Under My Nose, and Your Help

When we got out of Gooseberry, I checked my voicemail*, and was pleased to hear from Professor Chuck, saying that a friend had found a new Gambel-Turbinella oak hybrid that he wanted to show me.

*I don’t get cell service up on the mesa. Ironically, our old favorite campsite got taken out about in the last year when they put up a cell tower. But the tower is Verizon and my phone is AT&T**, which has miserable coverage in the Utah backcountry.

**Not my choice- my employer’s. Whenever my time with this company ends, my first stop will be the Verizon store.

Side Note/Background: Unless you’ve been following this blog a while, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. A few years ago I became interested in- and discovered an occurrence of- a type of hybrid oak that’s very rare in Northern Utah. Yeah, I know that sounds way geeky, but the ultra-super-way cool thing about these hybrids is that they were formed thousands of years ago, when the other species of Oak- Shrub Live Oak, Quercus turbinella, lived this far North alongside “normal” scrub oak, which are Gambel Oak, Q. gambelii. Which means that these stands are likely several thousand years old*.

*To be clear, many Gambel Oak hybrids are several thousand years old, and many Aspen clonal stands are likely much older. But with a Gambel-turbinella hybrid stand, one of the parent species hasn’t lived within 250 miles for probably 4,000 – 5,000 years.

I gave the background of these rare hybrids in this post, and since posted several more times about various hybrids I’ve discovered or visited. All hybrid oak posts in this blog are labeled- wait for it- “hybrid oak”, and nearly all of them date from the Falls of the past couple of years, because that’s when the hybrids become visible. Because one of their parent species is evergreen (live oak), one of the characteristics of these hybrids is that their leaves stay green and on the tree later in the year than typical Gambel Oak, meaning that the best time to find them is between late October (when the Gambel Oaks lose their leaves) and early December (when the hybrids lose their leaves). The rest of the year, they’re pretty much invisible.

So the next (this past) weekend, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I met up with Professor Chuck and we drove over to one of the trailheads in the upper Avenues. You see, this hybrid wasn’t far away at all. It was right under my nose.

By “under my nose” I mean that over the past 15 years I’ve passed within a couple hundred yards of this stand hundreds of times and never spotted it. In fairness most of the times I’ve passed it have been when the Gambels are leafed out, and its aspect is such that even when you pass within ~600-700 feet of it on the Shoreline trail, it’s still largely invisible. But there are actually a couple of spots from along the Bobsled trail where, if you stop and crank your head around just right*, you can spot it.

*Admittedly, the middle of the high-speed downhill Bobsled trail is about the last place where one would be incline to “stop and crank your head around…”

Side Note: I’m not giving the exact location in this post, not because the stand is in any imminent danger, but rather because I didn’t discover it. I don’t personally know the discoverer, other than his first name is “Blake” and he’s a biology student of some sort up at Weber State.

We walked an easy trail over to the bottom of the gully running up Perry’s Hollow, then up along the Bobsled trail for a bit before bushwhacking up the hillside through oak.

Tangent: After years and years of battling thickets of scrub oak on exploratory foothill hikes/scrambles, I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t fight scrub oak and win; you have to have an almost Zen-like patience, persistence and a Moses-and-the-Red-Sea sort of faith that a path through will eventually reveal itself. And inevitably, it always does. But the more impatient I am in finding that path, the more scratched up, tired and pissed off I am when I ultimately make it through. You can’t find a path through scrub oak; the path has to find you.

Nested Tangent: I love posting these little nuggets of professed backcountry wisdom, because I imagine they make me come off like some kind of Wilderness Zen Master or something. In truth I am Mr. Zero-Patience and at least 9 out of 10 of my exploratory scrub oak scrambles end with me scratched-up, grumpy and cursing (and sometimes visiting my sewing-crush seamstress the next day.)

Ideally one clearing will open into the next, but sometimes the oak presents a virtual wall. Fortunately the walls are often penetrated by game trails, which while not wide enough to simply march straight through (much less ride a mtn bike along) are just barely well-enough defined to allow a skinny adult to do a sort of slow-motion twisting side-step through- almost like a kind of interpretive dance. I always assumed that most of these game trails were the work of mule deer, because I see them so frequently in the foothills, but more recently I am coming to suspect that many are actually the work of porcupines*. Mule deer stott through/over a lot of thick brush, whereas a porcupine stays low to the ground. The well-defined break-through game trail that got me through the last “wall” on Sunday passed right by this burrow, with the porcupine’s tail still visible. I passed by quickly and carefully.

*Porcupines have my absolute favorite migration/evolution saga of any mammal I’ve posted about in this blog. I just love them. Go check it out.

The Perry’s Hollow hybrid is a big one, consisting of several stands of a couple square hundred yards. The leaves, still present though yellowing in mid-November, clearly show the pointy-lobed-ness of their turbinella parentage (pic left). The leaves on one small sub-stand on the downhill side of the main stand looks extremely live-oak-ish (pic below, right), and Professor Chuck suspects that while the main stand may be an F1 hybrid, this sub-stand may be a turbinella back-cross.*

*I explained F1 hybrids, F2s and back-crosses in this post. Turbinella back-crosses are particularly interesting, because they hint at the holy grail of Wasatch hybrid-oak hunters: a modern-day living stand of pure Q. turbinella. Though unlikely, it’s not impossible such a stand exists this far North; planted turbinella seems to get along just fine along the Wasatch Front.

Walking in and through the hybrid stand and checking out the distinctive pointy-tipped leaves I marveled at something so cool and ancient having been smack in the middle of my regular stomping grounds all this time. And it got me wondering: what other hybrid stands are there close by that I’ve biked, hiked, run or driven by time and again without noticing? If I missed this one, there must be at least a dozen or so more tucked away in the foothills between Spanish Fork and Ogden.

Your Help

So here’s the point- and yes there is one and I am getting to it- of this post: As best I can tell, there are at least a couple dozen regular readers of this blog who a) live along the Wasatch Front and b) bike, hike or run trails in the foothills regularly. So if you’re one of those readers, I’m asking you a favor. Over the next week or so, if you see a stand of scrub oak that still has (mostly) green leaves on it, and the lobes/tips of the leaves are at all pointy, would you drop me a line?

Hybrid leaves can take all sorts of forms, But they key thing is 1) they are oaks, 2) the leaves are still on the tree, and still mostly green, and 3) the leaves- whatever the shape- have pointy tips. There are several photos in this post and my earlier posts with the “hybrid oak” label. Here’s a comparison, using the hybrid I discovered 3 years ago in Maple Hollow.

If you think you’ve found one, please comment or email to adventureREMOVECAPSbotanist@yahoo.com, removing the caps. (It would be Additionally Extra Fantabulous if you pocketed a leaf and then emailed me a photo of said leaf.) I know there are more hybrids out there. If you spot one you get a WatcherSTICKER and I write a flattering post about you*. Thanks!

*Really, this is better than it sounds. Not the sticker- the Flattering Post. It may not seem the case from this blog, but when I apply myself I can really lay it on thick. I’ve been making a living in sales for over 20 years; nobody can blow smoke up your backside like I can. Seriously, if I write a flattering post about you, you will be filled with a wonderful sense of confidence and self-worth that will last all Winter long.

Extra Detail: The Draper/Corner Canyon trail system in particular seems like a great spot. I’ve already found one on the North slope and Rudy Drobnik has found a several on the South/Utah County slope.

Yes, I know this is a total long-shot. But really, what do I have to lose?

Hike. Tree. Spider!

Sunday morning* I met up with my 2 favorite Botany-Heroes, Professor Chuck and Rudy Drobnick (pic left from last Fall- Rudy left, Chuck right.) Longtime readers may remember the series I did last Fall on rare hybrid oak clones in the Wasatch following my discovery of such a clone, which in turn introduced me to Professor Chuck and later to Rudy. You can refer back to that post and the next for background on that discovery and the significance of these hybrids in Northern Utah, which is nothing short of amazing**.

*Yes, I am just blogging about what I did last Sunday now. I am always behind in this project…

**The series included my subsequent discoveries of 2 more such hybrids, which I posted about here and here, as well as my introduction to Rudy, which I posted about here. I later posted here about my scramble to probably the most dramatically-situated of the hybrids, which Rudy initially discovered over 50 years ago.

Late last Fall, Rudy and Professor Chuck re-discovered another such hybrid, which Rudy had discovered in the late 1950s, but subsequently “lost” and omitted from his thesis. Sunday we returned so that I could get a GPS reading and some sample leaves.

Hike

Accessing the hybrid required an easy 4 mile round-trip hike along the old Bonneville shoreline-bench on the West slope of the Oquirrhs. Rudy waited at the car while Professor Chuck and I made the hike.

It was wonderfully warm Indian Summer morning, the foliage was beautiful, and it would’ve been a wonderful hike (or run) even without the hybrid.

Tangent: The lower west slope of the Oquirrhs has some absolutely beautiful stretches. It’s a lot like what I imagine the Wasatch foothills were like 50+ years ago, before they were cluttered with homes, hospitals and natural history museums- open golden, grassy slopes, broken by intermittent stands of scrub oak and maple, the vegetation growing more dens as one ascends the slope. It’s not a “destination” really, but well worth visiting for an easy hike in the Spring or Fall.

Tree

Rudy described the hybrid’s location for us, assuring us we couldn’t miss it. And indeed we couldn’t. Amongst the fading browns, oranges and yellows carpeting the slope, the hybrid stands out like a bright green jewel. Its live oak (Quercus turbinella) parentage gives the leaves a strong late-season persistence un-matched by any “regular” scrub oak (Q. gambelii) around. Sheltered by a large boulder, and consisting of several trunks, it’s a magnificent little stand.

Check out the leaves- bright green in mid-October, and clearly intermediate in form between the scrub Oak all over the place up here, and the little, shrubby, holly-like live oak you get down around Gooseberry Mesa. Professor Chuck thinks the clone is probably an F1 hybrid, formed sometime between 4,000 and 7,000 years ago, during the Altithermal. I think that’s what I love most about finding these hybrids- each one is like this little living time capsule from when the world- our world, right here in the Wasatch- was different. And yet hardly anyone is aware of them. They just go on cloning and growing, without any signs or plaques or fences proclaiming their coolness.

Tangent: And if I can be forgiven for waxing poetic for a moment, this, right here, is what I love about living in Utah. The state has a thousand little mysteries- mysteries of flora and geology and topography and hydrology and archeology and so much more, and no matter how long you live here and how much you explore, there are always a thousand more mysteries, waiting to be explored. It’s like living in the middle of a giant, continuous, never-ending adventure*.

*Yes, I realize this is exactly the kind of over-the-top boosterism I was poo-pooing in Wednesday’s post, but damnit it’s true. As Stegner wrote, “It is a land that breeds the impossible.”

October and November are the best times to spot such hybrids. Eventually, in late November or December, their leaves will turn, wither and fall.

We walked back, chatting about plants and moss and range condition* and the day grew warmer. A gopher snake slithered across the old 2-track we were following, and then a moment later I saw it- a nice, big Tarantula.

*Moss on the ground in open grassy areas is an indicator of good range condition. Mosses like these (pic right) don’t survive long on heavily grazed/trampled soil.

Spider!

Utah certainly has many animals I never saw in the wild growing up in New England. Mountain Lions, Elk, Coyotes, Bobcats, Golden Eagles, Magpies, Pronghorns, Buffalo- I never saw any of them in the wild before I moved out West. But of all the wild animals I’ve seen since moving here, I don’t think any freaks me out more than a tarantula.

By “freaked out”, I don’t mean “scared”; I just mean “freaked out.” A “bug” just shouldn’t be that big. Tarantulas here in Utah primarily eat other invertebrates, such as crickets and beetles, but occasionally a tarantula here will eat a mouse. A “bug” eating a mammal? That’s just wrong.

Tarantulas are of course spiders, and spiders are, as everyone knows, arachnids. But people tend to use the words “arachnid” and “spider” interchangeably, which isn’t the case. Arachnids are a huge class of invertebrates that include not only spiders, but also things like ticks, mites, vinegarroons*, pseudoscorpions**, windscorpions***, “daddy longlegs****” and much more. All arachnids have eight legs, but evolution has changed the form and function of some of these legs in some species so that they no longer look or function like legs. Arachnids also have a couple of other appendages: chelicerae, which are mouthparts used to grasp food, and are different from the mouthparts of insects (which are mandibles), and pedipalps, which are used from everything from feeding to movement to moving packets of sperm around during mating. Confusingly, the pedipalps of some arachnids have practically evolved into “legs”; a windscorpion for example appears to have 10 legs, but the front pair is actually modified pedipalps.

*These are also called whipscorpions, but I get a kick out of “vinegaroon.” Sounds like some weird kind of cookie.

** These are not the same as scorpions. Completely different kind of critter.

*** Nope. Not scorpions either.

****Called “Harvestmen” in much of the non-US English-speaking world. BTW, these are (I believe) the subject of Christopher’s studies over at CoO.

Arachnids have a distinctive two-chunk body-form: the cephalothorax, which is a combo head and thorax and to which the legs are attached, and the abdomen.

Extra Details: There are still lots of unresolved issues in arachnid evolution and phylogeny. One example is scorpions, which you’ll find included in lots of lists of arachnids, but which are now thought by many researcher to have evolved instead from Eurypterids, an ancient and varied and now-extinct group of (sometimes) monster-sized sea-dwelling creepie-crawlies (OK invertebrates) which included the largest arthropods that ever lived. (I googled for a Eurypterid pic, and this was my absolute favorite. I’m pretty sure that’s “Dwayne” from One Day At A Time.)

Detail Tangent: This is a good time to talk about why “bugs” don’t usually get all that big. An exoskeleton is a very efficient support structure for very small animals, and offers protection against both predators and dessication (drying out.) But it’s got a big disadvantage: as the animal gets bigger, the exoskeleton required to support it and house the increased musculature needed to move it, becomes too heavy and cumbersome*.

*Yet another disadvantage to exoskeletons is the whole molting-hassle.

With an internal skeleton, this isn’t nearly as much of a problem. Consider the thick, trunk-like legs of an elephant compare to those of a deer. Certainly an elephant’s skeleton is much more massive, and its leg bones thicker, but the weight of that skeleton is nothing what a suit of elephant-sized armor capable of supporting an elephant would weigh. BTW, this is a bigger problem on land than in the water, which is one reason why you get crabs and lobsters bigger than any tarantula or cockroach.

So skeletal mass and bulk is a size-limiter for “bugs”. But interestingly, the more important limiter- in that it becomes a problem sooner as a “bug” gets bigger- may be respiration. Insects don’t have lungs as we think of them. They use trachea (diagram above left, not mine), a network of tubes which carry air directly to the tissues that need it. Spiders have a different mechanism, called a book lung (diagram right, not mine either*)which is a gill-like structure in the abdomen full of hemolymph**-filled flaps. Both of these airflow mechanisms work fine for a small body, but terribly ineffective at getting oxygen to tissues in a larger one. And speaking of breathing…

*What, you think I have all day to sit around and draw pictures?

**Bug-blood. Confusingly, many other arachnids, like mites and Daddy-Longlegs, have trachea instead of book lungs.

Another unresolved issue is how many times arachnids evolved from water to land. Do all land-based arachnids* share a common terrestrial pioneer ancestor, which accounts for some of their common features, such as book lungs? Or did things like books lungs evolve multiple times independently in different pioneer-ancestors**?

*Aquatic spiders BTW are descended from land-based spiders that returned to the water, analogous to whales or seals.

**In which case these features would be analogous to Old/New World Vultures, C4 and CAM photosynthesis, isoprene emission in plants and about a zillion other things we’ve looked at in this blog. Isn’t it cool how the same or similar features keep evolving over and over again?

Spiders, the order Araneae, are air-breathing arachnids in which the chelicerae have evolved into hollow venom-injecting fangs. Nearly all spiders are predators, but are incapable of eating solid food, and so liquefy their prey by injecting it with digestive enzymes*.

*Although some spiders, including tarantulas, also do a bit of tearing and chewing with their fangs, and also grinding-up of food with their pedipalps.

Tangent: This is a good point to get back to the whole bug-eats-mammal, thing, because Bird Whisperer and I just saw this darn near happen last week, when we watched Return Of The King. You know, the part when Shelob the Giant Evil Spider paralyzes Frodo and wraps him up in her web? Yeah, that part is so bogus and here’s why… OK, OK, I know the whole movie is make-believe and there’s no such thing as wizards or orcs or hobbits (gay, straight or otherwise) or elves or whatever. But besides all that I mean. I mean the part that’s anatomically bogus: Shelob has a stinger. Spiders don’t have stingers- that’s what bees and wasps have. Spiders always inject venom through their fangs*.

*Oh yeah, and she’s way too big, too; she couldn’t breathe or walk, though maybe she’s just powered by some kind of physics-defying Magic Malice or something…

There are at least 40,000 known species of spider, some 900 of which are tarantulas, occurring on every continent except Antarctica. Most live in underground burrows and wait for prey to pass by. Many surround the burrow with a “welcome mat” of silk threads that alert it to passing prey.

Here in Utah, the common species- and the only one I’ve ever seen- is Aphonopelma iodius. Females rarely stray far from the lair; if you see a tarantula walking about, it’s almost always a male. I’ve seen tarantulas here in Utah about a dozen times, and except for 2 of them, every single sighting has been in the month of October, always crossing a trail or a road.

It’s thought that in the Fall males go wandering in search of mates. I’ve mostly seen them down in the foothills, around 5,000 feet, but I spotted one a few years back up by Jeremy Ranch, at nearly 7,000 feet. (The only place I’ve seen a tarantula twice around here is crossing the “paved” road of Mill Creek Canyon, about 100 feet below the entry-fee station, both times- that’s right- in October.)

Side Note: Speaking of males on the prowl, tarantula mating is pretty weird. The male spins a web and deposits a sperm packet on the surface. He then picks up the sperm with his pedipalps and attempts to insert it into the female genital opening. Successful or no, he runs a decent chance of getting eaten by the female.

Tarantulas have few natural enemies; a notable exception is the Tarantula Hawk, Pepsis sp. a wasp which stings, paralyzes and then lays its eggs within the spider’s body. The eggs hatch and consume the still-living-but-paralyzed spider from the inside-out. Interestingly, though I’ve seen Tarantula Hawks many times in Southern Utah and even in Costa Rica, I’ve never seen one in Northern Utah.

Fangs are the tarantula’s offensive weapon, and they’re used defensively as well. The fangs, BTW, move up and down, unlike most spiders, whose move side-to side. But a tarantula’s bite, though painful*, isn’t all that dangerous; there’s no record I could find of anyone dying from a bite.

*But nowhere near as painful as the sting of a Tarantula Hawk, which is apparently out-of-this-world-awful.

But the primary defensive weapon of New World Tarantulas, including A. iodius, isn’t venom; it’s hair.

All New World Tarantulas have what are called urticating hairs*, which are specialized barbed hairs that rub off easily and can embed in the skin or eyes of other animals. When embedded in skin, they can cause significant irritations; when embedded in eyes or mucous membranes* they can cause extreme irritation, and even death in small animals through edema. The level of irritation varies across species. The urticating hairs of the South American Goliath Birdeater, Theraposa blondi, cause a rash that supposedly feels like “shards of fiberglass.” But the only firsthand description I could find of the irritation caused by A. iodius hairs described it as “15 minutes of minor irritation.” There also seems to be a range in severity of the reaction depending on the individual afflicted, and it now seems as though the irritation may have a chemical component in addition to the mechanical one.

*A number of caterpillars also have urticating hairs, which they of course evolved completely independently. That’s right- yet another example of convergent evolution!

**The hairs can get in the lungs of small mammals, though there’s no known case of this occurring with humans.

Most hairs on a tarantula are not urticating; they’re just body hairs*. Urticating hairs on most species, including A. iodius, grow only on the top of the abdomen.

*It’s not clear what purpose the body hairs serve.

There are 2 really cool things about urticating hairs, each of which relates to another animal we’ve looked at previously.

Last month when we looked at porcupines, I noted that porcupines don’t actually “throw” their quills. But tarantulas do. When threatened, a tarantula will spin around to face its attacker, and then use its 2 rear legs to brush urticating hairs off its abdomen in the direction of its attacker!

You can often ID a tarantula that has recently employed this maneuver because it’ll have an actual bald spot atop its abdomen, and in fact you can see such a bald spot on the one we saw Sunday.

Reader “Enel” BTW was kind enough to send me some tarantula shots from where he lives (down in Central Arizona) and in this shot you can also see a bald spot.

They also seem to spread the hairs liberally around their lairs, on and around their egg sacs, and apparently, to mark territory. Urticating hairs BTW, don’t grow back until the tarantula’s next molt.

The second cool thing relates back to Black Widows, which I blogged about way, way back when, long before anyone ever read this blog*. You can go check out that post if you like, but the Readers Digest version is this: black widow venom contains at least 7 different toxins, specifically targeted towards different kinds of prey and/or predators- 5 for arthropods, 1 for vertebrates (i.e.us) and 1 for crustaceans (i.e. woodlice.)

*I’m serious. Like no one read it back then.

Similarly, there appear to be at least 6 types of urticating hairs, called types 1 through 6, which serve different functions and appear to target different creatures, although the full “target list” for each type is not yet clear. The analogy isn’t perfect; no tarantula has all 6 types. But like the toxins, the array of hairs and their forms and specificity is simply dazzling. Tarantulas are yet another thing that seem pretty cool at first, but then when you learn a little bit about them, turn out to be way, way cool.

Side Note: I had a really tough time determining for this post how many urticating hair types a given species has. Best as I can tell, the minimum is 1, the maximum may be as high as 4.

Type 3 and 4 hairs appear to be most irritating to mammals, and type 3 appears to be effective against both vertebrates (you, your dog, your ex-spouse) and invertebrates (bugs). The urticating hairs on A. iodius are Type 3. So while you don’t need run away from a Tarantula in the Wasatch or the Oquirrhs, I don’t know that I’d go picking it up.

Professor Chuck patiently waited while I examined poked, prodded, filmed (but didn’t touch!) A. iodius. After a bit, we finished the hike back, rejoined Rudy, and drove back home, passing and noting 3 other (previously-visited) hybrids en route. October’s a great time to spot both hybrid oaks and tarantulas in Northern Utah. Keep your eyes open.

The Real Problem with Rim-Brakes, and the True Nature of The Force

If you only know me through this blog, you might not know it, but there are certain things about my life which are definitely “old school”. Here’s one: my mountain bike- both my “main ride” and my “back-up bike”- have rim brakes, specifically V-brakes. I’ve been riding my main ride* since 2004, and though I’ve upgraded a few components over the years- new fork(s), new rear shock**, tubeless rims- the basic set-up is the same.

*Ellsworth Truth. Great bike, so-so company. My frame is a replacement frame, now out of its (reduced to 2 year) warranty. When it breaks I’ll probably go 29”er.

** Cane Creek Cloud Nine. Best performing, most reliable, easiest-maintenance bicycling suspension component I have ever owned. Cannot recommend this product highly enough.

Over the last couple of years, other riders have commented on my “old school” brakes, and asked when I planned to “go disk”, to which my response is generally, “Why”? V-brakes are light, reliable, a cinch to set up and maintain, and in typical Utah riding conditions, brake just fine with 1-finger effort. But finally this year, I am forced to admit that I have found the Achilles heel of rim brakes.

Oh sure, sure. I can see you now, nodding your head all smarty-pants-like, thinking how he “finally got it.” You think I’m going to say something about braking power or wet braking or riding in snow or maybe even rim wear. Well you’re wrong- it’s none of those things.

Tangent: Especially not the wet/snow braking thing. Because why would anyone want to ride in the rain? Wet trails trash your cabling and components, hypothermia- yuck. What’s that? You live in someplace where it rains a lot/all the time? Yeah, that used to be my problem too. That’s why I moved to Utah.

Nested Tangent: This reminds me of a minor rant about boosterism and the Pac-Northwest. People in every “cool” part of the country love to work little proselytizing-testimonial-endorsements into conversations about how great it is where they live. We all do it- yes, including me*. Here in Utah, the most common testimonial endorsement usually relates to ski conditions and proximity. We love to say things like, “You can ski and golf in the same day!” Really? You really need to ski and golf in the same day? What are you, some kind of checklist-activity freak? OK, so I got up this morning, ran 5 miles, then I biked, then I skied half a day, then I did yoga, then I floated in the Great Salt Lake and then I went flyfishing. Tomorrow I’m going paragliding, skate-skiing and then panning for gold…

*But why do we do it? Are our egos really so tiny and fragile that we actually need affirmation from others regarding our choice of where we live? Why can’t we just say, “I live in Utah.” And when the listener says, “Yeah but you can’t get a beer there and women can’t vote and contraceptives are illegal…” or whatever, instead of going into some lifestyle-defense pitch, just say, “Yeah, you’d hate it. You should stay in New Jersey.”

Coloradans use this “ski and golf” line as well, but there it’s even sillier, because any day that includes both golf and skiing along the Colorado Front Range also involves at least 3 hours in the car…

In the Pac-Northwest, they go on about the beauty of the place and all the activities and how hip the cities are etc., etc. But sometime during the standard Northwest-Lifestyle-Testimonial, the victim- woops I mean listener- inevitably asks, “Yeah but doesn’t it rain a lot?” to which the testifier always says with a big smile, “Oh that’s OK- you get used to it! We just do stuff in the rain!”

I’ve heard that “do stuff in the rain!” line at least a dozen times from Pac-Northwest evangelists and I think it’s ridiculous. Doing stuff in the rain sucks. It sucks to bike in the rain, it sucks to ski in the rain, it sucks to run in the rain. The Pac-Northwest has a lot of good things going for it, but the copious rains is not one of them.

Seriously, it’s ridiculous. What if I told you I lived in this great place with beautiful scenery, nice people and low cost of living? And I was going on and on about how great it was. But you happened to know that the trails in this place were almost always covered in manure. And so after I’d been going on for a while you asked, “Yeah but, isn’t there a lot of manure on the trails?” And I smiled and said, “Oh that’s OK- you get used to it! We just do stuff in the cowshit!”

And snow? You don’t need disk brakes for snow- you need skis. Yeah, yeah, I know all about snow-biking. But it always seemed a bit like skiing sand dunes- fun to do as a novelty, but at some point a receding season is like an ex-spouse or your old Steve Miller* records- you need to let go…

*OK since I just made fun of Northwesterners and snow-bikers, I’ll share another embarrassing tidbit about myself. My iPod contains- and I frequently still listen to- Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits 1974 – 1978. Wait it gets worse- I just bought it like 2 years ago. We were having a neighborhood garage sale, and Hunky Neighbor put out a table of old CDs and I picked it up for a buck. I only play it alone, in the car, with the windows rolled up so I can sing along. One of my Life Goals is to figure out how to sing along to “Rock’n Me” without having to change octaves every time the chorus comes around.

Yeah so anyway, the weakness of V-brakes isn’t any of those things. Give up? Ok I’ll tell you- it’s Maple leaves.

Maples leaves get caught up in V-brakes and stick there. And even though they don’t slow you down, they make that wildly-irritating card-in-spokes noise* that makes you think they’re slowing you down. I say Maple specifically because here in Utah when you ride over a trail covered with fallen leaves, those leaves are almost always Aspen, Maple or Oak. Aspen leaves never get caught- they’re too small and round. Oak leaves do sometimes, but Maple leaves are the worst. Their broad, lobed form gives them maximum spread to lock into a V-brake, and their thin-ness means that when dry they easily get punctured by a tire lug, allowing them to be picked up and spun over and around into the brake.

*You can actually hear that “wildly-irritating card-in-spokes” noise in this video.

Side Note: Oak leaves don’t seem to get picked up as often, and I’m convinced it’s because they’re tougher, thicker, and so don’t get lug-punctured as easily as Maple leaves. Also they don’t seem to drop their leaves all at once as Maples do, and so the trails generally aren’t “carpeted” with them as they often are with Maple leaves. But when they do get stuck in a V-brake, they don’t disintegrate, meaning that without manual intervention, they never come out.

As you might expect, mtn biking as often as I do, I think a lot about leaves this time of year. Whereas during the summer I tend to categorize trail types based on their form, grade and surface (smooth descent, fast singletrack, technical ledgy climb, etc.) in the late Fall I find myself categorizing them based on fallen leaf-type: Aspen, Maple, Oak or PLT.

Side Note: If you look pay attention, you’ll notice that even “evergreen” PLTs drop needles in the Fall. Practically no tree is really “evergreen”; they just don’t lose all of their needles/leaves every year, which is which why botanists use the term “persistent” rather than “evergreen” to describe the foliage of things like Pines and Curlleaf Mountain Mahogany and Live Oaks.

Back East BTW, I remember the White Pines of Maine would drop a beautiful carpet of golden needles every Fall. I haven’t seen it probably 30 years, but I remember the floor of the pine grove around our cabin practically lit up with fresh needles.

So anyway, there are a lot of leaves on the trails- well on the ground, really- right now. What happens to all of those leaves?

On trails of course, they often get ground up by feet, paws, hooves or tires, but that’s not a real answer; you’re still stuck with lots of leaf bits. No, the real answer is that they get decomposed by an army of microscopic and/or creepy-crawly things, including earthworms, nematodes, insects, protozoans, snails and various bacteria, who eventually break down the dead leaves and other organic matter into soil components that can be used by plants. But the super-soldiers of this army, who do the lion’s share of the work of decomposition worldwide, are Fungi.

Throughout this blog we’ve bumped into Fungi from time to time. We saw them when we talked about the symbiotic relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and tree roots, and we visited them again when we talked about lichens.(pic below right, on oak bark. Species = Xanthomendoza montana.*) Except for mushrooms and lichens, you don’t see Fungi all that much, and that makes them easy to put out of mind. But that’s a shame, because Fungi are the connecting glue of the living world. Something like 70,000 species of fungi have been described, but this is thought to be only a fraction of all species.

*Thanks to Larry St. Clair of Brigham Young University for the ID. Larry has helped me out multiple times, he’s an awesome guy, and his lichen guide is the best around.

Even when you do see them, Fungi are hard to get your head around for many reasons. But for me the 3 most important reasons, and the things that really distinguish them conceptually from the other 2 great kingdoms of multicellular life- plants and animals- are these: Fungi don’t have bodies, they don’t have individuals, and they have no real distinction between movement and growth.

Quick Reminder/Tutorial: Fungi are eukaryotic, like plants and animals. I explained the difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic creatures (like bacteria) back in the lichen post. Short version: eukaryotic cells have a standard, complex structure including a well-defined nucleus, a membrane(s) and organelles. In addition to the 3 multicellular kingdoms, there are a number of unicellular eukaryotic kingdoms, including protozoans, algae and slime molds (which can sometimes be multicellular as well.)

No Body

When you see a mushroom, you’re not seeing the body of a fungus, but rather a specialized reproductive organ (which we’ll come back to in a moment.) The “body” of a fungus, usually called the mycelium, is a network of growing threads or filaments, called hyphae (pic right), that usually spreads and grows throughout something else, such as soil, wood or flesh. This lack of- or rather flexibility of- body lends itself to all kinds of intimate relationships with other living things. These can be symbiotic, mutualistic relationships, such as we saw with mycorrhizal fungi and lichens, or they may be parasitic, such as we saw with Dutch Elm disease. Closer to home, examples of parasitic fungi include Athlete’s Foot and yeast* infections (Candidiasis.)

*Yeasts are (usually) unicellular fungi.

These hyphae may seem inconsequential, but they’re practically everywhere; the total mass of fungi has been estimated at nearly ½ a ton per acre across all vegetated land on the planet. You can dig up or scratch out bits, pieces and strands of hyphae, but you can’t really pick up and separate a real, complete “fungal body” distinct from the substrate (soil, wood, flesh, etc.) within which it lives. This is the first mind-bender of Fungi: it has life, it has mass, it has significant physical presence and scale- but it has no body*.

*Strictly speaking, I suppose one could argue that some specific fungi do have what could conceivably be considered bodies. Arguably, the fungal partner constitutes the “body” of lichens, and I have no idea about such past characters as the prehistoric maybe-fungus, Prototaxites.

No Self

Mycelia in many ways behave in manners we would associate with individuals- they eat and grow and mate- but probably “colony” is a better analogy; if you divide a given hyphal network in 2, then it’s 2 separate mycelia. This confusion of “what comprises an individual…” entered the public consciousness in the early 1990’s, when the “Humungus Fungus” was announced in Southern Michigan. This fungus, which was an “incidence” of Armillaria bulbosa (“Honey Fungus”), was estimated to cover >30 acres and weigh something like 10 tons. But it wasn’t really clear whether the Humungus Fungus should be considered a single living thing, a colony of living things, or a number of separate, extremely similar (possibly identical) things. In a sense a mycelia is analogous to a clonal stand of Oak or Aspen, but unlike those organisms, which have clear, individual components (i.e. trees), there really is no “fungal individual.” This is the second mind-bender of Fungi: complex, highly-evolved multicellularity without any real concept of an individual.

Growth and Movement

The third mind-bender for me about fungi is the lack of any real distinction between growth and movement. Animals grow and they move; the distinction is easy. Plants grow, and-for the most part- don’t move. But Fungi just grow. Or do they move? It’s not quite clear.

Side Note: You can of course define plant growth as “movement” if you want to be more liberal in your use of the term. Plants grow toward light, and vines and creepers certainly achieve something that looks a lot like movement through their growth. And long-lived clonal stands of Oak or Aspen might well migrate along, up or down a hillside to the extent that after a 1,000 years or so the stand occupies a completely different spot than it did originally.

Fungi, like animals, don’t make their own food. They eat other stuff. And like animals*, they don’t wait for it to come to them- they go it. But they go to it by growing to it, and onto it, and around it and through it. This high surface-to-volume ratio makes fungi highly efficient at absorbing nutrients (eating.) While we’re on the topic of eating, you might think that fungi go through a leaf-litter eating/clean-up frenzy every Fall. But Fungi are busy whenever conditions- specifically moisture and temperature- permit. Most North American forests have many years worth of un-decomposed organic debris on/in the ground, ranging from around 10 years worth in Eastern deciduous forests to something like a 350 year backlog in Subarctic Boreal forest, where decomposition is limited by extreme cold and too much moisture**.

*Most animals anyway. Anemones are an obvious exception, and I suppose you could even argue the case for something like an Ant Lion or many spiders.

**Because frozen soil inhibits runoff.

Fungal Love

Aaah so what, you may be thinking. They still sound like plants of a sort. But if you’re not yet convinced that fungi are different- and BTW they’re more closely-related to us than they are to trees- then consider how they mate.

Plants mate at a distance, through mechanisms like flowers, pollen and such. Animals mate by physical contact*, achieved by going to each other. Like animals, fungi also mate** by going to each other. Same species mycelia connect and exchange genetic material by linking hyphae; they grow to each other. The mechanical specifics of these connections are probably as widely varied (or more so) as those in the animal world.

The genetics also vary; though sexually-reproducing species generally practice meiosis, many (most?) fungi use an alternating-generation haploid-diploid reproductive schema, similar to what we’ve seen with mosses, ferns and lycophytyes.

*Oh sure, there’s a bit of distance in the “last mile” contact in the mating of lots of animals, such as sperm transmission in fish or scorpions, but by and large these creatures are still going to each other.

**Sexual species that is. Many fungi reproduce asexually.

But that’s the simple part. The really mind-bending thing about fungal reproduction is a completely different concept of gender. Fungi species are either homothallic or heterothallic. Homothallic fungi can mate with any other fungus of the same species they bump into. But a heterothallic fungus can only mate with another fungus of the same species, but of different mating type. And here’s the thing- many species have more than 2 mating types- like 3, 4 or even more! As if that weren’t confusing enough, some species appear to switch mating types as they grow.

Fungi don’t come above ground- or rather “out of substrate”- to mate, but they do so to propagate. When the 2 hyphae meet they grow a specialized organ, the mushroom (one of the few cases where fungi grow real organs), that serves to disseminate spores via wind or water.

So. They’re alive; they’re complex and evolutionarily advanced. They’re everywhere, and they serve as the linchpin of decomposition and material re-use that make the living world work. But they have no bodies, no individuals, no “self”, and somehow move without, well, moving. Fungi remind me of something.

The True Nature of The Force

Like most geeky teens who grew up in the late 70’s and early 80’s, I loved Star Wars. I loved the action, the drama and the special effects, but most of all I loved the idea of The Force. An all-pervasive bodiless-yet vital thing, that connected all life, transcended any concept of individual, and to which we were somehow linked. I wanted, really wanted, the Force to somehow be real- not because I wanted to “worship” or gain spiritual guidance from anything, but simply for the sense of connection and commonality between all living things it hinted at. And I guess, deep-down, I still do.

As a skeptic, non-theist and general un-believer, I don’t believe in spirits or ghosts or “Forces”, and so The Force always remained a nice story, but nothing more. Until now. Because now I realize that there is a Force, that is real, that pervades and permeates the entire Living World and, in the big picture- bigger than me or my little worries or my short life- links us all together, to each other and to all other living things, through birth, growth, consumption, life and eventually death. That Force is Fungi.

When I roll across rotting leaves, The Force is with me.