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Mushroom walk on August 10

Velvety Fairy Fan

On the morning of Saturday August 10th a group of ten fabulous fungi finders gathered at the Pink Beds for a Mushroom walk led by Charlotte Caplan.  Under perfect summer skies we explored the first mile or so of the trail and unearthed a wide variety of mushroom species.  Highlights included black trumpets (ultimately serving as someone’s breakfast), and unusual speciments such as the Velvety Fairy Fan, the hard to pronounce and even harder to see Tolypocladium ophioglossoides (connected by an umbilical cord to a truffle), and a large Fairy Club.  Some distance down the trail we came to a beautiful wet meadow at a stream crossing, and a magnificent display of wildflowers (Joe Pye Weed, Ironweed, Boneset, Blue Lobelia, Goldenrod and more) distracted us from the mushrooms.  All in all a very pleasant morning spent in a great place with great people.

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Nature Notes

Fraser Magnolia Trees: Ancient Botanical Relics

by Linda Martinson Blue Ridge Naturalist

Every year in May, the big magnolia tree behind our house in the woods surprises us almost overnight with several stately blossoms glowing like candles against large dark green leaves. Our tree is a Fraser Magnolia (Magnolia fraseri), sometimes called a mountain magnolia, and it is native to the Southern Appalachians where it is fairly common. The flowers are large, fragrant, and showy, and the leaves are also big (12 inches or more in length), tough, and dark green. They are deciduous trees, and the leaves turn yellow and drop in the fall, when they also glow in the sun. The tree is named for John Fraser (1750-1811), who was a Scottish botanist—one of the many botanical explorers who combed the New World for interesting plants and trees to send back to Europe.

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