Highlights

Walking in the SMB or in other area forests one often comes upon pieces of bright, blue-green wood fragments on the forest floor or in the trail that look as if they have been stained or painted. How did these pieces of colorful wood get way out here and who painted them?

A little research reveals that the “artist” responsible for these painted pieces of wood is a fungus, the blue-green elfcup. 

The blue-green elfcup lives off decaying woody material in fallen hardwood tree branches, most commonly oak and beech and in the process the elfcup’s mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus, stains the wood a deep blue-green color. The chemical component, produced by the elfcup mycelium, responsible for the staining is xylindein. Xylindein contains anti-bacterial properties and is presently being studied for its possible medical benefits in treating a number of diseases.

The elfcup’s stained wood is common in the forest and often found, but its fruiting body, which in many other woodland fungi we would call the “mushroom”, is extremely difficult to find. 

Although rarely seen, when temperature, rainfall and humidity are exactly right the elfcup shoots up a cup-shaped fruiting body which, when mature, bears the spoors which eventually result in the next generation of elf cups.

The “elfcup” itself is tiny. Large ones are slightly less than a quarter inch in diameter sitting atop a short, less than a quarter inch, stalk. 

The richly colored wood resulting from the presence of elfcup has long been used in creating intarsia, an inlaying process using tiny, thin veneers similar to parquetry. There are many examples in art museums dating from the Medieval Period up to the beginnings of the Twentieth Century.

Rattlesnake plantain is perennial and evergreen. Its attractively variegated leaves are hard to miss and grow from basal rosettes. The reticulated leaves bear a resemblance to the pattern on timber rattlesnake skin, thus giving this plant its “rattlesnake” moniker.

The second part of its name comes from the shape of the large oval leaves that resemble the leaves of the alien English plantain, a plain ubiquitous plant that grows in similar basal rosette form. The English plantain grows on disturbed ground and poorly kept lawns and even from sidewalk cracks.

Rattlesnake plantain grows best in shady oak and pine forests from acidic, well-drained soil rich in organic material. It prefers damp soil and does not do well in excessively wet or dry ground. In some forests and woodlands rattlesnake plantain has suffered from overzealous collecting. Their evergreen leaves have been used in Christmas and winter displays and some gardeners transplant them from the wild into their home gardens. Others have plantknapped specimens for use in home terrariums.

Rattlesnake plantain and other wild orchids are exceedingly slow growing and rarely thrive under domestication. Many have symbiotic relationships with soil fungi and cannot survive if transplanted to an area that does not contain their fungal partner. 

Our native orchids should not be taken from the wild. Enjoy them where they are found.

In late July to early August tiny white orchid blossoms bloom on 6 to 12 inch stems that rise from the center of each leafy rosette. The flowers are pollinated by small forest bees.

Probably because of the belief in the “Doctrine of Signatures” Indians and early European explorers and settlers used a poultice of rattlesnake plantain for snake bites. If little venom was injected, a healthy person was bitten, or the bite was from a non-poisonous species, recovery likely occurred. Indians did use the chopped and macerated leaves somewhat more effectively to treat skin irritations and minor burns.

Wintergreen, aka checkerberry, teaberry, is a low growing shrub in the heath family. The heath family also includes other common Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve shrubs such as mayflower (trailing arbutus), azalea, cranberry, blueberry, rhododendron, laurel and huckleberry. Heath family members do best growing from acidic, infertile soils in oak and pine forests.  

Evergreen wintergreen grows to a height of 6 inches, but most shrubs you see carpeting the forest floor are only an inch or two high. Crush one of the dark green oval leaves or bright red berries and you immediately get the oil of wintergreen scent. Wintergreen is used as a flavoring in candies, toothpaste, mouth wash, medicine and tea. Many people are familiar with the wintergreen aroma from having chewed Teaberry Gum. Most commercial wintergreen flavor used in products today is synthetic Methyl salicylate and other chemicals.

Wintergreen blossoms open during the summer. The flowers are bell-shaped and white to pink in color. The wintergreen berry is fleshy and red and about a quarter of an inch in diameter. They are edible and can be added to cookies, muffins and other baked goods or used in making wintergreen flavored ice cream.

Wintergreen shrubs grow from horizontal stems, shallowly rooted, that sprout lateral new shoots along its length creating a colony from a single plant,

Some forest wildlife that feed on wintergreen’s leaves and berries include white tail deer, ruffed grouse, wild turkey, chipmunk, white foot mouse and red back vole. 

Our common polypody is beautiful and beguiling. Here we are on a winter woodland walk when …suddenly …we spot bright evergreen leaves growing out of seemingly solid granite ledge. Such greenery against a backdrop of newly fallen snow seems totally out of place among the black, brown and gray tones of the still and somber winter woods.

Walking over to the base of the ledge we get a closer look at the shiny, lustrous fronds (leaves) of the polypody fern. With a little imagination this fern, growing in colonies from tiny fissures in the rock face, gives one the feeling of stepping back in time to the Jurassic Period when ferns were the dominant vegetation and dinosaurs tromped about the rocky landscape.

Henry David Thoreau, in his rambles about the Concord countryside in 1857, also felt such stirrings when he stopped to contemplate the polypody. Here is what he had to say:

The form of the polypody is strangely interesting; it is even outlandish. Some forms, though common in our midst, are thus perennially foreign as the growths of other latitudes; there being greater interval between us and their kind than usual.

We all feel the ferns to be further from us, essentially and sympathetically, than the phaenogamous plants, the roses and weeds, for instance. It needs no geology nor botany to assure us of that. We feel it, and told them of it first. The bare outline of the polypody thrills me strangely. It is a strange type which I cannot read. It only piques me.

Simple as it is, it is as strange as an Oriental character. It is quite independent of my race, and of the Indian, and all mankind. It is a fabulous, mythological form, such as prevailed when the earth and air and water were inhabited by those extinct fossil creatures that we find. It is contemporary with them, and affects as the sight of them.

Polypody’s fronds grow up to 12 inches long and three inches wide. The fronds are asymmetrically pinnately compound with deeply-cut, lanceolate leaf lobes on both sides of the frond’s central stalk. 

These ferns reproduce by releasing spores from round sori (spore bearing structures) on the underside of a frond). They shed their spores in autumn.

In the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve (SMB) this fern is the only common fern growing on ledges, cliff edges and large glacial-erratic boulders. Polypody clings to the thin soil found in rock crevices and depressions with numerous tough, wiry roots growing from long scaly rhizomes (horizontal extension of the frond stem).