve. At 9:30am on Saturday October 15th the FYS class and some guests found a diverse range of species.  Some of the species seen here include jelly fungi, cup fungi, polypores, puffballs, stinkhorns, slime moulds, and tooth fungi.

Among the poisonous specimens were deadly gallerina autumnalis, and lepiota (deadly dapperlings). Both of which are safe to handle, but if ingested could cause severe poisoning or death. Symptoms include crying, sweating, vomiting, diarrhea, and convulsions! Students are reminded never to eat wild mushrooms unless they have several years of experience in collection and identification. And books/the internet are not good enough to confirm a mushroom’s identity.

Students below are checking out the soccer ball sized, young giant puffball, Calvatia gigantea.

We foraged in grassy areas, coniferous and deciduous woods.

Digging up some large fleshy mushrooms – possibly Lepista irina? Or Entaloma? Even a spore print came back inconclusive. We did find many large fairy rings of this pale fungus with pinkish gills and a bulbous base. Jessica suggested we stay out of the rings to as not to be taken away by fairies! Though fairy rings are caused by the underground organism – a network of delicate fibres called the mycelium – growing in a circle and fruiting on the periphery.

Below are some specimens of Ganaderma tsugae or Reishi – a polypore used in Chinese medicine. Also below is a blue stain fungus –  Chlorociboria aeruginascens – fruiting in this picture but showing the staining in wood.

And the show-stopper: a skirted stinkhorn – Dictyophora duplicata. Which smelled so awful no one could bear to handle it, or stand within 5 metres of it. It attracted large black flies that quickly consumed its stinky spore laden slime.

The mushrooms and field guides on the hood of the car. Along with a cicada carapace, and a wild ginger plant.

Enjoying some bread, honey from Diane’s bees, and wild apples (from Andrea) after the foray.

In North America, Europe and many other parts of the world, bee populations have plummeted 30-50% due tocolony collapse disorder, a fact not lost on artist Aganetha Dyck who for years has been working with the industrious insects to create delicate sculptures using porcelain figurines, shoes, sports equipment, and other objects left in specially designed apiaries. As the weeks and months pass the ordinary objects are slowly transformed with the bees’ wax honeycomb. It’s almost impossible to look at final pieces without smiling in wonder, imagining the unwitting bees toiling away on a piece of art. And yet it’s our own ignorance of humanity’s connection to bees and nature that Dyck calls into question, two completely different life forms whose fate is inextricably intertwined. (from www.thisiscolossal.com)

Born in Manitoba in 1937, the Canadian artist has long been interested in inter-species communication and her research has closely examined the the ramifications of honeybees disappearing from Earth. Working with the insects results in completely unexpected forms which can be surprising and even humorous. “They remind us that we and our constructions are temporary in relation to the lifespan of earth and the processes of nature,” comments curator Cathi Charles Wherry. “This raises ideas about our shared vulnerability, while at the same time elevating the ordinariness of our humanity.”(from www.thisiscolossal.com)

We started the day off at the Honey Bee Research Facility, where we learned about topics such as: how smoke calms bees, different jobs that bees do, and larvae. We even got to pet the fuzzy little honeybees and try some of the honey straight from the comb, which all of us really enjoyed! Afterwards, we were allowed to try some goldenrod pollen which was semi-sweet and soft, but the truly outstanding part of that was seeing the parasite that affects honeybees walking along the pollen (it’s a miniscule grey dot so it may be hard to see)

Paul gave all of us a sample of honey to take home with us at the end of the day as well!

   We left the research facility and took a scenic walk to the learning centre near the Arboretum where an exhilarating, eventful, yet somewhat frightful hour would begin. All of us received bug identification charts, and a net and were told to go out in small groups and catch an insect to present in front of the class at the end of the allocated time. Some bugs included: spittlebugs, milkweed bugs, black and yellow garden spiders, and praying mantises. All in all it was a tiring, yet eye-opening day! I think we’ve all learned to appreciate nature more.

(Two praying mantises mating)

Hypothetical question: what happens when there’s so much air pollution all the time that you can’t even see the sky at night? You attempt to recreate it and bring it to you.

Standing under an open night sky is like standing in an imax theater; you feel surrounded and you get a sense of limitless space. That’s the feeling I get when I’m standing under the night sky at my house, and it’s what I was trying to recapture with my Universe in a Box. The small size of the box makes the viewing experience an intimate one, and once inside the 24 mirrors bounce reflections and light around the viewer. The spaces in between the mirrors create an interesting juxtaposition of space by creating breaks on the panels themselves, as well as in the reflections. They’re multiplied in the mirrors around them which create even more dimensional space depending on where you’re sitting in the box.

The reflections of the light bulbs are also multiplied to make it seem like there are more then there actually are. They’re meant to replicate stars, but constellations weren’t the direct focus of the piece. They’re like stand in, domesticated stars.

You can do anything in this box: sit quietly, study, read and think about if there will ever be a need for a Universe in a Box because you can’t see the real one anymore.