Views from the Valley - Alder, Mountain Ash, Sumac, Chicory and more...

I am really having a great time learning more and more about the flora of the valley here behind my home in Toronto, Ontario. It's almost like I am beginning to reach a sort of critical mass where the various reading I have done over the past year are coming together and I am making more and more sense of it all. It's a great feeling - getting to know my natural environment.


This is an amazing tree - the Speckled Alder (Alnus incana subsp. rugosa) - it is related to the birch tree. The catkins are edible and are supposed to taste awful (probably because of the salicylic acid). The image above is of the female catkins that have dried out.


The image above is of female alder catkins that are still unripened - I suspect that these are the edible form - survival food containing proteins and starches. I found it especially interesting to learn that the tree roots contain nitrogenous nodules (similar to how clover plants do, etc...), and these are about the size of a potato. I hope you found it especially interesting too... :-)


Common chicory (Cichorium intybus) is in abundance - in fact they line the highways and roads near my home. It is also known as Coffeeweed, because the roots can be roasted, ground up and used either as a coffee substitute or additive to extend your coffee supplies.


The blue flowers are radiant.


Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) is a bright yellow flowering weed - not to be confused with the infamous Ragweed. In Germany, it is touted as a herbal treatment for urinary tract disorders (inflammation, infection, etc...) and as a way to treat, and even prevent kidney stones. The preparation is a tea made from the leaves (in the picture above, you can see the smooth, elongated green leaves - that look a little like willow leaves).

I have had kidney stones and they hurt. If I feel one coming on, I'll drink a little Goldenrod tea... in addition to visiting my family doctor.


Good old Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina). Next time you see one, grab a few of the tiny flowers on a bud like above, and put them on your tongue... there is an intense, acidic, ascorbic acid kind of flavouring to it - as though you have put lemonade powder in your mouth. And indeed - it contains ascorbic acid. A cold-steeped drink, filtered through cloth to remove the irritating fuzz tastes really nice. I've made a pleasant drink from this flower in a Nalgene bottle before. Quite nice - and great if you are suffering from Scurvy... By the way, if you use hot or boiling water, bitter tannins will leach out and make for an unpleasant drink.


The Grape vine tendrils reach out and capture everything that they can reach.


American Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) grows rampant in these parts. We have one at the bottom of our backyard, they line the parking lot at my work and are scattered amongst the valley. The bright berries sit on the trees for a long time, because the quality of the berries is poor (low in protein and lipids) - and birds preferentially eat other berries first... I ate a berry the other day on my way into the car after work - and it left an awful, bitter quinine-like (combined with subtle overtones of camphor and naphtha gas) flavour in my mouth for nearly 15 minutes. But they aren't toxic - just nasty.


One of my favourites is the European Rowan or Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia). The dense clusters of fruit above are also considered poor-quality fruit for birds and animals - and I understand why (other than it having low protein and lipid yields)... it doesn't taste very nice, but nothing as nasty as the Winterberry. Apparently shortly after the first frosts, the berries develop a sweet flavour. We'll see.


When I was a kid, we had one of these growing on the front lawn. It had grey, smooth bark and I loved to climb it. I would grab handfuls of the berries and throw them about.


At the time, my Dad worked at Rowntrees (chocolates) and I thought that the tree was a Rowntree-tree. It made sense at the time, but I often wondered how it came to be that we had a tree named after my Dad's work in the front yard.


I'm not sure what this pink clustered flower is - anyone?


Well - that's it for tonight - more soon!

Cheers,

Mungo

Ventures in the Valley

Early on Saturday morning I wandered down into the valley. I made my way down to the river which was swollen with all of the rain that we have had over the past few days. The sound of the rushing waters made it through the woods up to nearly the entrance to the valley, which is unusual.


Along the way I saw a lot of grape vines extending their tendrils and growing into the plants around them. While making some cordage with grape vines earlier this year, I discovered that the growing tips of the vines have a sweet, tart, grape flavour to them. So I snipped off the tips that you see in the photo below and nibbled on them. It would take a lot to fill my belly though.


The flowers above below to the Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), or Bouncing Bet - which is a delicate, easily broken plant. The stalk is full of liquid and it gets its name from the fact that the leaves contain saponins. Wikipedia has an entry that describes these compounds:
Saponins dissolve in water to form a stable soapy froth; this is thought to be due to their amphiphilic nature. The word sapon means 'soap', referring to the permanent froth saponins make on being mixed with water. Soapwort, Saponaria officinalis also called "Bouncing Bet" in the carnation family is the quintessential saponin-producing plant. The plant contains mildly poisonous saponins, as reflected in the genus name from the Latin sapo, meaning soap.
So all you need to do if you need a quick wash etc... is grab a handful of the leaves, squish them up with some water and you will have some soapy water with which to scrub. Nature sure seems to provide...


The valley is full of snails. Boil up a few of these for a rather chewy and dull meal if you'd like. I'll stick with sandwiches.


The grape vine leaves seem to fill in every spot to take advantage of the light filtering down through the trees.


The very young leaves can be nibbled, and cooked up as greens.


I sat for a while on the river bank.


I listened to the water rush by and wondered where it was all coming from, and what it had passed and witnessed along the way.


And then a peculiar mass of shapes in the distance snapped me out of my reverie - it appeared to be a mass of eggs. On closer examination, it was a mass of Golf Ball eggs.


A hole in the ravine bluff above me looks like it was dug by an animal. Perhaps dug by whatever laid those Golf Ball eggs.


I sat for a little longer but the heat and the humidity began to get to me.


A week or so ago I had made a small fire down in the valley, but it was too hot for that.



So I struck out again onto the path leading out of the valley again and made my way home.

Cheers,

Mungo

The Common Inkcap (Coprinopsis atramentaria) or Inky Cap Mushroom

This afternoon Spring and her mum and I went to Eaton's Center in downtown Toronto. They wandered off looking at clothes and shoes and eyeglasses and I plopped myself down in a comfortable chair with a handful of books. I picked up a Peterson's Guide to Eastern North American Forests, a couple of books on Black Bears and most importantly - Roger Philip's Mushroom manual: "Mushrooms: A Comprehensive Guide with Over 1,2500 Detailed Photograph".

After a few minutes I settled on the Mushroom manual and pored through it cover to cover. I'd have bought it, but it was $36.00 and that was a little much... maybe for Christmas. Or Thanksgiving. Or the coming Civic Holiday in August (in case Spring is reading this)...



Once we got home I snuffled about in the back garden and located a couple of mushrooms that were growing in the grass, just above a buried, rotting 4x4 chunk of wood that has likely been their since the house was built in 1956.



Knowing that Roger Philip's Mushroom manual has a companion web site, I brought the mushrooms inside (carefully not disturbing them to make identification easier), cut the smaller one in half, lengthwise along the stem and through the cap, and lay half of that on a white sheet of paper to collect any spores that would have dropped and examined it all carefully under a light.


Image Source

The mushroom smelled very little, if anything kind of like a typical market-bought button mushroom, but maybe a little more sour. The cap was conical or bell-shaped, and brown to beige in colouration. The stem was white, hollow and fractured easily when pressed between my fingers. I didn't see a ring around the stem, but there did appear to be a small flap that might have been the remnants of a ring (volva or veil) there.

Using a mushroom-identification quiz found on the Roger's Mushroom site, I narrowed it down to 23 posssibilities. Carefully considering each one, I finally isolated the 'Common Inkcap', also known as Tippler's Bane (for reasons I shall explain shortly).

Below are a few interesting things I discovered from reading various sources:
  • It is edible.
  • It is poisonous if consumed with alcohol, or if alcohol consumed within a few days of eating the mushroom. This is the reason it is known as Tippler's (someone who drinks) Bane... It won't kill you, but basically gives you the symptoms of a horrific hangover.
  • When the caps produce enzymes that cause the material to auto-digest (mushrooms do this to release any remaining spores caught in the gills or pore beneath their caps), it is called 'deliquescence'. This deliquesced cap material is black, and when boiled up with a little water and cloves, makes a great, long-lasting black drawing ink.
After cooking up a cupful of these Common Inkcaps in butter, with salt and pepper, it would be wise to avoid a glass of wine for a week or so:
"The poisonous effects of C. atramentaria are caused by a molecule named coprine, or N5-1-hydroxycyclopropyl-L-glutamine (shown below), which is metabolized to 1-aminocyclopropanol. This latter compound then inhibits the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, which normally oxidizes alcohol (i.e., ethanol) into acetaldehyde.
After alcohol intake under the influence of coprine, the concentration of acetaldehyde in the blood may be 5 to 10 times higher than that found during metabolism of the same amount of alcohol alone. As acetaldehyde is one of the major causes of the symptoms of a "hangover" this produces immediate and severe negative reaction to alcohol intake. Some 5-10 minutes after alcohol intake, the unfortunate victim may experience the effects of a severe hangover for a period of 30 minutes up to several hours. Symptoms include flushing of the skin, accelerated heart rate, shortness of breath, nausea, and vomiting. The ill effects of coprine may be felt if alcohol is consumed for up to several days after eating the mushroom. The biochemical mechanism of action of coprine and the resultant symptoms are similar to the drug disulfiram, used to treat chronic alcoholism."
I also recognized a few mushrooms that I've seen down in the valley and in other places I've wandered, in the Roger Philip's Mushroom book. Can't wait to learn more about mushrooms!

Cheers,

Mungo

Going Down into the Valley

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
Yesterday morning, bright and early, I decided to throw on a back-pack and head on down into the valley behind the house.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
I saw a yellow flutter in the grass and saw a couple of male American Goldfinches (Carduelis tristis) chasing insects near the ground. The one above was sitting on the stalk of a weed, a good 2 inches above the ground.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
It was an overcast day and the clouds were threatening rain. The weather service was threatening SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS. I brought an umbrella in my pack just in case, but never ended up needing it.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
The sounds of the woods increased as I got deeper down the path - birds and wind and the rushing of water.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
So much firewood around - too bad I wasn't doing some remote camping.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
There were a few mosquitos, but nothing too bothersome. The air was thick and humid and it made me sweat easily as I hiked up and down the ridges.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
A wikkiup has stood for at least the last couple of years along the first valley leading deeper into the woods. It is hidden up the slope, but a couple of sheets and some plastic reveal its presence. I don't think it is occupied, and I haven't gotten closer to see - but it is an ingenious shelter: well hidden, strong and has a great potential for weather proofing and could stand up to the winters here.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
Closer to the ground, the rain has managed to wash away most - but not all - fungi and mushrooms.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
Green is all about and the air smells fresh.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
Through gaps in the overcast clouds, pockets of sunlight appear and brighten up the forest.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
Gnarled trees remind me of this area's past - orchards and rough terrain.

Mungo Says Bah! Hiking, Camping, Bushcraft, Nature
The heat and the diffuse light of the morning made me tired and decided to head home - but first I wandered onto the pebble and sand beach that lays alongside the river.



A dark swirling mass in the creek attracted my attention - I got closer and filmed it and realized it was a school of minnows, swarming about in the sunlight. It was then time to hike out again.

Cheers,

Mungo

This Weekend in the Valley - Burdock Intentions

So I'm thinking that this weekend I'll poke around the valley a bit more and try to make my way up along the river farther than I've been before. The weather has been hot and muggy around Toronto, and there might be rain this weekend. But I don't mind - I like the rain.

My plan is to find a big Burdock plant and dig up the root and give it a try... and see what else new and different I can find in the valley.

And that's all I have for the moment!

Cheers,

Mungo

Into the Valley - A Familiar Refrain

I went into the valley yesterday and wandered a little further along the path than I've been before.

Mungo Says Bah!
There is a terrific view, high up on a bluff over the river. If I had taken this photo a minute later, I would have caught a few shots of a heron making its way along the course, twenty feet below me and twenty feet above the river. It looked like a pterodactyl.

Mungo Says Bah!
I'll explore this region more in the coming weeks - there is a lot more of it.

Mungo Says Bah!
After slipping and sliding my way down a clay and mud embankment to take some photos, I looked carefully at the debris that had been exposed by the rains.

Mungo Says Bah!
Perfectly exposed, and still attached by a finger of mud was this little fossil of a bivalve. Beside it was some organic matter, it felt like a piece of charcoal.

Mungo Says Bah!
A little higher up, I found this coin - corroded and pitted, I can't figure out what it is. It was about 3 feet down, so I am guessing it is from the 1800s.

Mungo Says Bah!
In the forest below, I sat and had a hot chocolate with some biscuits and sat in my folding, legless camping chair, and listened to the birds.

Mungo Says Bah!
Next time I am going to bring some heavy-duty garbage bags down with me. An accumulation of plastic and beer bottles and mosquito-repellent candles and general garbage is making it a mess. I have no words.

Mungo Says Bah!
The woods are overgrown and thick and green.

Mungo Says Bah!
This berry reminded me of a gooseberry, but I think it is not.

Mungo Says Bah!
I had a quick fire started with my ferrocerium rod and a small handful of roughed up birch bark. It was hot out, and the wood was dry and fire was without smoke.

Mungo Says Bah!
Along the way I found little tiny fungi, but the rains from over the last few nights seem to have melted most of them away.

Mungo Says Bah!
This one was small, but tough, and resisted my attempts to peel it away from the fallen birch branch.

Mungo Says Bah!
These bright berries are white inside, with a seed. They taste dry like a partridge berry. I spat out the small piece I tasted immediately though. Just to be safe.

Mungo Says Bah!
I left these ripening blackberries alone for another day.

Mungo Says Bah!
There are so many of these Daddy Long Legs spiders on the forest floor, looking for a bite to eat.

Mungo Says Bah!
Burdocks are ripening.

Mungo Says Bah!
These blackberries ended up in my mouth - I picked a large handful of them. No black bears about, luckily. After all, I'm still in Toronto.

Mungo Says Bah!
I think this is a wild rose.

Mungo Says Bah!
The plantains are huge - each leaf is larger than my hand.

Mungo Says Bah!
Each time I go down into the valley, I find something new. I could spend every afternoon there.

Cheers,

Mungo

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