By Ted Williams
After the first heavy rains of fall, dead trees and roots east of the Rockies suddenly bloom with clusters of spectacular fungi. The bright orange-and-yellow jack-o'-lantern mushroom, which may have a stalk eight inches high and
By Ted Williams
After the first heavy rains of fall, dead trees and roots east of the Rockies suddenly bloom with clusters of spectacular fungi. The bright orange-and-yellow jack-o'-lantern mushroom, which may have a stalk eight inches high and a cap eight inches in diameter, is bioluminescent. Pick a few, then take them into a darkened room and note the eerie green light glowing around the gills. It's caused by waste products from the myceliumthat vegetative part of the fungus reaching, in a mass of threads, deep into the decaying wood. Also note the delicious fragrance, and remember that odor is an especially unreliable test for edibility. If you eat a jack-o'-lantern mushroom, you won't dieyou'll just wish you would. But this fungus also is a potential lifesaver, yielding a substance recently formulated by researchers into a powerful anticancer drug.
Unless you have a powerful underwater flashlight, a wet suit, and scuba gear, don't bother looking for spawning lake trout, because you won't find them. But on autumn nights, when bare hardwoods sigh and black clouds race south, it's a good feeling to know these enormous fish are out there perpetuating their kind. Now in northern lakes across the continent, they ease up from great depths to deposit eggs and milt on submerged reefs. Lake trout, which can reach 100 pounds, are not true trout but descendants of an Arctic char progenitor landlocked by ancient glaciers. Unlike other salmonids, they are not adaptable to salt water. Lake trout were once virtually extirpated from the upper Great Lakes by alien sea lampreys, but a half-century of chemical lamprey control has restored self-sustaining populations in Lake Superior, and robust hatchery-maintained populations are present in the other Great Lakes. The lake trout of New York’s Finger Lakes apparently evolved with naturally landlocked sea lampreys and, perhaps as a result, are relativel