Ecologist's Notebook

Pizo in her natural habitat. Photo by D. Sillman

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog …. Housecat Day 2024

Eleven years ago I wrote about Groundhog Day and suggested that we change this early February day-of-prediction to focus not on an animal that should be sound asleep in his grass-lined burrow dreaming of gardens to ravage, but rather on an animal with whom we could more naturally base an ecologically or culturally significant day of hope for the coming spring.

I went through the pluses and minuses for using a number of different species for our new holiday including robins, bumblebees, scarlet tanagers and killdeers. Each of these animals had features that positively reflected the coming spring, but none of them matched up to the intent and timing of this odd, mid-winter holiday.

I also thought about using earthworms or the early spring butterflies (mourning cloaks and spring azures), but the timing of their activities were too close to the actual onset of spring! These animals wouldn’t get active soon enough to stimulate the anticipation and buzz for the joyous coming of the new season.

Four years ago someone suggested that stink bugs emerging from their hibernation hideouts in our houses might be a “good” sign of spring. I am of the opinion, though, that stink bugs are not a “good” sign of anything and am not seriously considering that well-intentioned but obviously misguided suggestion.

Bella. Photo by M. Hamilton

Taking all of this into consideration, I have again settled on what was, to me anyway, the most logical and most reliable and most available indicator species among us. That species, of course, is the housecat (Felis catus).

Cats are the most popular house pet in the United States (the Humane Society estimates that there 74 to 86 million house cats in the U.S. (as compared to “only” 70 to 78 million dogs)). As I wrote in my November 24, 2016 blog (“Our Other Best Friend”) and also in my recent January 18, 2024 blog (Signs of Winter 6, “Cats are Perfect”) cats have a complex relationship with humans and may be the only animal species that has chosen us as a co-evolutionary partner rather than vice-versa (hence the hypothesis that cats are not really domesticated at all but are wild animals exploiting our habitats and resources!). The resemblance of domesticated cats to their closely related wild species, the focus of many cats on places rather than people, and their perceived aloofness and self-absorption are factors that cause people to have intense feelings (both positive and negative) about cats. On the distinctly positive side of feelings for cats, the English philosopher John Gray in his recently published book (Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life) suggests that cats hold the secret to a well-live human life! How can we doubt philosophy?

A cat’s inherent love of sunshine and warmth, though, make them a perfect biological agent to help us predict the nearness of the coming warm seasons! And, since they are living in our houses year round, they are available for predictive experimentation!

Mazie. Photo by D. Sillman

So, eleven years ago on February 2, 2013 I took one of my cats, Mazie, out into the snow-covered front yard in Pennsylvania (I tried to take both of my cats, but my other cat, Taz, sensed that something was up and disappeared into one of her magical hiding places somewhere in the house). I put Mazie down in the yard (on a nice dry towel!), and left the front porch door open. If Mazie ran for the porch, then we would have six more weeks of winter. If she stayed on her towel or started walking around in the yard thus avoiding a dash back into the house, then spring was just around the corner.

I was amazed how fast she ran back into the house! But, that year the weather suddenly turned warm. March temperatures set record breaking highs (I even remember a day when it nearly got up to ninety degrees!).  Maybe our predictive model was not articulated correctly.

Mazie in snow on Housecat Day. Photo by D. Sillman

In 2014 and 2015 I followed the same experimental procedure, and Mazie, as I reported in this blog, responded with equal speed and agility and got back into the house almost before Deborah could take the lens cap off of her camera. In both of these years winter hung on grimly well into March. Mazie’s predictions, then, fit the observed phenomenon.

In 2016, though, Mazie’s response to the front yard was entirely different. She stepped off her towel and explored the front flowerbed, jumped at some little Pardosa spiders that were running around in the grass and seemed to enjoy herself very much. The early onset of spring that this behavior predicted came about! We had a mild, pleasant March and April and eased our way into a warm, early summer.

In 2017  Mazie not only ran back into the porch but she headed straight for the basement and hid in a box in the furnace room for several hours! Her reaction, though, did not match the resulting weather as both February and March had average monthly highs of 66 and 67 degrees! Definitely an early (and sustained) Spring!

In 2018, Mazie ran from the cold and snow and predicted six more weeks of winter. The rest of February was a roller coaster of temperatures bouncing from the teens all the way to 77 degrees (on Feb 20)! March, then, was cold and snowy but finally finished up in the 60’s. Sounds like Mazie nailed her prediction again!

Taz and friend. Photo by D. Sillman

In 2019, Mazie took control of her House Cat Day performance. Just before 2 pm she went to the front door and meowed to go outside! (we were waiting for the warmth of the day to build up before we took her out!). Deborah opened the door and Mazie walked out the door, down the deck stairs and out into the snow covered yard. She then went under deck and spent the next half hour exploring! This is the most “Spring Positive” reaction she has ever shown! Mazie predicted the immanent onset of Spring!

Observations of Feb and March 2019: first two weeks of Feb were warm, then after a cold spell the last week of Feb also warmed up. Then we had another cold spell until the second week of March where we hit (on Thursday March 14) 77 degrees! After that the highs stayed in the 50’s through the rest of March and the in the 60’s in April.

Overall, Feb/March 2019 was wet (almost 7 inches of rain) and more warm than cold.

Binx and Mora. Photo by M. Hamilton

We got about an inch of snow the night before the 2020 House Cat Day event, and it continued to snow through the morning. I was a bit worried about Mazie’s reaction to the outside world, but, in Pennsylvania 2020, the snow melted quickly and there was sunshine and 52 degrees by 3 pm. We opened the deck door for Mazie and she stepped boldly out. A gust of wind hit her in the face, but she shook that off and walked slowly down the stairs into the side yard. She walked on top of the landscape timbers that edge Deborah’s perennial flower bed like it was a balance beam and then stepped off into the wet grass of the yard. She sniffed the air and did not even look back at the deck. She stayed out for about 20 minutes and then came up to the sun room door to be let back into the house.

Mazie predicted an early spring! And the March and April data backed her up again!

Mazie on Housecat Day 2016. Photo by D. Sillman

March 2020 high and low temperatures were very close to average, but one-third of the days of the month had highs of 60 degrees F or greater! April 2020 also had average high and low temperatures very close to average but half of the days had highs that were 60 degrees F or higher and a number of these were over 70 degrees F! Also, there was no snow in either March or April! An early spring, indeed!

Mazie nailed it again! Her spring predictions have been correct 6 out of 8 times since 2013!

Take that, Phil (who is only right 40% of the time!)!!

Unfortunately, after a long and wonderful life, Mazie passed away just before we moved away from Pennsylvania. There was, then. no Housecat Day the first two years from our new home in Colorado. Last year, however, we corrected that situation!

Pezz and Pizo. Photo by D. Sillman

In December 2022, Deborah and I adopted two kittens, Pezz and Pizo. We got them from the  local Humane Society and they are sisters. Pezz is the smaller of the pair and has some of the quiet characteristics of Mazie. Pizo is a little bigger and a bit more athletic and has more of the aggressive attitude of Taz. Mostly, though, they are a bit of blend of the two extreme personalities.

On February 2, 2023, I took Pizo out the back door and put her down on the snow-covered patio. It was a sunny, cold afternoon, but she wandered all over the patio (even walking boldly across the snow!) and showed no intention of running back into the house. Pizo’s prediction: Spring is right around the corner!

Boy! Did Pizo get it wrong! As I wrote in my blog-email later in February:

“Friends and Family,

We’ve been watching a slow thaw after a “real” (according to the locals I have talked to) Colorado winter. My new snowblower has gotten a very good workout!

We have had a couple of weeks with days that climbed up over freezing in the afternoon, but it has been the intense sunshine that has melted most of the snow almost without consideration of temperature. Any place that is shaded still has deep, icy snow, and any place that gets both morning and afternoon sun is mostly clear. My front yard where my buffalo grass is planted has been slowly emerging from its snow cover. On a sunny day the snow pack recedes toward the south several feet, while on a cloudy day, even if it is above freezing, the snow line only moves a few inches. Any exposed concrete really heats up in the sun, and any snow or ice near the edge of the concrete melts.

Pizo on Housecat Day 2023

The nature of the snow has changed a great deal. When it initially fell, it was dry and powdery and had a bright, sparkly surface that reflected a bright glow of moon and yard lights. As it has been exposed to the sun, though, the snow has melted into a slushy mass during the day which then freezes solid in the deep cold of the night (most of our overnight lows have been in the single digits or colder!). The snow, then, has gone glacial on us. Just a few degrees colder and we would have an advancing ice front down the block!

My roof top solar panels were covered with snow and had stopped their production of electricity. Warning messages and alerts flowed in from my monitoring systems, but, when I called the engineer at the company that installed the panels, he said to just wait for the snow to melt. When a part of one of the panels got uncovered, it quickly heated up enough to melt the rest of the ice and snow covering the array. The system is now back on line!

Some of the streets in my neighborhood are snow and ice free, but others that are angled away from the direct sun are still heavily covered with ice and densely packed snow. There have been news reports from Denver (which has had even more snow than we have had this winter) that some neighborhood streets are still ice packed and nearly impassable. Denver, like Greeley, also has a policy of not plowing certain residential streets. One official told the local public radio that they were waiting for the sun to clear the roads!”

Maybe Pizo meant that it would be a wet winter and spring? We’ll see what happens this year!

Housecat Day 2024 is once again dedicated to Mazie, Taz, Binx and Bela. They will be greatly missed forever!

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … Safflower Seeds

I went to the feed store a few Saturdays ago to pick up some bird seed. I have been buying shelled sunflower seeds since the end of October and have been impressed that 20 pounds of shelled sunflower seeds kept my feeder-organisms fed for about the same length of time as 40 pounds of still-in-the-shell sunflower seeds and only costs a few dollars more a bag! The time and work savings from not having to rake up the spent seed shells from under the feeder made those couple of dollars seem like a good bargain. Also, our granddaughter, Zofia, who is now 16 months old and extremely mobile, decided that the old sunflower seed shells looked like fun to play with (and stuff into her mouth)! We had to do something about that!

Anyway, Deborah and I were at the feed store with our 4-year-old grandson, Ari. Deborah and Ari were off in the back of the store looking for the store-cats (two, friendly, twenty-plus pound, American short-haired domestics!), and I was at the front looking over the stacked seed bags.

I picked up one bag that looked like the shelled sunflower seeds that I had been buying noting that the white seeds through the clear plastic of the bag looked larger than ones I had been scooping out into the feeder, I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses (big mistake) but the label on the bag definitely had a heading word that started with a capital “S.” I paid for the bag feeling pleased that it was about $8 cheaper than the bag I had bought 3 weeks ago. Some impact of supply and demand, I wondered? I watched Ari playing with one of the store cats, and I didn’t think any more about the bag of seed I was carrying.

It was only when I got the bag home that I clearly read its label: safflower seeds!

In my defense, the bag, except for the large label at the top, was identical to the shelled sunflower seed bags. They were both packaged by the same seed company and had phrases like “Wild birds love them!” and “No mess feeding” prominently splashed all over them.

What, I wondered, were safflower seeds? Time to fire up the Internet Search Engine of choice.

Safflower blooms. Photo by E. Ustua, Wikimedia Commons

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) is a plant native to Asia and Africa. It native range stretches from India over to the Middle East and up the Nile River into Ethiopia. It is a thistle-like, highly branched annual plant with attractive red, orange, yellow or white flowers from which dyes were once extracted. Safflower is one of humanity’s oldest cultivated plants. Archeological evidence indicates that it was widely grown in Mesopotamia in 2500 B.C. and also in ancient Egypt.

Safflower is sometimes called “the poor man’s saffron” because its dried flower petals resemble saffron and can be used to give saffron’s characteristic colors (although not its flavors) to foods (like rice). The Spanish brough safflower to Mexico during the 16^th Century primarily to use it as a saffron substitute.

Safflower grows well in hot climates and is very tolerant of drought primarily because of its deep tap root. In North America it is widely grown in Mexico and California and is cultivated as a summer crop in the Northern Great Plains. Most of the harvested seeds from these safflower fields are processed for oil which is them used as cooking oils and to make salad dressings and margarines. Safflower oil is also used in the manufacturing of cosmetics, and, as we inadvertently found out at the feed store, it is also used as bird feed.

Kazakhstan leads the world in safflower seed production (in 2020 they harvested 226,739 tons of safflower seeds), Russia and the United States are second and third in the world for safflower production with just over and just under 90,000 tons of safflower seeds in 2020.

Safflowers in a field. Photo by MGB CEE, Wikimedia Commons

Safflower flowers, seeds and oils have been used in traditional folk medicine throughout the Middle East (especially in Persia (Iran)) to treat a wide variety of maladies (including constipation, rheumatism, psoriasis and mouth ulcers). Scientific exploration of the efficacy of safflower products and extracts have indicated that they might be effective in treating heart disease, blood clots and certain kinds of cancer. Safflower also reduces blood sugar and cholesterol and helps to control skin inflammations. The chemical “hydroxysafflor yellow A” seems to be the active agent in many of safflower’s medical applications.

Safflower oil is also considered to be a very healthy cooking oil. It is a rich source of essential fatty acids and tolerates high cooking temperatures.

A number of seed companies extoll the efficacy of safflower seeds for use as bird feed. It has an excellent nutritional profile (38% fat, 16% protein and 34% carbohydrates) (compared, for example, to the average nutritional profile of sunflower seeds (28% fat, 15% protein and 22% carbohydrates). It does not have the heavy shells of sunflower seeds, but, instead each seed is encased in a thin, but tough protective layer. These safflower seed “shells” are shed by seed -eating birds but are so thin and fragile that they do not form a significant debris layer under an active feeder.

House finch at feeder. Photo by Rhododendrites, Wikimedia Commons

Safflower seeds are said to have a bitter flavor which many bird species tolerate or, at least, get used to. Feeder birds such as cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, nuthatches, grosbeaks, titmice, doves, house finches and house sparrows are all said to readily consume safflower seeds. Other bird species (like grackles and starlings) are described as intolerant of the safflower taste and will avoid feeders filled with safflower seed.

Another major selling point for use of safflower seeds in backyard bird feeders is the assertion that squirrels (which are the destructive banes of existence for many bird feeder managers) do not like the bitter flavor of safflower seeds, and will, therefore, not come to safflower seed bird feeders!

I filled my bird feeder with safflower seeds when I got home from the feed store Saturday afternoon. Through the rest of the afternoon only one bird (a red breasted nuthatch) came to the feeder, and he only stayed for a few seconds. My seed-eating fox squirrels, though, did come to the feeder and spent the afternoon gorging themselves on the safflower seeds. So much for a squirrel-proof bird feeder seed!

Fox sqyuirrel. USFWS, Public Domain

Over the next four days the squirrels continued to eat the safflower seeds, but also spilled large quantities of the seeds out of the feeders. There was a small amount of the original sunflower seed feed in the feeder, and I think that they were sorting through the safflower seed trying to find it. They were also, though, eating a considerable amount of safflower seed. By Tuesday, flocks of house finches and house sparrows showed up at the feeder, and collared doves and juncos came in and gobbled up the spilled seed on the ground. I have seen chickadees in the feeder and several red breasted nuthatches. A blue jay also came in to the bird bath and dropped down to the ground seed for a few seconds. Most of the activity at the feeder, though, is squirrel!

So, squirrels like safflower seeds! They have recently finished off the seed pods from the backyard honey locust and would probably have eaten anything that I put out. The birds also eat the safflower seeds but do not seem to like them nearly as much as the sunflower seeds. My 20 pounds of mistakenly purchased safflower seeds should last three or four weeks. Then, I think, that I will go back to sunflower seeds to get everyone through the coming winter!

Pizo. Photo by D. Sillman

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … Cats

“What greater gift than the love of a cat?” (Charles Dickens)

Purring is one of the most pleasant things a cat can do. As I write this, my cat, Pizo, is draped across my left arm and chest and is purring loudly. It is  cold day, and Pizo has a deep need to be warm. The conditions of our closeness more than satisfies her thermal needs, and her purring is lowering my blood pressure and stimulating the synthesis of all sorts of pleasant hormones and endorphins throughout my body.

Research has shown that cat owners who regularly hold their purring cats have a 40% reduced risk of heart attack and have measurable reductions in their blood pressures. Holding a purring cat can also ease migraine headaches, reduce anxiety and generate feelings of belonging. My twelve pound cat is making my writing difficult and slow, but it is a very fair trade!

Why do cats purr?

Pezz. Photo by D. Sillman

The simplest answer is that purring in a cat is like smiling in people or tail wagging in a dog. Often purring reflects contentment and happiness. Cats seldom purr when they are alone which suggests that purring is a mechanism of communication and, often, what is being communicated is happiness. A happy, contented cat typically stretches out, closes their eyes and sinks into deep, sustained purrs.

But cats also purr when they are afraid. The explanation for this from several behavioral scientists is that purring may be a way for a cat to both calm herself and also communicate a calming message to others around her or to the source of her distress or fear.

Pizo. Photo by D. Sillman

Similarly, a cat might purr to relieve its own pain or discomfort. Purring is common in a mother cat as she is giving birth to her kittens. That purring continues after birth and attracts the blind, new-born kittens to the mom-cat to nurse. Kittens also begin to purr when they are only two days old. This purring is thought to be positive feedback for the mom-cat and also a mechanism of communications among the kittens themselves.

A cat will also purr when it is hungry. This is a very strong “feed me” message sent loud and clear to the cat’s human even when they are sitting at their computers trying to write.

How do cats purr?

An old hypothesis explaining how purring sounds are generated starts with nerve impulses coming into the larynx from the brain. These nerve impulses stimulate muscles in the larynx that then cause the cats vocal folds (aka “vocal cords”) to vibrate with each inhalation and exhalation thus creating the purring sound.

Mazie. Photo by D. Sillman

Some recent observations and experiments, though, on the physiology of purring reveals that there are no initial nerve impulses when purrs are generated, and there are no active muscular contractions in the larynx during purring. Instead the very low frequency sounds of a purr (the sound  is between 20 and 30Hz) seems to come less from the vibration of the cat’s relatively short vocal cords (which are seemingly too short to generate these low-frequency sounds in the first place) but, instead, from the vibrations of masses of fibrous tissue scattered across the vocal folds. When a cat relaxes the muscles supporting her vocal folds, these vocal “pads” are then free to vibrate as the air flow from inspiration and expiration blow across them.

Taz and friend. Photo by D. Sillman

All cat species can purr, but the large cats (lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars) very seldom do so. The females of these large cats (members of the subfamily Pantherinae) only purr when they are heat or when their cubs are nursing. What these large cats are able to do, though, that all other cat species cannot accomplish is roar! So, cougars, cheetahs, ocelots, servals, lynx, domesticated cats and the whole array of small, wild cats all can purr, but they cannot roar (a cougar’s blood-curdling call sounds more like a woman screaming (loudly!) than anything else in nature!

Photo by Benh-Lieu Song, Wikimedia Commons

So there is a relationship between purring and roaring, and one seems to prevent the other. The focus of this relationship is the vocal folds. In the non-Pantherinae cats the vocal folds are relatively short and arrayed in a characteristic triangular configuration. These short vocal folds cannot be vibrated energetically enough to generate a roar. In the Pantherinae, with the exception of the snow leopard, which is unable to roar, the vocal folds are quite long (and very well supported with strong connective tissues). They are also arrayed in a square configuration. These folds and their geometries and anatomies allow for the extremely energetic vibrations and the high volume sound generation of a roar. A lion’s roar can be heard up to five miles away! A roar is an incredibly powerful vocalization made possible by very specific laryngeal structures.

There was a recent article about cats in Scientific American (October 4, 2023) that discussed the remarkable anatomical and ecological similarities among all of the cat species on Earth. From domestic cats to tigers, all of these species basically look alike and do the same things in their ecosystems.  They are all “hard core predators” and carnivores. They are, to quote the Scientific American article, “not jacks-of-all-trades bur, instead, masters of one.” There are a number of species that have tried to take on the same predator roles as cats, but when they have had to compete against actual cats, those other species have always failed!

Mora. Photo by M. Hamilton

The skull of a house cat looks like the skull of a lion (although it is significantly smaller). The basic body shape, the teeth patterns (no molars behind the “slicing teeth” of the upper 4^th premolar and the lower first molar) and the overall shape of their heads (all rounded, “baby-heads!” lacking the elongated face and jaw so common in other adult mammals) are all consistent among all of the cat species.

Cats have not changed significantly over evolutionary time. Their design and ecological role are perfectly matched. Why change when you are perfect? Or, to loop this ending back to the title of this blog, why change when you are “purr-fect?”

Blue-gray rosette lichen and common sunburst lichen. Photo by R. Hodnett.Wikimedia Commons

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog …. Lichens

Lichens have been described and discussed since the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Aristotle, Dioscorides, Theophrastus and Pliny all mentioned lichens in their writings and considered them to be an odd type of plant. Lichens were not of any great economic value or seemingly important at all, so they received very little attention or discussion.

Some of the earliest descriptions of lichens postulated that they were, in fact, merely excretions produced by rocks, or soil or trees, or that they were decomposition products oozing out of “higher” types of plants. The term “vegetable juice” was use to describe them. They were considered to have almost no complex structure at all.

Rocella tintoria, N. Nagel. Wikimedia Commons

A group of lichens that were valued for thousands of years, though, and which were described by Aristotle, are the rock lichens (Roccella tinctoria) from which a valuable purple dye was extracted. Other lichens of large or unusual conformations were also occasionally mentioned by observers and naturalists. But little detail about these species were developed. Some lichens that had shapes or colors that corresponded to the pseudo-scientific ideas called the “doctrine of similarities.” This doctrine contended that a plant that looked like a particular organ of the human body or in some way resembled physical aspects of some human disease would be of benefit to that organ or to curing that disease. So, a lichen that resembled a lung (Lobaria pulmanaria) was collected and used to treat lung diseases, and a lichen that has pustule-like eruptions all over it (Peltigera aphthosa) was used to treat thrush (a yeast infection of the mouth and/or throat). Similarly, a yellow lichen (Xanthoria parietina) was used to treat jaundice.

Starting in the 18^th Century, lichens were almost universally considered to be some type of plant. They were variously classified as algae, as fungi (which then were considered to be a type of plant), as a liverwort or as a moss. Linnaeus in his 1751 work Philosophica Botanica mentions 86 lichen species. It was somewhere around this time, though, that Linnaeus disdainfully referred to lichens as the “poor trash” (“rustici pauperimi”) of vegetation. Over the next one hundred years, another 1000 lichen species would be described.

Calopaca marina. R. Griffiths, Wikimedia Commons

In 1869 the Swiss botanist, Simon Schwendover, proposed that lichens were not plants and that they were also not the singular organism that they had previously been considered to be. He referred to lichens as “dual organisms” made of a fungus with algae living within the fungus’ cytoplasm. He used extensive metaphors to explain the relationship of fungi and the algae in the lichen. The algae, according to Schwendover, were variously “slaves” or kept “damsels” or “parasites with the wisdom of a statesman.” The fungi were, again according to Schwendover, “masters” or “tyrants” that kept and enslaved the algae inside of their cellular masses.

Schwendover inspired few converts to his lichen hypotheses. He was widely ridiculed and dismissed. His language made it difficult to seriously consider or accept his ideas, but even more fundamentally, his rejection of the increasingly popular, and distinctly Darwinian concept of “life divergence” (living organisms separating from each other as they live and evolve (Origin of Species had been published just ten years earlier, in 1859)) and his advocacy of an opposing concept of “life convergence” (living organisms fusing together), was, philosophically too extreme for many to tolerate. There were those, though, that set aside these prejudices and preconceptions and began to look at lichens more closely.

Lichens on rocks at Dowdy Lake, Colorado. Photo by D. Sillman

In 1877, Albert Frank, a German botanist, coined the term “symbiosis” to describe the relationship between the fungus and the alga in a lichen. The idea of symbiosis was quickly expanded to cover a spectrum of interactions between species from parasitism to mutualism. The cooperative relationship of a lichen’s mutualistic symbionts (and other types of mutualistic pairs that were subsequently described) was a powerful counterpoint against some of the more extreme interpretations of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection. Huxley’s description of life as “a gladiator show where the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day,” and Spencer’s and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “nature red in tooth and claw” were tempered by the reality of “fitness” often meaning cooperation!

Lichen cross section. Photo by Nefronus. Wikimedia Commons

Lichens cover 8% of the Earth’s surface. This is a greater area than is currently covered by Tropical Rainforests. Lichens are the vital pioneering colonizers of newly exposed or emerging rock surfaces. The physical (via hyphal growth into micro-crevices in the rock)  and chemical (via acid production) breakdown of the rock generate the mineral matrix of soil. Lichens are the pioneers in almost all terrestrial successional sequences.

Lichens are an important part of desert crusts (see Signs of Summer 7, June 30, 2022). They can survive for long periods of time in dehydrated states (“suspended animation”). They can survive, to a degree, in space (although, the heat of re-entry is very tough on them!). Lichens are the principal food of arctic reindeer and other arctic grazers. Lichens are chemical factories that can synthesize more than a thousand chemicals not found in any other life forms.

Lichens first clearly show up in the fossil record about 400 million years ago. Lichens, according to DNA analysis, have evolved independently 9 to 12 times! Fungi and algae will spontaneously fuse together to make either a lichen or a fairly undifferentiated fungal/algal mass. The functional assemblage of the lichen symbionts occurs if each participant brings some physiological or structural features to the composite organism (often referred to as a “holobiont”) that facilitates the survival of mutualistic pair.

Lichen symbiosis. Photo by M. Grimm, Frontiers

Recent research has explored the nucleic acid composition of lichens. In addition to the DNA of the fungal and of the algal mutualists, these studies have revealed DNA from a myriad of bacteria and yeasts (which are single-celled fungi). The picture of a lichen, then, is more complex that we had assumed. It is not just a mutualistic symbiosis between a fungus and an alga, it is an entire micro-ecosystem of organisms! As one researcher put it, “lichens don’t have a microbiome, they ARE a microbiome!

So, what is an individual? Lichens are obviously not individuals: they are mini-ecosystems! But what about people? In an “individual” human there are, according to the most recent estimates, about 30 trillion “human” cells. In addition to those human cells, though, there are also estimated to be 39 trillion bacteria living in the internal and external microbiomes of the body. Add to this numbers maybe 4 trillion fungi (1% of bacteria microbiome), and you have a complex, diversly populated system.

So what is an individual?

An interesting aside: in a paper recently published in Nature, researchers state that a major factor causing a person to experience sustained SARS-CoV2 infections (i.e. “long COVID) is an imbalance in the fungal microbiome of the intestines. We are a multitude!

Black truffle, Public Domain

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog …. Truffles

Truffles are very famous fungi. They are packed with complex chemicals that give some of them deep, musky, earthy flavors which they contribute to food even when added in very small quantities. Since truffles sell for astronomical prices (white truffles often cost $4000 a pound and black truffles cost $300 to $800 a pound), careful to outright stingy use of them in cooking seems extremely logical.

“Truffle” is both the common name of a diverse group of subterranean fungi and also the name of their edible fruiting bodies. Many truffle species, like the white and black truffles mentioned above, are in genus Tuber, but there are over a hundred other genera of fungi that have species that are called “truffles.” All truffles exhibit the fungal tendency to synthesize a diverse array of chemicals, and they make these chemicals in very large quantities. When you dig up a truffle, the scent of its chemical array can be overwhelming! A truffle loses its scent very rapidly after it is dug up and detached from its supportive mycelia. It must, therefore, be transported to market and used as quickly as possible after harvesting.

Some of the truffle chemical arrays are pleasing to human tastes and olfactory perceptions (like the deep flavors of the white and black truffle). Other truffles generate less pleasant but equally intense aromatic chemical arrays. Some of these other “truffle-scents” have been described as resembling sewage gases or baby diarrhea. Not something that would fit in haute cuisine!

Truffle in ground. Photo E. Johnson, Cambrideg Univeristy

All fungal species labeled as “truffles” are mycorrhizal fungi that form associations with the roots of trees or shrubs. These fungal mycorrhiza are ectomycorrhiza and, so, grow on the outside of a root with a mantle of connecting material holding the mass of the surrounding hyphae and the root together. Many different tree species have associated truffle mycorrhiza. Notably oaks, beeches, birches, hazels, pines and poplars form mycorrhizal associations with the most edible and commercially valuable truffle fungi.

The life cycle of a truffle is complex and full of potential failure points. The truffle fungi, apparently, are not very robust and are easily ousted from their ectomycorrhizal positions on the tree and shrub roots by other, more aggressive fungal species. Also, it takes many years for truffle fungi to grow large enough to begin to form fruiting bodies. Any diseases of or damage to the supportive tree or shrub during this period of time can short-circuit the formation of the fruiting bodies.

There is also a suggestion that the truffle fungus needs to have very specific soil bacteria associated with it in order to synthesize the full array of aromatic chemicals! Truffles, then, like grapes take on many of their subtle (and highly valued) flavors only when grown in certain soils. This truffle “terroir” can make huge differences in the market price of the harvested truffles!

Lucy, a trufle hunting dog. Phto by E. Johnson, Cambridge University

The final life cycle problem of  truffle fungus is how to get the spores in its subterranean fruiting body to be dispersed out through its surrounding environment. This dispersal is via frugivorous animals. The fruiting body needs to be eaten by a squirrel, vole, gopher, chipmunk, deer or bird, and the spores must then pass through the animal’s digestive tract and, thus, get spread about the environment in the animal’s feces. In order to be noticed by these animals, the fruiting body emits its complex mix of volatile odor chemicals!

Because of the complexity of the environmental needs of the truffle fungus, truffles have historically been harvested from natural, forested habitats where all of the complexities of truffle biology are handled by natural, ecological processes. Roving truffle hunters hike through pristine woodlands, following their trained scent animals (usually dogs or pigs) (both dogs and pigs have exquisitely sensitive noses and can be easily trained to find truffles) to the scattered locations of truffle development. The hunters can dig up thousands of dollars-worth of truffles each day! This scenario is acted out in France, in Italy and in the United States each year as the wild truffles mature. The truffle hunter and their dogs or pigs dig out the hidden truffles (they are usually a few inches to a foot below the soil surface) and it is often a battle between hunter and his dog (or pig) to unearth and bag up the truffle without the scent animal eating them first! Interestingly, truffle hunting pigs are no longer allowed in Italy because of the extensive damage they do to the truffle mycelia when they dig out the truffles. Pigs are also very hard to control when they smell a truffle!

Truffle scent animals vigorously seek out the hidden fruiting bodies. One truffle dog owner  remarked that his dog, Dante, acted as though “he sensed god living just below the surface of the soil” and rapturously sought to unearth him! One difficulty truffle scent animal handlers have is rewarding their animals for finding the truffles. A bit of liver is no substitute for a mouthful of truffle!

Natural habitats suitable for wild truffles have been declining over the past century. Changes in agricultural practices, changes in land use and changes in life styles have all contributed to declines of truffle-friendly, pristine woodlands. There has been a concerted effort, then, to translate the truffle-supportive woodland ecosystem into managed, cultivated plantations.

Truffle farm in France. Photo P. Sourzet, Scielo

Beginning in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, truffle plantations began to successfully grow truffles, and by the 1980’s these plantations had been established in many countries around the world. About 80% of the truffles produce in France are now grown on plantations. Establishment of these plantations is a difficult, delicate process requiring precise analysis of soils, healthy tree species and control of potentially competing fungal species. Also, the truffle plantations must be secured by strong fences to keep out wild animals (like wild boars!) who are attracted to the compelling scent of the maturing truffles.

The time it takes to establish a truffle plantation and the cost to manage and protect it, make truffle farming a very expensive and risky business. The potential yield and incredible payoff, though, make this risk worth taking.

There was a recent article in the New York Times (November 11, 2023) describing a declining crop of wild truffles in Italy. The dry summer and fall of the past few years (all attributed to climate change) have stressed the trees that symbiotically support the truffle fungi causing a precipitous decline in truffle fruiting bodies. The continued decline in these vital tree species could lead to the extinction of the wild truffle. A catastrophe of unspeakable proportions!

(Next week: lichens!)

Fungal hyphae. Photo by J. Opiola, Wikimedia Commons

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog …. More on Mycelia and Fungal communication

As we saw last week, the hyphae in a fungus’ mycelia communicate with each other both chemically and electrically and carry out searches for resources in a very coordinated manner. A single mycelial network can have hundreds to millions of actively growing hyphal tips, and these tips are constantly interacting with the fungus’ environment and also with each other. Some of the junctions between hyphae in these networks function like “decision gates” and open and close cell membrane and intracellular pores to alter the flow of chemical and electrical information through the system. The pathways that these mycelial hyphae form resemble computer networks or, to some, neural networks of a brain!

Attempts to use fungal networks as computers are ongoing. The “Unconventional Computing Laboratory” at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, founded in 2001, is leading the way into “living computer” networks. A growing set of published papers in prestigious scientific journals is documenting the development of these systems.

Further, experiments to determine if these mycelial systems can learn or retain information (i.e. form “memories”) are also ongoing in a number of laboratories around the world. The potential for emergent properties to arise from these systems, possibly all the way to intelligence and consciousness, are also being seriously discussed! It is not clear how far one can take these ideas without blurring the line between Science and Science Fiction! Are the soils beneath our feet conscious? Do the soils of a forest think?

Mycelial cord (rhizomorphs). Photo by Distant Hill Garden and Nature Trail. Flickr.

The hyphae in a mycelium can become modified for efficient transport of water or food molecules. A number of hyphae can grow together into long, hollow tubes or cables that are called “cords” or “rhizomorphs.” These rhizomorphs can transport large volumes of food or water over very long distances, and are capable of dispersing a discovered resource throughout the extended body of the fungus.

As we said last week, fungi are heterotrophs. They feed on formed organic molecules that they find in their environment. Since most of the materials that a fungus will consume are dead, fungi are often classified as “saprotrophs” or ‘decomposers.” Animals are also heterotrophs (and many animals are saprotrophic, too).

Animals ingest their food (i.e. take it into their bodies) and then digest it down to its constituent molecules which they then absorb into their body fluids and deliver to their cells. Fungi, though, have a very different method of feeding. Instead of bringing the food into their bodies, they insert their bodies into the food! When a food source is found, the hyphae grow densely around and within it. The  hyphae then secrete digestive enzymes which breakdown the complex molecules of the food item into their constituent components. The fungal hyphae then absorb these products of digestion and, if necessary, transport them throughout the mycelial network.

Mycorrhiza root tips, Photo by E. Larson et al., Wikimedia Commons

Hyphae can make cell to cell connections with other hyphae. Some of these connected hyphae may be parts of the same fungal individual, and some of these connected hyphae may be from different individuals. Some of these different individuals may be the same species as our starting fungus, but some of these may also be individuals of a different species. When these connections are made, communicating chemicals and also food molecules, mineral nutrients and water may be passed from one fungal individual to another. This transport is highly controlled and represents a fascinating aspect of the  intraspecific and interspecific ecology of fungi!

Fungal hyphae can also make cell to cell contact with plants. This most often happens between a soil dwelling fungus and a plant’s roots. These plant root associated fungi are called “mycorrhizal fungi.” Mycorrhizal fungi can exchange food molecules, mineral nutrients and water molecules with their associated plants. They can also exchange communication molecules.

Vesicular arbuscuar mycorrhizae. Photo by R. Rit, Wikimedia Commons

The hyphae of some of these mycorrhizal fungi can actually enter the living tissues of the plant roots and make direct contact with or even penetrate into the living cells of the root. These types of mycorrhiza are called “endomycorrhiza.” The hyphae of other mycorrhizal fungi only approach the outer edges of the plant roots and often generate complex junctioning “mantels” between the hyphae and the root. These types of mycorrhiza are called “ectomycorrhiza.”

In a forest, the trees are typically highly interconnected by mycorrhizal fungi. Nutrients from one tree can flow to another. Damage to one tree can be sensed by the other trees in the forest through the dispersion of alarm chemicals both through the air and also through the mycorrhizal network. This network has been called the “Wood-Wide-Web,” and it knits trees of all types together into a mutually beneficial, social/ecological network.

The Wood-Wide-Web is a highly controlled system. There are mechanisms controlling its exchanges that balance abundance and need into an efficiently functioning system that helps to maintain the overall health of the forest ecosystem. Some have used anthropomorphic terms to simplify this complex system of nutrient and energy flow (see Signs of Fall 10, November 21, 2019 for a discussion of this), but the reality of the physiological and ecological elegance of this system is much more compelling and much more interesting than fairy tales about trees!

Rirch forest. Photo by M. Krzyszkowski, Wikimedia Commons

Most plants rely on mycorrhizal fungi to survive. Many plants need specific species of soil fungi to make their mycorrhizal networks. The ability of certain crops to grow (or not grow) in certain fields has been  often shown to be related to the type of potential mycorrhizal fungi that are present in the soil. The pattern of the recolonization of tree species following the continental retreat of the Ice Age glaciers was also influenced by the potential mycorrhizal fungi present in the freshly uncovered soils. The first tree species to recolonize these vast areas were the ones for whom the proper soil fungi were present.

Plants, in fact, may owe their very existence to fungi and the tendency of fungi to make connections with plant structures. When plants first evolved and emerged onto land (about 500 million years ago), they did not have functional roots. Instead these first-plants got water, mineral nutrients and, possibly, more from the preexisting soil fungi that fused with their tissues. Fungi, then, were the first plant roots!

(In two weeks: Truffles and lichens!)

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … A fungus among us

This past summer I read an absolutely brilliant book written by Merlin Sheldrake. It was called Entangled Life, and it was about Sheldrake’s fascination with and research into fungi. Over the next few week I will be presenting a series of blogs on fungi. I will talk about some general aspects of fungal organisms, I will talk about mycelia and mycorrhizae and the concept of the “Wood-Wide-Web.”  I will talk about  truffles, and I will talk about lichens. Sheldrake’s book is the inspiration for all of these topics and represents a very significant source of the information that I will present. Even if you are not a biologist, I would recommend that you read Entangled Life. It is written in a light, very readable style, and it will open your eyes to an invisible world that is pulsing and throbbing and changing everything around you!

When we talk about fungi, we need to be able to visualize their structure and shape and also describe how they grow, how they feed themselves and how they reproduce. Fungi make structures and carry out physiological functions that are quite different from structures and functions that we see in either plants or animals. This has led to a bewildering array of terms that uniquely apply to fungal biology. It is easy to get lost In all of these terms and lose track of what it is you are trying to talk about or visualize. For that reason, I am going to try to talk about fungi without resorting to their unique vocabulary. Any precision or detail lost in this discussion because of the simplification of terms will be more than compensated by increases in overall clarity.

Candida (yeast) cell. Public Domain

A fungus is an eukaryotic organism (i.e. it has large, complex cells that have nuclei) that is heterotrophic (i.e. feeds on organic materials in its environment). Fungi can be unicellular (yeasts, for example) or multicellular. Fungi synthesize a diverse array of chemicals, and many of these chemicals have huge impacts on people. Fungi are our primary source for antibiotics. Drugs that make organ transplants possible (like cyclosporin) come from fungi. Drugs that can alter your brain activity and change your very fundamental perceptions of reality and self (like psilocybin) are also synthesized by fungi. Fungi use their amazing array of chemicals to communicate with each other and to successfully compete for space and resources in their crowded, stressful environments.

There are 150,000 described species of fungi but most experts estimate that there are many million actual species (5.1 million is most frequently cited estimate). DNA analysis indicates that fungi have been around for a billion years. There are, though, some fossilized impressions etched in rocks that strongly resemble fungi. These rock etchings have been dated to over 2.4 billion years ago. Fungi, then, may have come into existence right when the very first eukaryotic cell evolved!

Fungi used to be included in the plant kingdom. Their immobility seemed to suggest a plant connection but little else about them was plant-like. In 1969, Robert Whittaker placed fungi in their own kingdom in his Five Kingdoms of Life, and they have remained in their separate classification category ever since. It is interesting that detailed analysis of the nucleic acids and proteins of fungi suggest that fungi are actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants!

Penicillium fungus. Photo by A. Hunter. Wikimedia Commons

Many people think of mushrooms when they hear the word “fungus.” Mushrooms, though, are a very small part of a specific set of fungal species. Mushrooms are the structures formed when these types of fungi undergo sexual reproduction. Often this sexual event occurs when two fungal individuals meet and then each contribute genetic material to a new kind of cell. You can’t really call either of these individuals “male” or “female,” though, because they both similarly and equally contribute their genetic material to the new cell.

This new cell, then, develops into the mushroom (or some other type of fruiting body), and eventually the genetic material from the two contributing individuals fuses and is used to generate the dispersal life stages of the fungus: the spores. Millions of spores are generated by each mushroom or fruiting body. Worldwide, about 50 megatons of spores (over 110 trillion pounds!) are produced by fungi and released into the atmosphere. They are so many fungal spores floating in the air that they can influence weather patterns and trigger rain storms.

In some fungal species, a single individual can contribute both components of the genetic material to make the spore producing structure. These fungi, then, are hermaphroditic and can self-fertilize (even though sometimes these hermaphroditic fungi exchange genetic material with other individuals!).

The “dating” and “mating” matrix of a fungus is complicated!

Armillaria mellea (Honey Fungus). Photo by Stu’s Images, Wikimedia Commons

Mushrooms and other fruiting bodies are literally the tip of the iceberg when it comes to visualizing a fungus. Most of a fungus is made up of a single-cell thick threads called “hyphae” that are interwoven and hidden from view in the soil or in the organic material matrix housing the fungus. An individual fungus, though, is more than just a single hyphal thread: it is a complex, branching system of these individual threads that forms an interconnected  system called a “mycelium.”  A fungal mycelium can consist of thousands to millions of hyphae and can spread out over a very vast area of soil. The largest living organism in the world is a honey fungus (Armillaria) in Oregon whose hyphal mass is estimated to weigh hundreds of tons. This Oregon honey fungus spreads its mycelia out over ten square kilometers of soil. This fungus is estimated to be between 2000 and 8000 years old!

Fungal mycelia grow from their hyphae tips. The cells in the distal ends of these hyphae have very active rates of metabolism and a diverse array of chemical sensory structures. When a fungus seeks food (or water or mineral nutrients), it grows its distal mycelial hyphae out in all directions at once! A fungus is not limited to single directional searches like we might observe in an animal when it seeks resources. A fungus’ search probes into all of the ends and edges of its environment all at once.

Red death cap mushroom, Public Domain

When the food (or water or mineral nutrient) is located, the successful hyphae send out a variety of signals that alerts the rest of the mycelial mass to the location of the sought after resource. The other distal hyphae of the mycelium, then, either stop growing or start to grow in the direction of the found resource. The signals the successful hypha sends out include intracellular chemicals that travel in the cytoplasm of the interconnected hyphae, chemicals that are released into the surrounding substrate, and electrical impulses that flash along the cell membranes of the hyphae.

(Next week: more on mycelia and fungal communication!)

Asian elephant, Denver zoo. Photo by A. Hansen, Wikimedia Commons

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog ….. Palm_Oil

Last summer we were all at the Denver Zoo standing in a concession line trying to decide between cotton candy and popcorn (thank goodness, the popcorn won!). While we were in line waiting to fork out $5 for about 25 cents of popcorn (hey, the profits go to support the zoo animals!) we heard the amplified voice of the elephant keeper starting up his elephant demonstration.

The keeper had two of the zoo’s Asian elephants posed in a concrete enclosure surrounded by tiers of bench seats for tired, zoo-wandering humans. We (three generations of Hamilton-Sillman’s) sat and enjoyed the presentation very much. The elephants were willing and showed remarkable personalities and senses of humor. At the end of the presentation, the keeper talked about the loss of habitat facing elephants especially in southeast Asia. The prime culprit for this habitat loss is deforestation caused by rain forest clearing to make room for palm oil plantations.

Photo by K. Bakie, Wikimedia Commons

Several species of elephants are critically endangered because of palm oil generated deforestation. Also several species of orangutans, the Sumatran rhino and the Sumatran tiger and a host of other species are losing their habitats to the bare, open monocultures of palms. Currently, 67 million acres of the Earth’s surface (an area larger than the total area of the United Kingdom!) are covered with palm oil trees. All of these palm oil sites are located within ten degrees latitude of the Equator, and almost all of them were once covered with dense tropical rain forests. The great bulk of the deforestation (and palm oil production) is occurring on the islands of Indonesia and in the forests of Malaysia. Eighty-five percent of the world’s palm oil comes from these two countries.

The Denver Zoo is partnering with a group called “Palm Done Right” to raise awareness of the on-going ecological catastrophe being caused by palm oil production. The elephant keeper described some websites where you can check the products you eat or use and see their palm oil content. Realistically, the keeper said, almost any packaged bread, cookie, cake, pie, snack or prepared food product contained palm oil, as did most soaps, shampoos and cosmetics. Half (or more) of all of the products sold at a grocery store typically contain palm oil.

Oil palm tree. Photo by M. Schmidt, Wikimedia Commons

Palm oil trees are native to West and Central Africa and the oils from their pressed fruits have been used as cooking oil by humans for at least 5000 years. Starting in the 18^th Century, palm oils were used as industrial lubricants by the English to help run the machines of their Industrial Revolution. Palm oils were also used to lubricate railroad cars and engines, and later as the foundation material for a wide range of soaps. Lever Brothers (now “Unilever”) and Palmolive (now Colgate-Palmolive) extensively used palm oil in their soaps and growing array of personal care products (lotions, shampoos, cosmetics, etc.). Today, 70% of personal care products contain palm oils or palm oil derivatives.

Palm oil is a highly saturated fat. Chemically, this means that it has very few double bonds between the carbons in its long-chain fatty acids, structurally this means that these fatty acid chains are very straight and cling tightly to each other via intermolecular bonds. Palm oils more closely resemble the saturated fats from animal sources than the fats found in most other plants. Because of its intermolecular clinging forces, palm oil is semisolid at room temperature. It is frequently used as an inexpensive substitute for butter in cooking and baking.

Alternate Names for palm oil in products.

It is often difficult to tell if a food product contains palm oil. There are over 200 different terms for palm oil chemical ingredients. Some of these (only 10%) contain the term “palm,” but the rest can be very obscurely labeled. The chart to the left indicates a few of these possible terms. For a more complete list of these 200 possible palm oil names, please follow this link to view a web document prepared by the “Orangutang Alliance.”

Palm oil is also used as biofuel. In fact, more than half of the considerable volume of palm oil imported into Europe each year is used to make biodiesel fuels. The use of these palm oil biodiesel fuels, however, generates 3X more carbon pollution than the use of more conventional, fossil fuel-derived diesel fuels.

Some food products containing palm oil

Foods containing palm oils especially include the highly processed, convenience foods like chips, cookies, snack foods, bread products, etc. Many health authorities caution against eating these foods and have even indicated that they, along with sugar-rich soft drinks, are the fundamental cause of the obesity epidemic plaguing human populations all around the world. The high caloric nature of the palm oil’s saturated fats and their rapid processing into cholesterols by the liver is definitely one factor in the development of atherosclerotic disease of the coronary arteries and of other arterial systems of the body. Heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, diabetes and more can all be connected to palm oil ingestion.

Human ingestion of palm oils, outside of Africa, was not widely seen until WW1. The rise of the margarine industry during the war changed eating habits and attitudes significantly. In the United States, palm oils were not a significant part of the diet until the 1920’s. It is interesting that coronary arterial disease and heart attacks were not a major cause of death in the United States at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, but by mid-century had risen to the #1 cause of deaths in the population.

Oil palm plantation in Indonesia, Photo by A. R. Taim. Wikimedia Commons

So, palm oils is an ecological disaster. The tropical deforestation that the growth of the palm oil trees causes is increasing the extinction pressures on a wide variety of tropical species. The use of these oils for biofuels causes more carbon pollution than simply burning fossil fuels and is, thus, accelerating the already terrifying rate of climate change. Our ingestion of the oils in foods adds to our saturated fat loads and may be accelerating atherosclerotic disease, contributing to obesity, and leading to premature death in a large number of our fellow human beings.

There are some groups (like “Palm Done Right” (which I mentioned before)) trying to educate the public about dangers of palm oil. There are other groups (like the “Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil” (“RSPO”))that are combinations of palm oil industry producers and users (like Unilever, Mondelez (the giant snack food company), Nestle and a number of financial institutions with deep ties in the industry) and large NGO’s (like the World Wildlife Fund and OXFAM). RSPO  and others have been accused as being “green-washing” agents for the palm oil industry.  RSPO, in particular, has lavish yearly meetings in exotic locales and very colorful, highly-produced websites and booklets, but is very light on true accountability or auditing of the palm oil producers that they have certified.

The answer to all of this is to use as little palm oil as possible. Don’t buy highly processed food products. Read labels and, when possible, only buy food or personal care items that are not made with palm oil. Homemade cookies, are, after all, even better than Oreos!

Lady Moon Trail. Photo by D. Sillman

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … Red Feather Lakes part 2

A tall, metal gate had to be opened to get onto the Lady Moon Trail. The gate allowed hikers, horseback riders and trail bikes through but was narrow enough to prevent jeeps or quads from entering the trail. A robust, wooden fence extended around the gate to ensure that no one tried to make an end run around it.

There were several aspen groves along the first part of the Lady Moon Trail. Some of these were stripped down to skeletons of bare branches while other held on to a good percentage of their quaking, golden leaves. Very slight differences in elevation (the groves growing in the lower basins were more sheltered, those growing up higher were more exposed). The presence or absence of nearby, sheltering ponderosa pines also helped to explain why some of the groves had moved on to their winter forms while others still held on to their autumn leaves.

Aspens along Lady Moon Trail. Photo by D. Sillman

The trees in each aspen grove were tightly packed together and were all the same height and trunk diameter. They probably all grew after a fire some 15 or 20 years ago. Aspens vigorously stump and root sprout after a burn and quickly re-establish their thickets. The roots of the trees in each grove are also all highly interconnected making the definition of individual trees in the grove almost impossible. Each grove was, essentially, a single tree with dozens to hundreds of trunks.

The ponderosa pines spread out in between the isolated groves of aspens. There were pine stumps scattered in between the standing trees and a number of old, wind-thrown pines that had turned gray with weathering and age. There obviously had been some logging in this area some decades before.

Young ponderosa pines on Lady Moon Trail. Photo by D. Sillman

Ponderosa pine saplings were growing primarily in low spots in the terrain or in rough basins surrounded by rocks. These spots could hold the transient surface water from snow-melt and spring rains and allow the germination of the pine seeds and the early growth of the saplings. Once a ponderosa pine gets through its first three or four months of life, it is not greatly affected by drought, but in its early months, just after seed germination, it is very dependent on available water.

Kangaroo rats ran in between the pines and up and down their furrowed trunks. The rats were probably very dependent on ponderosa pine seeds and in their gathering and shredding of the pine cones not only fed themselves but also spread the pine seeds. Their caches were probably stuffed full of ponderosa pine seeds, too. Some seeds would not be eaten and could germinate in the spring if there was sufficient water.

Flocks of chickadees flew from one pine trees to another. They clattered and buzzed up into the tree branches and picked at crevices and creases in the rough bark. I am sure that were gathering ants and other potentially overwintering insects and insect larvae from the tree. Again, like the kangaroo rats and the pines, this chickadee and pine symbiosis was distinctly mutualistic: the birds got a meal and the pines were cleaned of potential pests.

The chickadee flocks reminded me of cleaning stations in coral reefs and other aquatic ecosystems. Large fish or sea turtles swim into the cleaning zone where they are swarmed by small fish that gobble up parasites from the larger animal’s scales and even from their gills, teeth and oral cavities! Little, meal-sized fish and crustaceans swim all over the larger, predaceous fish getting a meal and cleaning their “clients” of potentially damaging parasites. The chickadees are the cleaners in these forested ecosystems, but instead of their waiting for their clients to come to them (a very difficult thing for a pine tree to do!) they swarm around the stationary trees and do their work.

Granite outcrops along Lady Moon Trail. Photo by D. Sillman

The open spaces in between the pines were full tall, globular-looking granite outcrops and a blanket of tall, dried, standing grasses. I didn’t identify the species but think that they were a mix of invasive grasses that are plaguing the forest and grassland ecosystems all though the Rocky Mountains. Cheat grass, smooth brome, field brome, tall fescue and more had made a dense, dry, highly flammable stand of vegetation that was just waiting for a spark to set it off. I bet these grasses were the targets of the Forest Service’s prescribed burning program. There was a sign on the entry gate (and also on the trail’s web page) that tells horseback riders to only bring hay that is seedless onto the trail. I am not really sure that seedless hay actually exists, though! The hay-dispersed exotic grasses are accentuating the exotic plant invasion and fire potential on the trail!

Lady Moon Meadow. Photo by D. Sillman

A mile or so down the trail was the edge of a broad, treeless basin called Lady Moon Meadow. Running through the middle of the meadow was  a stream which still had some flowing water in it. In the spring with snow melt this stream was probably quite a formidable torrent that spread ground and surface water all through the meadow soil. Spring conditions were probably too wet to allow pine seedlings to germinate or aspens to get established, so the meadow retained its treeless aspect.

This meadow made me think of all of the human-constructed lakes up in Red Feather Lakes. It would be relatively easy to dam up this stream and add some rocks and soil to the rim of the basin and create a lake. Probably, the late 19^th Century Red Feather Lakes builders did just that in other wet basins across the landscape.

We stayed the weekend in a small, rental cabin near Lake Ramona. We dined and had a beverage or two in the nearby Red Feather Lakes Tavern and watched a roomful of locals play a vigorous round of trivia. There was a very nice community feel to the tavern crowd. There is a distinct feeling of isolation up here in Red Feather Lakes. The town itself looks like a frontier village carved out of the Alaskan wilderness. The streets are dirt and gravel, and the storefronts are made of rough wood and decorated with home-made, hand-painted signs. There is a rock shop, a couple of realtors, a liquor store, a trading post, a gift shop and a grocery. The only store that looks out of place is a shiny, new Ace Hardware that looks transplanted in from some suburban mini-mall.

Vegetation around Dowdy Lake. Photo by D. Sillman

The next day we hiked around Dowdy Lake and inspected the stone and soil dam that had made the lake possible. On the trail around the dam we saw big sagebrush and rabbitbrush growing in between ponderosa pines. A rich array of “weeds” and lovely flowering plants grew in between the brush plants. In the spring, this would be a great place to hunt for wildflowers.

There were great, boiling masses of granite clumped together all around the lake. The deep, rock bone of the Rockies were poking up through the dry, sandy soil and making their presence known.

Walking along one raised bank of the lake we were surprised by a golden eagle flying over the water almost at our eye level. The eagle was barely 15 feet away from us. I could clearly see her golden eyes with their dark-brown pupils. Her focus was on the surface of the water. She didn’t seem to notice at all as she cruised over the wind-blown, slightly rolling water looking for fish.

Dowdy Lake (a Red Feather Lake). Photo by D. Sillman

(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog … Red Feather Lakes part 1

Red Feather Lakes is a set of twelve, small lakes located in north-central Larimer County (the same county that includes Fort Collins). The lakes are set in the Rocky Mountains (north of Rocky Mountain National Park) and are surrounded by the Roosevelt National Forest. The mountainous landscape is punctuated by large, granite outcroppings and densely forested with ponderosa pine.

The lakes are about an hour and a half from Greeley and sit at an altitude about 4000 feet higher (8245 feet). The twelve lakes are Parvin Lake, Dowdy Lake, West Lake, Snake Lake, Laritia Lake, Red Feather Lake, Lake Ramona, Hiawatha Lake, Apache Lake, Shagwa Lake, Lake Nokoma and Lake Erie. All of these lakes drain into Lone Pine Creek which in turn flows into the Cache la Poudre River which runs down through its canyon and then onto the plains and through Greeley. It then empties into the South Platte River to the east of the city.

Dam at Dowdy Lake. Photo by D. Sillman

All of the Red Feather Lakes are human-made. An 1879 survey of this area showed only one natural lake in the region. This lake was Creedmore Lake which is located five miles north of the Red Feather Lakes cluster. The Red Feather Lakes were constructed to establish local water rights to the large amount of snow melt pouring through the local streams in the spring, to provide drinking water for the extensive herds of cattle being raised on area ranches, and, more subtly, to generate a lake-resort environment that could support hotels, taverns and a lively (and profitable) tourist industry.

The first three Red Feather Lakes were established between 1885 and 1888 by a local rancher and businessman named Jake Mitchel. Mitchel diverted water from North Pie Creek to fill the dammed basins of what is now Hiawatha Lake, Lake Ramona and Red Feather Lake. Mitchel’s diversion of this water established the water rights for continued diversion of stream flow.

In 1889, the South Pine Creek was diverted by the rancher, Frank Gartman creating West Lake and Dowdy Lake. The remaining seven lakes were constructed later.

In 1902, Mitchel and Gartman formed an investment/development group along with a former governor of Colorado (B. H. Eaton) and planned to build a resort around the lakes. The plans for this project fell though and the lakes then passed through a series of owners. Frank Gartman, in the meantime, married a woman named Catherine Lawder who was a young Irish immigrant who had come to this area to work in a lodge located not far from the lakes. Catherine divorced Gartman after a short marriage and then married Lord Cecil Moon (a younger son of an English nobleman who had come to the American West to make his fortune). Catherine and Lord Cecil also eventually divorced. Catherine, though, kept Lord Cecil’s ranch and also the title “Lady Moon.”

As one person who knew her during her lifetime put it: “(She) was a loud-spoken, profane, hard-drinking woman.”  She loved animals, owned racehorses, and had a huge pack of loyal dogs who followed her everywhere she went. Lady Moon, after divorcing Lord Moon, eventually lost most of her property and money and ended up making a living as a local bootlegger. She was frequently mentioned in newspaper articles and even featured in several books and in a play.

The name “Lady Moon” is still found all over Larimer County. There is a Lady Moon Drive in southeast Fort Collins and a Lady Moon Park. There is also a hiking trail up near Red Feather Lakes called the Lady Moon Trail.  Of course, Deborah and I went to that trail for our first hike up in the Red Feather Lakes.

Lady Moon Trail. Photo by D. Sillman

The trailhead for the Lady Moon Trail is off of County Road 74E about 20 miles west of Livermore and 2 or 3 miles east from the turn-off to Red Feather Lakes. The drive up from Livermore (altitude 5896 feet) takes you from the tall sagebrush steppes of the lower foothills up into the ponderosa pine forest of the middle Rockies. Over ten miles or so on County Road 74E you rise up 2400 feet in altitude in a long, steady climb. Along that rise you cross the lower “tree-line” between the sagebrush and grassland dry plains and the forested slopes of the Rocky Mountains. At first you see just one or two ponderosa pines across the rolling terrain, but soon entire hillsides are covered with a dense growth of trees.

A the twenty-mile marker on 74E there are two trailheads with parking: on the north side of the road is the Mount Margret Trail and on the south side of the road is the Lady Moon Trail. Driving in from Livermore on Friday afternoon (the first Friday in October), we could the glint of cars parked in the Mount Margaret Trail parking area, so we pulled in to the north lot and then hiked  across the road to get to the Lady Moon trailhead. We were surprised to find the southside parking area tucked in a shallow hollow behind a stand of ponderosa pines well hidden from view from the road. We could saved ourselves nearly a mile of walking if we had known about the closer parking area.

We planned to come back to the Mount Margaret Trail Sunday morning on our drive back out of Red Feather Lakes. Our plans, though, were thwarted by a group of 40 or so middle-aged (or older) (they looked like us, actually) hikers/birders clustering around the trailhead in anticipation of a group hike. We didn’t feel like fighting our way through such a big crowd, so we drove on down the road to the Trading Post at Livermore and had coffee at a sunlit, outside table instead.

Smoke from prescribed burn on Lady Moon Trail. Photo by D. Sillman

There were signs on the entrance to the southern parking area that the Forest Service was going to conduct a prescribed burn in the fields and forests along the Lady Moon Trail. On Saturday, as we walked around several of the Red Feather Lakes we could see plumes of smoke curling up from the area of the Lady Moon Trail. On Sunday, when we encountered all of those hikers, there were several Forest Service personnel stationed at the southside parking entrance turning everyone away from the areas of burning.

The Lady Moon Trail website (as of early November) still indicates that the Lady Moon Trail is closed due to prescribed burning. Our hike on the trail on Friday may have been the last chance this year for anyone to get out on Lady Moon!

(Next week: The Hike on the Lady Moon Trail!)