November 1, 2012
Good morning. It’s Thursday, so it’s time for SeeMore Explorers.
A couple of weeks ago, Seymour Simon and I took a walk up to Bash Bish Falls, the highest waterfall in Massachusetts. As we were walking along the creek, heading up the trail to see the waterfall, we came upon this interesting looking thing growing on the side of a tree. I took photographs from both above and below.
It looks like a fungus, or maybe a mushroom. I decided to use the SeeMore Explorers Observation Log to try to find out what it is.
I typed the words "orange brown tree fungus spongy bottom" into Google. The first website that came up in the search was a "Mushroom and Fungus Identifier" on a website called Healthy Home Gardening. This seemed promising. I opened on the website, and started clicking through lists of photos, looking for images that resembled what I had seen.
I soon found several things that looked quite a bit like what I was looking for, and I noticed that all of them had the word "shelf" in their name. I could tell that what I was seeing was either a Shelf Mushroom or a Shelf Fungus.
Back to Google, where I typed in "shelf mushroom" and did a Google image search this time. Sure enough, I found several credible, scientific websites with photographs of shelf mushrooms that looked very much like what I had found.
What interesting things have you seen outdoors lately? You can download your own copy of SeeMore’s observation log here. Fill it out and share it with your friends, your classmates, your teacher or your family. Let people know what interesting things you are seeing, and what a good nature detective you are!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
