2011-09-24
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3:00 snapshot #814

Last day with our vet student :(
She cuddles a stinky wormcat, still sleepy from its dental procedure.
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More mushrooms in my yard

This is a puffball which started out exactly like this one. Then a hole formed at the top, probably from slugs grazing on it, and it collected a little puddle of rainwater. A bit of black rot appeared on it, and quickly it spread over the whole mushroom.

I took this context shot (the black puffball is visible at middle right) to show the extent and location of the ringless honey mushrooms in the yard.
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Even more mushrooms in Franklin Park Zoo

This group of puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum) came up just outside the service yard gate at the zoo, a few feet from a gasoline pump. This species is edible, but the possibility of contamination from the fuel makes eating these a bad idea. I mainly took these pictures to further document how profuse the mushroom fruitings have been this year:

I've never seen so many terrestrial puffballs at once! (I have seen similar troops of puffballs coming from dead wood).