Mists and Dark Mirrors

It's a misty, foggy day here on Cape Cod, with the remnants of Hurricane Jose brushing along the shore and continuing to drape the Cape with windy sheets of rain.  Today, not as much wind, not as much rain, but weather still unpredictable, so a short walk is better than a long one.  Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail is a viable choice:  only .8 of a mile, it offers limited exposure to a downturn in the weather.

The misty weather today suits fairy tale landscape of this trail, with its mossy hillocks and dark mirroring pools.

It's elfin, is what it is.  I think I expect to see tiny nimble creatures, all elbows and knees, wearing tiny cone-shaped caps, retreating shyly behind a mossy tree or hummock as I approach.

 What or who lives in here, do you think?

The low growing ground cover offers exquisite combinations of color and texture:

 And the mushrooms, always the mushrooms, always and everywhere, in this fog draped autumn woods at the edge of the ocean.

Today on Cape Cod: Mushrooms and Mosses

 We're waiting for Hurricane Jose here on Cape Cod, but he hasn't arrived yet.  So meanwhile, we took a ride out to Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail in the Cape Cod National Seashore.

 A trail through pitch pine woods leads to a boardwalk passing over silent black pools, moss, and mushrooms.

So many mushrooms! 

On the part of the trail that was not a boardwalk, Joe and I saw a young man, off the path,  rummaging through the woods, stooping every now and then, plastic shopping bag in hand. I asked what he was getting.

"Mushrooms." 

"Really?  Do you know what you're doing?"

"No, but I'm going to take these home and look at a book."

"See you tomorrow!"

He was far braver than I would ever be toward wild mushrooms.

Instead of picking them, Joe admired them photographically.  Later, looking at their photos, book in hand, I can't identify most of them.

Like this sexy little number:

Or this one.  Is the one above an unopened version of the one below? Or are they two different kinds?

 And how about this frilly little number?  You can't make this stuff up.

I don't know the names of any of them.

But that doesn't stop me from admiring them.

 

OK, these I know.  Indian pipes.  But I've never seen this pink relative until today:

I looked them up, and it turns out that these rosy looking plants are pinesaps, not Indian pipes. Indian pipes as I know them are white.  Those are growing here too.

It turns out that both pinesaps and Indian pipes are monotropa, flowering plants that do not manufacture food by photosynthesis, but get it from rotting matter in the soil.  They're strange, waxy-looking things.  But I love the coral glow of the pinesaps.

I know more flowers than I do mushrooms.  Like this one.  I recognize this one because it so resembles the centaurea that people grow in their gardens, and sure enough, it too is a centaurea, a wild version called centaurea maculosa.  The common name is spotted knapweed, which in no way describes them, except maybe in Old or Middle English:

Pretty, aren't they?  Spotted knapweed indeed.

Meanwhile, no hurricane here, not yet.  Maybe we'll go back out there for another look.