The Urban Pantheist

Firstly, cottonmanifesto took this picture. I saw and and was delighted, went to the compost heap myself and shot about a dozen pictures. Finally after disgusting myself with my collection of substandard photos, I decided to ask permission to use this one.

Cap and stem mushrooms aren't common in the New England springtime. It's only the heat of decomposition and the quick life-cycle of this fungus that allow these to thrive now. Many mushroom species emerge from a fungal mycelium that has been growing for months or even years. Coprinoid mushrooms are different, coming from a mycelium that grows quickly through an ephemeral food supply--dung, wet straw, compost, etc.

These are most likely Coprinopsis, one of the genera that was split from the formerly monolithic and easy-to-study Coprinus mushrooms. The mushrooms in these groups turn into a inky mush in order to spread their spores. Despite having that in common, several of these groups turned out not to be closely related to one another, requiring the shuffling of taxonomic names and the coining of the word "coprinoid" to refer to them all.

The scurfy scales on the tops of these mushrooms tempt me to identify them as Coprinopsis lagopus, the rabbit's foot inky. However that would be rash--microscopic examination of the spores would be a better way to try to speciate these.

Tomato Lycopersicon esculentum

I am resistant to including garden plants in this project, but this tomato plant insisted. We have tomato plants growing in planters, in a raised garden bed, and in a place in the yard where they must have grown from chicken droppings. The plant in this photo is growing from our compost. There are a series of half inch ventilation holes in the sides of the compost container and this tomato vine emerged from one. At first I was mildly amused: plants frequently sprout in our compost (I guess we don't turn it often enough) but they eventually die and become more compost. We left this to its own devices and soon enough it flowered. I told myself, if it bears fruit it becomes part of the project. Here we are.

Tomatoes are native to South America. They made their way north with human help, then were brought to Europe, where many were under the misapprehension that the fruit was toxic. Easy mistake--many plant in the nightshade family are. Eventually the truth came out that love apples were perfectly edible, and well-suited to be made into sauces. Imagine Italian food before the tomato. The plant is so easily grown in North America that even I can do it, ours are annuals, but in warmer places it can be perennial. I have taken to deliberately feeding the chickens certain fruits (tomatoes and wine berries) in order to draft them into gardening. I'll let you know how that goes.

A wild tomato I encountered behind Brookline Ice and Coal was featured in the 365 Urban Species Project.