Houghton Garden/Hammond Pond Reservation, Oct. 6 2020

I went for a walk in the Houghton Garden conservation area and then went to the Hammond Pond Reservation. It was a sunny and cool autumn day, and the fall season was even more noticeably this time with more yellow, red, and orange leaves falling on the ground. I saw a lot of fungi on my walk. The first one I saw was the common lichen, which was nearly everywhere on dead branches and trees. Then I went off the trail and next to a dead tree where I found some more fungi, called puffballs. As I continued my hunt for fungi, I found more mushrooms called Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata. I realized the easiest way to find these fungi is to go to spots with lots of dead matter because this is where the fungi are most likely to flourish. The autumn season also makes it much easier to find these fungi growing on dead matter. The most interesting fungi I found was the artist's bracket and the Trichaptum because these fungi looked like clams or some other kind of mollusk. Some other species that I thought were interesting were the American Bittersweet, which looked like edible berries, and the redshank, which were coming out of the moss almost everywhere. Near the end of my walk towards Hammond Pond, I almost ran into some poison ivy, but I was lucky to spot it before touching it. Houghton Garden is a nice place to visit and the pond there is quite beautiful.

Posted on October 7, 2020 01:25 AM by connortp