The view on the way out; a view of the most impenetrable part of the woods. It is the north side of the forest.
A thicket of saplings, raspberry brambles, and dogwoods block the way in, but, I DID get some see some colouring up of some Sugar Maple foliage at the woodland’s edge.
Broader leaves and taller form than starry false solomon’s seal; its just old joe known as False Slomon’s Seal (Maianthemum racemosum) w/o the starry in the name.
Sometimes… common names… are redundant.
Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) nestled around some rotted down fallen trees.
Almost got out of the woods at this point, but the wall of corn stopped that plan, leading to more photos as I struggled to get out of the woods (it would’ve taken longer to backtrack out of the woods)
@geopsych ID’d these fungi as Turkey Tails, and I have to agree; the turkey-tailfeather-like morphology is hard to ignore.
I would give a specific species/genus but it appears that Turkey Tails is sometimes a lumped name of a handful of shelf fungi of north america.
I’ll let MushroomExpert.com take it from here when it comes to this group and how to tell its similar mimics apart from each other. I personally do not have the patience to try to figure out the exact identity of these fungi in the photos.
IM SURE THESE ARE CHRISTMAS FERNS (Polystichum acrostichoides)! I have never see so many in the wild before. They were scattered all about the sparser part of the woods (not far from the Canadian Hemlock zone).
I took some fertile spore-frond bits, but I haven’t sown them yet so…. fuck. Will have to try again when I have more on-hand equipment for such a thing.
Some unfamiliar lacey ferns. I have no idea what kind. It was quite a big lacey fern indeed.
A patch of Taxus canadensis. An untrained eye would see them as young canadian hemlock, but a few berries here and there along with other details (such as the fact that Canadian Hemlock has silver undersides for its needles) reveals what it actually is.
Interestingly its said that its rarer in deer heavy locales? (supposedly in Miichigan in particular) Despite being super-toxic to livestock, deer apparently like to browse on it, especially in winter.
One of the uprooted/ing trees happened to be a towering canadian hemlock. It may only be still holding on thanks to some younger trees rooted together with it.
IT WAS BIG.
BABIES! There were so many sapling Canadian Hemlocks! This isn’t even half of them I’m sure.
Also if anyone suggests digging these slow-growing babies up I’m gonna slap them.
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