2/26 - plums, butter, and escargot

What's ten minutes?

I had errands to run, but had about ten minutes, so I thought I'd head down the trail a little. Just for clarity, "the trail" is not far from home, and heads down into the Renton Natural Area, above Maplewood. It's good for a three mile walk or so if I have a free hour. Today, however was just a little foray.

Indian Plum

Indian Plum is a plant that was only recently pointed out to me on a walk. All of a sudden, it's everywhere! It's not even March, and it is in bloom, and fairly dense at the start of the trail. The fruit is edible according to the interwebs, so I'll be watching it closely!

It has been raining off and on lately, but wasn't today, so I brushed some of the leaf litter around, to see if I might come across some insects or some other surprise.

Some other surprise

Beaded Lancetooth 

One of the first opportunities to demonstrate how easy I would be with myself on this list. This is clearly not a living thing, but the shell belonged to a pretty specific creature. Thankfully, the Oregon Department of Agriculture has a nice little guide to slugs and snails that helped me identify this mollusk.  The shell was wide, rather than long, without much patterning. There were the ridges that give it the beady texture, and it came in at 11 mm.

Apparently, it is one of our smallest snails, and a native to the area. It is carnivorous, and eats other slugs and snails. Slugs are absolutely everywhere after it rains, but I always feel like it's infrequent that I come across snails! Fun find, and I'm glad that I poked around in the leaves a little.

I can't believe it's not butter

Witches' Butter

Okay, mushrooms can be tricky, but this one seemed like an easy identification after a little searching. Gooby jelly-like fungus growing on a fallen log - it's called "Witches' butter" among other nicknames. Not toxic, but not notably delicious. Nonetheless, it may be of interest in the world of biopharmaceuticals. The genus tremella  are fungi that produce some molecules that may have cancer-fighting abilities, among other positive properties.

So there ya go. A ten minute walk can turn into an hour of research if you stop and look around you.  you've been warned good reader. . . it's early in the blog, and maybe a good time to just keep on walking.