Author of Peterson Field Guide to Moths. #WriteOnCon Mastermind. Writer of action/thriller SF/F YA. Story junkie. Nature nut. Tea addict. Mother. Finding happiness in the little things.
Twitter: @SeabrookeN / @SeabrookeLeckie
Sometime last summer, shortly after we’d moved in to the new house and settled our outdoor and garden things (and stuff that needed storing) into the shed, I noticed a fungus beginning to bloom from a crack in the floorboards. I kept meaning to take some photos and get an ID, but never did. This summer it returned, beginning from a slightly different spot in the boards than last year. I watched it grow with some interest, but it was only when it started to swallow the extension cord our lawnmower is plugged in to that I finally went and got my camera.
I sat down with my Lone Pine field guide to Mushrooms of Northeast North America, an excellent guide to fungi, well laid-out with good photos. Some 609 species are covered in the guide, and while this is only a sampling of the different species that occur in the region, the author does make a good effort to provide representation of all of the major groups, such that I can usually at least find a sister species that sets me on the right track, even if I might not find the actual species itself.
However, after several flip-throughs, I was drawing a blank. The only fungus that grew in sheets like this (a growth pattern for which species in the group are called “crust fungi”) that seemed to match was Phlebia radiata, but it wasn’t quite right, and images online didn’t match up. Other Google searches came up blank. Finally, a Facebook friend put me in touch with David Fischer of AmericanMushrooms.com (he’s also a distinguished mycologist), who was able to put a name to my spreading fungus rather quickly.
It’s Serpula lacrymans, a species of fungus that contributes to dry rot. It is most often found affecting the interior of houses and other structures, and there are many photos online of the fungal growths. I did actually check out “dry rot” as a possibility while I was trying to come up with an ID, but the photos I looked at appeared completely different from the growth in our woodshed. It seems that substrate and location of the fruiting bodies will contribute to their shape and appearance.
The fungus will have a mycelium network (akin to the root system of trees) in the wooden floorboards of the shed; as with many fungi, fruiting bodies will only be put out from certain points of the mycelium. The fruiting bodies (I gather) can survive temperatures as low as 3°C (37°F), so will survive well into the fall here, but will die back from the winter. Indeed, this spring there was no sign of last year’s fungus, but a new one sprang up from the existing mycelium once the weather warmed up.
The fungus is a problem because the mycelium invades the wood and secretes and enzyme that begins to break it down. Though it does typically only invade damp wood, it doesn’t need much moisture in order to grow and survive – perhaps 30 to 40 percent moisture content in its host wood. The floorboards of the old woodshed undoubtedly have that; I don’t think they’re far separated from the ground, and while historically an interior wood stove might have kept the air inside dry, the building hasn’t seen such use in decades. The term “dry rot” doesn’t mean that no moisture is needed or involved, but rather that the fungus typically attacks the drier wood such as that used in construction, rather than the comparatively wet wood (with a relative moisture content of 100%) of newly- or recently-felled trees.
I have to admit that, despite knowing that the fungus is slowly eating away at the floorboards, I’m rather fascinated by it and tempted to let it be and watch it grow and change and take over the shed. Guess maybe I should let the landlord know…
I did brave the woods – briefly – on Sunday afternoon, the only nice, sunny day we’ve had here during my stay. The mosquitoes were not deterred by the sunshine and especially not in the woods, and though I’d taken my camera I barely slowed down during the whole walk, which took me the approximately 1.1 km (0.7 mi) to the back of the property and back. I made one single stop, battling mosquitoes for the roughly 23 seconds I paused, to take a few photos of these flowers. On the way out I’d only noticed one, which happened to be growing right in the middle of the trail, and then a couple more nearby. On the way back, now that I was looking for them, I saw quite a few more near the trail edges. One of the reasons they’d particularly grabbed my attention was because there’d been one growing at our Blue Lakes MAPS site at our last visit, which I’d intended to get a photo of but forgotten whenever I passed by.
I didn’t recognize the flower as one I’d encountered before, and had to look it up. My mom has quite a nice field guide called Forest Plants of Central Ontario, and a quick flip through the book turned up the flower. It’s Pyrola elliptica, which is most commonly known as Shinleaf, or less often Waxflower Shinleaf or White Wintergreen. As the last name suggests, it’s a type of wintergreen, in the family Pyrolaceae (the wintergreen family). The book lists five species of Pyrola in central Ontario, all of which look fairly similar. Shinleaf can be told apart from the others by its leaves, which are about the same length, or longer than, their stalks, and which taper into the stalk rather than having a clear point where the stalk joins the leaf.
Interestingly, it’s completely unrelated to what we typically associate with the name “Wintergreen”, Gaultheria procumbens, as the latter is actually part of the heath/blueberry family, Ericaeae. It’s this latter plant that we associate with the scent/flavour of wintergreen.
Pyrola elliptica is found throughout the deciduous and mixed forests of the northern hemisphere, on both Eurasia and North America. It’s a common species, occurring south through the Appalachians in the east as far as North Carolina, and down the Rockies in the west to New Mexico. It favours moist woods, and certainly much of my parents’ forest is damp or swampy.
Its name comes from its historic medical use as a topical salve and pain-reliever; crushed leaves were applied to bruises or injuries, and the aspirin-like compounds in the leaves would ease pain. Such pastes were called “shin plasters”, hence the name. It and other members of the Pyrolaceae have evergreen leaves, remaining green even under the winter snows, which provides the group’s common name of wintergreens.
This was actually supposed to be yesterday’s Sunday Snapshots, but I’ve been without internet for the last couple of days. I’m housesitting for my parents while they’re away touring the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. The internet was acting up on me when I arrived, and then it quit altogether. I finally left the modem and router unplugged for the night. This morning they seem to be functional again. The up-side to being without a connection for a while is that one tends to find one’s productivity greatly increases without the distraction… I made some good progress with the moth guide, and that’s a good thing.
Dan actually called yesterday to make sure I was alright as he hadn’t heard from me, and I hadn’t posted to the blog – which seemed a funny point to notice, but then, I do try to keep it regularly updated. Providing the connection here continues to cooperate (knock on wood) I should be back to normal.
The photos today are from the meadows that make up about a quarter of my parents’ 65-acre property. It might be the loveliest summer wildflower display I’ve seen. Certainly our own fields at Tay Meadows are only intermittently scattered with flowers; most fields I see are mostly grass. I attribute the profusion of flowers here to the fact that the area was grazed over by horses for a while, before my parents bought the place. The horses would have eaten the grasses but largely ignored the wildflower vegetation, which allowed the flowers to get a strong foothold in the soil – one of the reasons that artificial wildflower gardens often fail is that the grass, which is a stronger competitor, moves in before the wildflowers can become fully established. Whatever the reason it’s there, it makes for quite a lovely scene.
I didn’t actually pause to identify all the species of flower present in the meadow while I was out there – we’ve had so much rain here this spring that the swamps and vernal pools that are normally nearly dry by July are still quite full of water, and have been breeding mosquitoes like mad. I didn’t put any bug spray on as I quite dislike the stuff and only use it if I anticipate having to pause in one spot for long periods (for instance, when we’re out doing MAPS I have to apply it, though I’m careful to cleanse my hands afterward).
From the photo, though, I can spot the following species: Black-eyed Susan, Ox-eyed Daisy, Cow Vetch, Red Clover, Alsike Clover, Yellow Hop Clover, Philadelphia Fleabane, and St-John’s Wort. And although I don’t think any made it into the photos, there’s also Bird’s-foot Trefoil, Swamp Vervain, and Common Yarrow, that I noticed out there.
This afternoon I had popped into the shower to rinse off the sweat and grass after mowing the lawn (a concession – it’s easier to pick up dog poops if the grass is short; also, we were getting a lot of ticks this spring and felt the yard should be a tick-free zone) when there was a strange noise and a vibration under my feet. It sounded like it was coming from the water pipes, and my first thought was that the water pump in the basement, which is probably as old as the house (30 years) was finally giving up the ghost. In order to prevent anything disastrous as I assessed the situation, just in case it was about to blow, I turned off the water. But the floor was still vibrating – in fact, it sounded and felt a little like Raven was vigorously itching on the floorboards just outside the washroom. I stepped out of the tub to judge better if it was the dog or actually was the water pump about to have a catastrophic meltdown, and the door began rattling in its latch. And that’s when I thought, this reminds me an awful lot of the quarry blasting we would occasionally feel at the house where I grew up, where the quarry was just 5 km (3 mi) away – except there is no quarry nearby here, and it’s lasting much too long anyway.
Could it be an earthquake?
I stood on the mat, slowly dripping water onto the bathroom floor, my hair lathered up and piled on top of my head, feeling completely indecisive about what to do. While I suspect that those quarry-like tremors I’ve felt in years past might occasionally actually have been earth shakes, I’ve never been in an earthquake before that caused the floor to vibrate and the door to rattle in its frame. This was strange and disconcerting, and, if I’m completely honest, a little bit scary.
It only lasted about ten seconds, and once it was evident that the house wasn’t going to fall apart, nor the water pump in the basement blow up, I climbed back into the shower to finish washing the shampoo out of my hair.
As soon as I was out, however, I popped on to the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program’s realtime earthquake monitoring page, where they display records of all seismic activity over the last seven days. Earthquakes in the last hour are shown in red. There was a giant red square smack over eastern Ontario.
The page, if you click on that red square, gives more details on the event. When they first assessed it they called it a magnitude 5.5 quake, with an epicentre about 61 km (38 mi) north of Ottawa and 19 km (12 mi) deep; this was later revised to a magnitude 5 centred 56 km (35 mi) NNE of Ottawa and 16 km (10 mi) down.
The Richter scale always gets me. It only goes up to 7 or rarely 8, so it seems like 5 should be quite a substantial tremor. However, the scale is logarithmic – that is, each number is to the power of ten times greater than the previous. So a 2 isn’t twice as strong as a 1, it’s ten times as strong. A 3 isn’t three times as strong as a 1, it’s 100 times. And so on. To put it in perspective: the quake that hit Haiti was roughly a 7 on the Richter scale; the one that got Chile shortly after was an 8.8. Our quake was a hundred times weaker than the Haiti quake, and nearly 10,000 times weaker than the Chilean one. Strength here, by the way, is measure in amplitude – side to side movement – and not energy released which follows a slightly different logarithmic principle that I don’t really understand.
A magnitude 5 earthquake is labeled “moderate”. Generally, damage is restricted to poorly-constructed buildings within about 40 km (25 mi) of the epicentre; well-constructed buildings and those farther away should suffer little if any damage. My sister was working in Ottawa at the time of the quake, and reported that it was sufficient only to knock a few glasses off the office shelves and that was all. Out here in Perth there was the door shaking and the floor vibrating, but nothing was displaced. Dan, who was out doing bird surveys in the rock barrens of Frontenac Provincial Park and therefore on very firm ground, didn’t even feel it.
So it was pretty minor, as earthquakes as a whole go. It also wasn’t uncommon, on a worldwide scale. Wikipedia suggests that around the world there are about 800 magnitude 5 earthquakes every year. If that seems like a lot, consider an estimated 6,200 magnitude 4 quakes, 49,000 magnitude 3, 1000 per day magnitude 2, and a crazy 8000 per day magnitude 1. Unsurprisingly, magnitudes 1 and 2 are rarely felt, unless you happen to be directly over the epicentre, and even then if you’re on solid ground you might not notice. Magnitude 3 feels a little like the quarry blasts – might rattle the windows a bit, but could easily pass unnoticed.
And yet, a detectable earthquake in northeastern North America is so unusual that within minutes Facebook, Twitter and the local news feeds were all abuzz about it. I commented to one friend that an earthquake here is our equivalent of snow in Florida – we’ve a tendency to the melodramatic because these things just don’t happen here. Tornadoes do the same thing to us, although recently they’ve been becoming a bit more common with a few occurring every year, mostly down in the southwestern part of the province.
The USGS site has a spot where you can report whether you felt the quake and how strong it seemed where you were. Within half an hour, nearly 1700 people had logged on to the site and posted their report. The farthest at that time came from Toronto, a little over 400 km (250 mi) southwest of the earthquake’s epicentre. (For some reason, in Canada the reports are indicated by city, with the circle representing the population size of the city and not the strength of the quake there or the number of people reporting; in the US, presence of a reporting citizen is simply indicated by flood-filling the county.)
As of this writing (eight hours post-quake), more than 54,000 people have weighed in. The farthest reports now come from beyond the edges of the map. A news article from the Huffington Post, posted to Facebook by a fellow blogger, suggests that the earthquake was detected as far away as Wisconsin and Kentucky.
The earthquake occurred within an area known as the Western Quebec Seismic Zone. We typically think of earthquakes as happening where two of the earth’s giant tectonic plates meet and grind together – most well-known to North Americans is probably the meeting of the North American and Pacific plates along the western coast, especially California (who also have a much smaller plate, the Juan de Fuca, tossed into the mix). Since here in Ontario we’re about as far away from a plate edge as you can get in North America, we tend to think of earthquakes as something that happens somewhere else.
However, there are still faults in this area, and many remain “active”. They date back millions of years to when there was a huge mountain chain, as rugged and tall as the Rockies, that ran through what is now southern Quebec and into the United States. In modern times the faults themselves are largely buried and reduced to small cracks, most of them deep and small enough as to be difficult to detect, such that few have official names. They tend to run northwest-southeast, along the same line the prehistoric mountains once stood. Small seismic events, large enough to be noticed but not large enough to do any damage, occur three or four times a year in this seismic zone. Earthquakes of the magnitude recorded today are much rarer, maybe only once a decade or less. There have been only two “large” quakes in this region since Europeans started keeping data: one in 1732 and the other in 1935, both just slightly over magnitude 6. I suspect that quakes here are mostly the result of shifting and settling within the earth’s crust that causes old faults to “pop”, rather than an active building and release of pressure as happens where two plates meet. They occur so far underground that very rarely do they ever rift the surface.
Average number of magnitude 5 earthquakes per year within the region - note that gray is marginally more than zero. -- Image from USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/
When Dan and I were out in the field checking our nestboxes I happened across this chrysalis firmly attached to a horsetail stem. It was such an intriguing shape and colour, I snipped it off to bring it back and try to find out who it belonged to, too. I didn’t have long to wait with this one – four days later the owner emerged. I had checked the jar when we got home around lunchtime, and just a couple of hours later, as I was working outside, Dan came out holding the jar to say it was out. The owner, it turned out, was a beautiful Viceroy butterfly. I released it on the first daylily bloom of the year, where it paused for a bit to warm in the sun and pump its wings before taking off.
