Earth Almanac: January/February 2008

Snow Storm

Along all four major flyways snow geese are wafting south on the north wind, sometimes moving at 50 miles per hour and flying so high you can see only their V formations faintly penciled on azure. Yet through the still, cold air their whouk, whouk, whouk calls carry so well that the flock seems to be at tree-top level. If you’re near a coastal marsh, wet grass-

land, or farm field, you may see them tumble down in what is aptly described as the “falling-leaf maneuver.” For a few short weeks they’ll gorge on berries, sedges, grasses, rushes, and cultivated grains. Then, sometimes as early as February, they’ll start back to their Arctic and subarctic breeding grounds. Both the lesser and greater snow goose have made stunning recoveries since 1916, when market gunners had depleted them to the point that even sport hunting was outlawed. Pushed inland by coastal wetland destruction and pulled by abundant agricultural grains, the mid-continent population of lesser snow geese has exploded to the point that it is destroying its own summer habitat by denuding the tundra of vegetation. Hunting, which resumed in 1975, has had little effect even though managers have waived traditional prohibitions against using electronic calls and shotguns that hold more than three shells.

Velvet Foot

Most mushrooms you encounter in the winter woods across the northern states are the “bracket fungi,” the pretty trophies that don’t rot and on which you may break your teeth if you try to eat them. But one delicious, soft-bodied mushroom survives—in fact, thrives—in colder temperatures. This is the velvet foot, or winter, mushroom, and like the bracket fungi, you’re apt to find it above the snow line because it grows only on wood, especially elm, willow, and poplar. The velvet foot usually fruits in clusters. Its stems are fuzzy and brown, its caps sticky. If there’s a ring around the stem, be careful, because you’ve probably found the deadly galerina instead of the velvet foot. Other fungi have climbed no higher than the stratosphere and only as spores, but the velvet foot has fruited in earth orbit. In 1993 it was cultured as part of the joint Space Shuttle Columbia/Spacelab D-2 mission. The velvet foot typically bends its stem near the base, then grows straight up so that it can drop its spores cleanly. In space, however, it grew in random directions, proving that it is oriented by gravity.