The morning after I last emailed, I once again hiked near Sandia Crest. I ran into a group of three other hikers and we began chatting about this year’s amazing crop of wildflowers and mushrooms. After a couple of minutes, one of them turned his back to me and said, “Look in my pack.”1 There was a mushroom in it, about 2 inches wide by 3 inches high, and I immediately realized it was a small version of the giant mushroom I wrote about last week. He told me it was a HawkWing mushroom and that HawkWings are edible (you can learn more about them by clicking here).
Since I remembered exactly where the giant mushroom lived, I made a detour on the way back to my car. You can see that it’s now a bit worse for the wear, or maybe it’s just quite ripe. I wasn’t nearly as scared of it as I was two weeks ago, so I dropped my standard measuring tool on it to show scale.2
Similarly, the day after I sent the email about composites, I came across a coneflower that showed the tiny flowers in its center much better than the example I’d originally used.
I’m fascinated by flower composites and will likely have more to say about them at some point. For now, though, I’ll end by showing you the center of a gorgeous sunflower, with its own ring of tiny flowers.
This might sound strange to those of you who don’t hike. It’s actually pretty classic hiker behavior.
It was windy and the dollar bill kept blowing away when I laid it flat on the mushroom. I had to fold it a bit so it would stay put.