WiseAcre Gardens

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Prunella vulgaris

This is a Eurasian alien often found in lawns. It is a member of the mint family and tea / gargle made from the leaves is/was used to treat sore throats and mouth sores. In China a tea made from the flowering plant was considered ‘cooling’ and used to treat ‘heat’ in the liver. The plant contains the diuretic compound ursolic acid and is used to treat kidney aliments.

I don’t know about heated liver except it’s best cooked with onions. And as far as a diuretic goes - nothing beats a pot of strong coffee.

And now for something completely different.

Lichen Wallpaper

What do you get when you mix algae and fungus? I got another desktop background

More? How about tacking up a cat on your desktop?

I couldn’t resist posting this photo of my daughter’ssqueeze cat. Poor Mavie was ‘raised by’ my youngest daughter when both were toddlers. She used to take poor Mavie to bed and lay on him so he couldn’t escape. Now he isn’t happy until someone gives him a big squeeze.

If you think he’s cute enough the image is linked to a larger image suitable to use as desktop wallpaper.  You can’t squeeze him but he’ll be happy enough as your cat background.

Eupatorium rugosum

Snakeroot is a native woodland wildflower in the same family as Boneset and Joe Pye Weed. They bloom in late summer - fall and have flat topped flower clusters. The clusters look fuzzy until you get a close up view.

I gave myself trouble when identifying this plant. Every field guide and on-line photo showed the fuzzy look and I had something that looked quite different in a macro. I could match the leaves, the fuzzy look but the macro photo just made me wonder.

This plant is poisonousand is known to cause ‘milk sickness’. When eaten by cows the toxins are passed to the cow’s milk. Consuming such milk causes weakness and nausea. Death may occur.

It has been reported fatal to horses.

Native Americans made a poultice from White Snakeroot used to treat snakebites.

As you can see - there’s nothing fuzzy looking about the flowers when you have a bee’s eye view.

Being able to identify most of the wildflowers I photograph is a big part of the enjoyment I receive from that obsession. I can’t say the same for mushrooms though.  For me attempting to identify a mushroom only leads to Fungus Frustration. So I figured I’d relax a little and just enjoy the photos.

One of my problems in identifying mushrooms is the difference even age makes in their appearance. As if there wasn’t enough variation already in ‘form’ and ‘color’ to confuse me. This yellow fellow must be the same species as the orange ones to follow but I’ll never know for sure.  Just because it was growing inches away from the others doesn’t mean anything, does it?

I found these mushrooms in a moist Cedar woods. The ‘colony’ covered a fairly large area with mushrooms scattered over a couple hundred square feet. I think the spot was a decayed and nearly composted brush pile of cedar limbs from fence post harvesting at least a generation ago. I could feel the ‘give’ beneath my feet when on the mound most of the shrooms were located.

The ‘give’ to the ground let me get this photo. I just pressed the camera down into the moss. Looking at the photo I can remember using the flash. It wasn’t planned. I was just playing with my new camera.

These images are available to use as Desktop Wallpaper / Background images. The ‘thumbnails’ are linked to 1024 x 768 size image.