East Side of the Island

Here are a few botanical pictures from the east side of Mallorca, where I went this last weekend. I am meeting with a botany professor tomorrow so hopefully I will get some books on the flora of the island so I can give more details about what these pictures are of.

There were tons of these tiny little palms everywhere! They are called palmitos (Chamaerops humilis) and they are native to Mallorca.

Smilax aspera ssp. balearica

Lots of beautiful Araceae leaves popping up everywhere..

Some wild rosemary...

Fruticose lichens!

There are large patches of this orange lichen all over the place at the beach called Cala Varquez.

This hillside will be gorgeous in the spring with all those flower stalks covered in some kind of Lilliaceous flowers

I promise the next post will be way more descriptive!

Mallorca

I have been living in Palma de Mallorca for the last 2 and a half weeks and I will continue to be living here until the end of May. Mallorca is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and thus has a Mediterranean climate.

I am living in a city of 400,000 people so the majority of the plants I have seen are cultivars planted around the city like palms, many tropical species, olive trees, and various shrubs.

I was able to go hiking about a half hour north-east of the city near a town called Valldemosa in a very rocky, semi-arid landscape. The landscape was mainly dominated by a species of 2 needle Pinus and a couple differentQuercus species. There was an abundance of lichens and mosses, and I also spotted a few ferns. Unfortunately October is not really the best time to look for flowers but there were some representatives from the Asteraceae and Scrophulariaceae (if it still existed).

Here are a few pictures of what I have been talking about:

The view of the sea from a point on my Valldemosa hike

A very cute moss I saw saw frequently with very long, silvery awns

These orange crustose-foliose epilithic lichens are everywhere in the city of Palma. Maybe a nitrogen loving species like Xanthoria?

And here is a fine specimen of Olea europaea, or olive, that was growing in Palma.

I saw plenty of cubical brown rot on my hike but no mushroom fruiting bodies to check out. Once it starts raining, hopefully that will change.

I also hope to go visit a few botany professors at the University of the Balearic Islands to borrow some books so I can start keying species out!

Prarie Creek Redwoods State Park

I went camping over the weekend at Prarie Creek Redwoods State Park and I saw many species I have seen many times and also species I have never seen before, which is always a pleasant surprise.

The thalloid liverwort Conocephalum conicum

This is an old decaying fruiting body of Phaeolus schweinitzii that I found at the base of a Douglas Fir (Psuedotsuga menziesii). This fungus is a root/butt rotter and this tree will most likely fall over in the next few years depending on how extensive the rot is.

I was ecstatic when I found this rare species! This saprotrophic, achlorophyllous flower is called Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora)because it looks somewhat like a pipe. There were 3 patches of them along the trail I was hiking.

The beautiful California Rhododendron (Rhododendron macrophyllum)

Cladonia bellidiflora

A wild hazelnut fruit

Some gorgeous orange slash rotters with a poroid hymneophore that I saw in Fern Canyon

My old friend Fomitopsis pinicola. I was very ashamed of myself because I couldn't remember the name of this VERY common slash rotter for the longest time.

Peltigera neopolydactyla

Lobaria pulmonaria

Another saprotrophic, achlorophyllous flower I have never seen before called False Pink Asparagus (Hermitomes congestum)

I decided that this is the Coast Lily (Lilium maritimum)even though there are many other species of Lilium that look quite similar

I also finally noticed for the first time that there are tons of Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) growing in the park. I had only noticed them before as scrubby little sunlight deprived trees in the Arcata Community Forest.

Giant Puffballs

So unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the giant puffballs I encountered at the elementary school by my house in Northern California, but they were huge! The biggest one was probably 20 cm in diameter. There were three total. They were growing in a grass field. After a quick internet search I found the species Calvatia gigantia. The picture looks exactly like the ones I saw but it could be something different because the webpage says they are found in central to eastern US. But it does say that they grow in meadows. Here is the picture I saw on the webpage:

Very cool!

Skunk Cabbage Trail

Yesterday I went for an 8 mile hike on the Skunk Cabbage Trail. It was an excellent hike because it covers three different habitats: Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis)and Red Alder(Alnus rubra)dominated forest to Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)forest and then finally coastal scrub. With all of these habitats, I saw a wide diversity of bryophytes, a few lichens, many mushrooms, and some beautiful angiosperms.

This snag is covered with the Icicle Moss (Isothecium myosuroides)

This is definitely some kind of Polytrichopsidan moss, maybe even a Polytrichum sp.

Redwood Sorrel(Oxalis oregana)carpets the floor of the Redwood dominated forest

Fairy Bells (Disporum smithii)

I believe that these are Turkey Tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor) but it has been a while since Forest Pathology. They had a poroid hymenophore

This picture is a bit blurry but it works. This is Bleeding Heart (Dicentra formosa)and I was excited to see it because I had never seen it on a hike before

False Lily of the Valley (Maianthemum dilatatum)

These mushrooms are probably Armillaria sp because they were on an old Alder snag. I didn't check for rhizomorphs

Rhizomnium glabrescens

Buckiella undulatum

This lichen, Peltigera membranecea, was all over the trees and on the ground, but usually growing on some moss. Looks like it is growing on Kindbergia praelonga

Frullania sp on Alder

This is the first time I have seen Conocephalum conicum in the wild even though it is really common

Plagiomnium insigne was growing very thickly on the sides of the path

This is Wild Cucumber (Marah oreganus) and unfortunately the spiky cucumber fruits are not edible. It also makes the giant taproot seen below

We stumbled upon this huge root (I have actually seen a bigger one before on the HSU campus). We cut into it and it was quite soft and actually smelled really good

Kindbergia praelonga was very abundant in the coastal and Sitka Spruce/Alder dominated areas

Disclaimer: I did some pretty lazy botanizing and identified many of these species based on other pictures and books I have without doing any keying. So there is a good chance some of the species could be wrong.