Late Afternoon Scoot Through Alley Pond Park
Alley Pond Park is the 9th largest park in New York City, just a hundred acres or so behind Central Park itself. Although it can get crowded, much of the park is hidden away--distanced from the path by thick brush and foliage. Though usually I am here with friends and family, today, I whizzed around on my scooter by myself looking from opportunities to make some observations. The weather today was partly cloudy, leaning a bit more towards cloudy. Although it was not raining (I wish it had, it would have made spotting fungi easier), the day was cool and the forest had a sort of dampness associated with it. I came with my scooter because I expected to have to travel a decent bit before I noticed something worth taking a photo of, however not more than 5 minutes into my nature "walk" a branch on the side of the path caught my eye. Fungi are key decomposers, and that is obviously what they are known for--in anticipation of finding some rot, I inspected the branch. There I found what appeared to be a mold of sorts, observation one, and a lichen that I tentatively recorded as "Trichoderma," observation number two. I was about to leave the site when I spotted another lichen, one that was particularly familiar to me, which iNaturalist labeled as "Powdery Axil-bristle Lichen."
The next few observations happened in even quicker succession. On my scooter, I noticed a huge pile of decomposing leaves underneath the shade of a thick selection of trees. I know that leaf cover creates ideal habitats for all sorts of microbial life form, as well as other bugs and critters. Hoping not to damage to much of it, I lifted up some of the leaves to find observations 4, 5, 6 and 7. These molds were far more mature and seemed to be doing better in this moist damp spot than the mold on the branch I had found laying in the open.
The next few observations, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 I found exploring one of the park's nooks, a damp area near a portion of the park where park managers store mulch. Piles of slowly decomposing vegetation often contain enough microbial activity within their heart to generate substantial amounts of heat, so I figured the area in and around this spot would be a good place to encounter some fungi. The mushrooms and molds I found are all testaments to this.
