The Teachings of Ghost Pipe

Last Sunday I was asked to give the message for the Chequamegon Unitarian Universalist Flower Ceremony. Everyone brought a flower, they were admired in a bouquet, and each person left with a different flower. This symbolized the unique value of each person and the way we came together to create a beautiful bouquet. To illustrate this idea, I chose to talk about ghost pipe (previously named Indian pipe), a plant whom I’ve been puzzling over for a while. In preparing the talk, I realized that I’d learned a lot from ghost pipe.

At a glance, we can tell that ghost pipes are unusual because they are pure white. Unlike green plants, they don’t have chlorophyll and can’t do photosynthesis to transform water, carbon dioxide, and energy from the Sun into sugars. Instead, ghost pipes are classified as parasites because they take sugar from Russula mushrooms. Sometimes, when I tell people about this relationship, they are indignant. Our culture loathes a mooch.

But let’s consider this from another perspective. Russula fungi produce beautiful mushrooms with crisp white flesh and caps in shades of pastel red. They can’t make their own food either. Many mushrooms decompose dead wood to gain energy, but Russulas have another system. The white threads of their fungal hyphae weave through the soil and connect to the roots of pines, oaks, and also to ghost pipe. The fungal hyphae are much better at collecting water and nutrients from the soil than relatively large tree roots, and these resources are shared with the trees. In return, the trees give up to 30% of the sugars they produce through photosynthesis to the mushrooms.

The trees themselves are big and healthy, waving crowns of green leaves in the sunshine. But big trees can’t thrive on their own. Water and other nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus are often limiting for trees, especially because pines and oaks tend to grow on dry, sandy soil. The mycorrhizal relationships they have with fungi connected to their roots are essential for their supply chain. Even if they must pay for the water and nutrients, they can’t be resentful of a trade deficit. Resources gained through mycorrhizal relationships are what allow the trees to thrive, and include many side benefits.

The network of fungal hyphae (collectively called mycelium) woven throughout the soil and connecting many species of trees and fungi, can act as an internet of the forest, a way for chemical and electrical communication about drought, stress, pests, and pathogens to flow among the trees. The fungi may have some capacity to share the sugars from a thriving tree with another one who is struggling. In this way, the mushrooms can ensure that their preferred habitat—a deep, dark, shady forest—is maintained. A healthy forest is key to their survival. Some tree sugars travel through the Russulas into the ghost pipe. Is this a choice, or a trick? Scientists aren’t quite sure.

So, what is the value of ghost pipe in this system? The purpose of any living thing—at least from their own perspective—is to make more of themself. That’s what the trees and the mushrooms are doing. They haven’t forgotten that the health of the whole is essential to their own survival, even when parts of the forest ecosystem may compete at times. All flourishing is mutual.

As for the ghost plant, they have no leaves or trunk. They are just a flower—a reproductive structure. The beautiful, bell-like blossom curves over to protect a deep well of nectar. That nectar attracts and feeds bees and other insects, who move pollen from flower to flower and fertilize their seeds. The seeds disperse, and if they connect with the hyphae of Russula fungi, will grow. This focus on reproduction could be seen as self-serving.

But it's in this process that we begin to see ghost pipe’s unique contribution. The flower has given up their independence. They now rely on the mycorrhizal network for survival. Through this sacrifice they have gained the ability to bring a supply of sweet nectar into the darkest corners of the mid-summer forest floor, where few other flowers can survive. The trees, the mushrooms, and the flower are all part of the endlessly woven web of life on Earth.

Did you see yourself in any part of this story? Are you a healthy tree with resources to spare? Are you a networking fungi making sure your community is healthy? Are you a ghost pipe flower bringing beauty into the dark corners—even if that requires some support from others? Do you take sap from trees, concentrate it, and share it with others? I happen to have a little jar of maple syrup on my desk from someone who fits this last description. Maybe you're all of those. Maybe you're something else entirely.

Just like a mushroom is a visible outgrowth of the mycorrhizal network, each flower, each person, and each Being is a part of the web of life on Earth. If ghost pipe provides benefits that we struggle to notice, what does this teach us about other Beings in the web? Could it be that a “useless” Being is one whose value we just don’t understand? Could it be that a “mooch” is actually doing important work? Just like the bouquet of flowers on the altar, the web of life is more than just the sum of its parts.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Wilson’s Warblers on Their Way Home

One lovely afternoon last May, I set out with a friend to paddle an upper section of the Namekagon River. Flights of “mackerel sky” clouds patterned the sky, but plenty of blue shone through. The white blossoms of highbush cranberries and wild cherry trees accented the bright greens of brand-new leaves. As we rounded a corner, we spotted a flock of half-a-dozen or more little birds with lemon yellow bodies and smart black caps.

These beautiful Wilson’s Warblers are neotropical migrants who spends their winters along the south coast of Texas, or in Mexico, or Central America, and their summers in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. The bug-filled bushes of the Namekagon River are just a rest stop for them.

This May, I found myself in a very different habitat. As you might have read last week, I made my own migration to southern California for a museum conference. And then I rented a car and bopped over to Joshua Tree National Park to see what my friends had been raving about.

The temperature was pushing 100 degrees when I finally arrived just after noon. Stressed from L.A. traffic and drained from a week spent in the city, I pulled off at the very first trailhead and was surprised to find it empty. A faint trail led off through a desert of sparse and prickly plants. Chugging some water and grabbing my camera, I followed it.

This Zebra-tailed Lizard was the first animal life I spotted in Joshua Tree National Park.
Photo by Emily Stone.

At first all I saw were unfamiliar leaves. Then I recognized a clump of funny green twigs. To survive the desert, Mormon tea gave up on leaves and just photosynthesizes through their bitter green stems. Years ago, when I lived in Southeast Utah for a season, this plant was a familiar friend. A few steps later, a hit of fresh scent, vaporized like a potpourri pot by the blazing sun, led me to the shiny, tiny, leaves of a creosote bush.

Then the surface of the sand shifted, and a perfectly camouflaged lizard scurried away. As I began to feel the presence of wild life around me, my shoulders relaxed. The Sun blazed on my skin, but also warmed my heart.

Scientist E.O. Wilson’s book Biophilia hypothesized that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. He wrote, “To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents."

I don’t know how people can survive for long in a city. “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot,” wrote Aldo Leopold. I am one who cannot.

Soon, a lilting, three-note birdsong lured me toward a dry creek bed and an outcrop of rounded rocks. My Merlin bird ID app identified them as a Verdin, a pretty gray bird with a yellow face who only lives in northern Mexico and a bordering band of the U.S. I squinted through the intense Sun in the hopes of spotting the singer.

Flight! Out of the corner of my eye I caught the dart of a bird and followed their glint of yellow into a bush. Training my camera on the thicket, I snapped away, then zoomed in to check my results: yellow body, smart black cap. Instead of a new-to-me Verdin, I’d found an old friend!

A Wilson’s Warbler gleans bugs off of a desert-willow tree in Joshua Tree National Park. 

Photo by Emily Stone.

I watched as the Wilson’s Warbler bounced like popcorn through the narrow, willow-ish leaves of an unknown desert shrub. While this bird was named for a different Wilson, he certainly satisfied E.O. Wilson’s Biophilia. I wonder if the caterpillars and aphids he was eating here taste different than the ones along the Namekagon River? I wonder if he, too, was a bit fatigued and dehydrated by the intense heat?

I wound my way through the park, stopping at several short nature trails to explore. Several more times, movement among the leaves revealed the black-and-yellow garb of Wilson’s warblers.

I flew home early the next morning, wishing that I could listen to the soft rustle of wind through feathers instead of the roar of jet engines. One of my first days back at work was spent leading a birding field trip in the Bibon Swamp just north of Cable. Golden-winged warblers buzzed, catbirds warbled, and rose-breasted grosbeaks sang sweetly. I absorbed their vibrant life into my soul and the midwestern humidity into my skin.

Two years ago on this same field trip, we’d spotted a flock of little black-headed, lemon-yellow Wilson’s warblers bouncing through the willows. This year, we didn’t spot a single one. A part of me is worried that the population who migrates through here met some untimely end in their wintering habitat or during migration. With headlines like “75 percent of North America’s bird species are in decline” in the news, it’s not unlikely. Wilson’s warblers have declined by 60 percent between 1966 and 2019, mostly due to habitat loss throughout their range.

But a part of me is optimistic that they are taking a more leisurely trip north from Joshua Tree (as I would have preferred to do, too!), and will arrive in the Northwoods next week. In E.O. Wilson’s words, “hope rises on [this] current.”

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Networking: Reflections on the American Alliance of Museums Conference in LA

From the air, Los Angeles looks nothing like the Northwoods. There’s the grid of roads, the glint of glass, and too little water. But with 841 museums and art galleries in Los Angeles County, it was an ideal location for the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Annual Meeting. Our tiny little Cable Natural History Museum (CNHM) is accredited by AAM, which means that we achieved and now maintain core standards and best practices for the museum field. That’s a big deal, but still I felt like pretty small potatoes walking into the conference center with CEOs and curators from the most well-known museums in North America and around the world.

And yet, as the CEO of a local cultural center and I helped each other find our way through the maze of registration, our conversation somehow drifted to the mycorrhizal relationships between trees and fungi and how they allow for the sharing of resources and information throughout the forest. We headed in opposite directions after that, but we each felt that the conference was off to a good start.

During a lull in the presentations and networking events, I caught a rideshare to the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum with Rich Jaworski, CNHM director. Here, in southern California, the Ice Age looked different than it did in northern Wisconsin. While the Northwoods were buried under a mile of ice and even the earthworms were wiped out, the La Brea Tar Pits were a hub of big, furry, life.

The La Brea Tar Pits are an odd natural phenomenon that formed after a 6-mile-thick deposit of ocean floor sediment was buried and the algae within it turned into oil. Now pressure forces that crude oil up through bedrock cracks, and it turns into asphalt as kerosene evaporates. Throughout the grassy park surrounding the museum, Rich and I spotted small areas of blackened soil surrounded by fencing where asphalt continues to ooze up.

The much larger Lake Pit caught our attention next. This small pond is surrounded by bulrushes and cattails—and a serious fence—and its dark water churned ominously. Methane gas forms as the algae and other marine organisms continue to break down, and it bubbles to the surface.

Three sculptures of mammoths posed around the Lake Pit at the La Brea Tar Pits depict outdated ideas. The artist mired the female in the muck, with her baby and a male standing on the shore. Scientists now know that females lived in herds, and males lived apart. Males were more likely to get stuck in the tar because they didn’t have a herd to rescue them. Networks are valuable for many reasons! Photo by Emily Stone.

The Lake Pit is deep because it was excavated during asphalt mining operations in the late 1800s. Rainwater collects on top of the goo. And three sculptures depict the heartbreaking scene of a family of mammoths becoming trapped in the sticky mire.

Historically, the natural asphalt pools probably weren’t as deep and watery as Lake Pit. Scientists think it would only take a few inches of tar to spell an animal’s doom. The surface might have become camouflaged by dust and leaves, tricking animals into stepping right in. Once a large herbivore like a mammoth was stuck, their plight would have attracted scores of carnivores who also became trapped. Dire wolves are the most common large mammal found in the pits. One entire wall of the museum is covered in dire wolf skulls.

It’s dangerous to compare yourself to others, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking about the Cable Natural History Museum’s thousands of specimens in contrast to La Brea’s millions of bones.

Then, as we continued through the exhibit hall, I noticed a sign that explained how scientists use the teeth of these preserved remains to determine what their owner ate. Flat, grinding molars indicate that they were chewing plants; sharp canines were made to grip meat; and a combination of the two indicate an omnivorous diet. This is exactly what our four naturalists teach second graders in our MuseumMobile programs in schools!

The plant-grinding teeth of a mammoth.

The carnivorous teeth of a saber-toothed cat.

The omnivorous teeth of a Giant Ice Age Bear.

The hooked beaks of several extinct eagles excavated from the pits all looked very similar to the owl skulls we show fourth graders, and are a sure sign of a raptor. Yet another display explained how scientists can use the teeth of saber-toothed cats to determine how old they were. In fifth grade classrooms, we used to do the same thing with the jaw bones of white-tailed deer.

The Cable Natural History Museum may not encompass one of the world's most important paleontological sites, but the science we teach our students could still put them on a path to studying these fossils someday.

And here’s the thing about La Brea—the big animals represented there all went extinct. Meanwhile, descendants of all the plants and many of the small animals found in the pits are still alive today. I’ll take that bit of wisdom home with me.

As the conference continued, I interacted with people from museums of all sizes. Whether in a presentation or just waiting for a session to start, we shared our challenges and talked over solutions. In the furrowing of foreheads and scribbling of notes, I could see resources being shared, ideas taking shape, and relationships being forged.

Whether a network is made of fungi linking trees or shared goals uniting people, connections allow us each to grow just a little bit more than we could have on our own.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Adventures in Porcupine Lake Wilderness

“We all have enough reality, right?” My head whipped to the gas pump’s screen, catching the end of an advertisement for a virtual reality headset. Personally, I thought it was an odd thing to say. But I didn’t spend much time ruminating about it–I was on an adventure.

Snow was still on the ground, but the sunny 40 degree day felt like a cure to my cabin fever. Picking a spot on the map, I decided to take myself to Porcupine Lake Wilderness northeast of Cable. I was out the door to go explore in a flash.

My adventure started along the winding forested back roads that led to the trailhead. I have inhabited the Northwoods for a few months now, but I still cannot get over the wealth of trees that grow here. I find immense beauty in the way the forests surround the roads, encapturing me with every twist and turn, leaving almost nothing else in sight except for the wilderness around me, begging to be explored.

At the trailhead, the woods were set alight by the sunshine reflecting off the melting snow. While my boots crunched down the trail, my eyes wandered to the trees where life was starting to awaken. Lichens, mosses, and mushrooms decorated the bark in a burst of bright greens, yellows and oranges–a welcome sight against the backdrop of the forest.

One fallen tree appeared to have tiny orange scales sprouting up along the bark. Upon closer inspection, they were turkey tail mushrooms! Named for their shape and colorful bands of growth, these fungi have a similar appearance to a turkey's fanned out tail. They are a common sight in forested areas, and serve an important role within the ecosystem. Turkey tails are a saprobic fungus, decomposers who break down organic matter and cycle the nutrients back into the soil. This helps create healthy soil, and provides nutrients to microbes, insects, and plants.

Turkey tail fungus grew along the bark of the tree, feeding off the decaying plant matter.
Photo by Heaven Walker.

A bright yellow-green color spattered the bark of many trees, looking like someone with a paintball gun had run rampant through the forest. But it wasn’t paint that dotted the trees, it was common greenshield lichen. They are categorized as a foliose lichen because of their flat and leafy appearance. Lichens are another great example of how parts of an ecosystem are connected. They are a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae, where both beings benefit from the relationship. The fungus provides them a “house” with its fungal body and the algae provides food for them both by photosynthesis. Common greenshield has other symbiotic relationships within their ecosystem. The tree provides the lichen with a growing substrate, while the lichen neither benefits or harms the tree. Ruby-throated hummingbirds will camouflage the outside of their nest using bits of the lichen, and northern flying squirrels feed on lichens.

Nestled among lichens and mosses was a small, bright-yellow jelly fungus. This tiny wonder of nature had a fruiting body shaped like a brain, with no stem or cap. When jelly fungi dry out, they can become stiff and rigid, but bounce right back to a squishy consistency when hydrated again. Unable to resist my childlike nature, I gave them a poke and delighted in their jello-like consistency. But unlike turkey tail mushrooms who feed on organic matter, this jelly fungus is in the Tremella genus, and is a mycoparasite. Instead of feeding on decomposing plants, this cute little fungus was feeding on another fungus who inhabited the same fallen tree.

Nestled by lichens and mosses, this jelly fungus stood out with it’s bright-yellow coloring. Photo by Heaven Walker.

Leaving the lichens and mushrooms behind, I wandered farther down the snowy trail. Stopping to inspect the base of a tree, I noticed that the dirt speckling the trail was not dirt. Kneeling in the snow, I watched as the “dirt” sprung atop the melting snow. Snow fleas!

Snow fleas are tiny arthropods who live in the soil and leaf litter where they feed on fungi and decaying organic matter–a similar diet to the turkey tail and jelly fungus. As the temperatures begin to warm, they move up through the melting snow and become noticeable. I happened upon a large gathering of snow fleas as they occupied a depression in the snow, making a dark, moving puddle. Watching them closely, it made me wonder what it might be like to be a tiny snow flea, making my way through giant melting snow crystals and up to the surface.

These snow fleas transformed the white snow into a dark, moving puddle.
Photo by Heaven Walker.

As my toes began to freeze in my boots, I decided to turn around and begin my slow trek back to my car. I found my thoughts back on the commercial at the gas pump, and hearing “We all have enough reality, right?” I thought about the lichens, fungi, and snow fleas I just spent an afternoon getting to know, and the connection I felt to the world around me while I wandered through the forest. That is my reality, and I never want less of it.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Lois Nestel’s Sweet Ode to Spring

“What sweet ode shall we write to spring? Soft and tremulous one minute, tempestuous the next, she proffers her gifts with one fair hand and with the other snatches them away.”

–Lois Nestel, Wayside Wanderings II

All the talk these days is about spring. When volunteers arrive at the Museum to paint or construct or hang up something for our new exhibit (also a sign of spring!) we spend the first few minutes talking about arriving birds, muddy driveways, and late snow flurries. Lois Nestel, the Museum’s founding naturalist and director, captured the contrasts of spring in her Wayside Wanderings newspaper column, which was compiled into two little chapbooks. The Spring section of Wayside Wanderings II begins like poetry:

“So, shall the ode be to her gentle side with greening grass, with birds and flowers and breezes moist and sweet as baby’s breath? Shall it be of earth reborn, of seed and root awakened and of bursting life in every swale and stream and creatures bringing forth their young? Shall it be of mingled scents, of mouldering duff, unfolding leaves and earth itself spewing forth the life it held intact throughout the months of cold? And must we not include the hues of spring; the tender blue of skies with puffy clouds, the yellow, pinks, and copper tones of bursting leaves; all the lovely tones of autumn only softened, modified?

“Mayhap it should be of slim-legged girls on bikes and running boys preparing for the race, of women planting flowers, and men in fields.

“Or should the ode be to the harsher side with snow and sleet, with slashing rain and wind, the lightning's flash and thunder roll or sudden frost that wounds the tender things?

“But would the ode not better be to hope, to promise and to the expectation of fulfilment of a dream that might have seemed for naught in winter's cold? Is there one heart so sick, so sad and worn that it stirs not with hope at spring's sweet touch? There is a magic, a restorative in spring that speaks of better things to come, of life worthwhile.

“Yes, it is all these things. The bitter makes us savor ever more the sweet and gentle days. No verse, no hymn, no song to spring but must include the teardrop with the smile. A bright new season, bright new dream, a time of growth; that's spring.”

I’ve been riding my bike around Lake Namakagon on warm afternoons, and while I’m checking the spots where hepatica and trailing arbutus usually bloom first, the buds have been tightly furled. That’s ok, because I know where to look for the even earlier flowers, and so did Lois. Her Spring section continues with odes to the flowers of trees!

“It is spring; there is no doubt about it. A pervading aroma emanates from last year's leaves, dampened by rain and warmed by sun, from expanding leaf buds, and from the earth itself. There is also the bitter sweet hint of another fragrance, fresh and elusive, coming from the prodigious blossoming which often remains unnoticed if one only looks at the ground. But look up at the trees, the willows, aspens, and maples. The flowers are there, small, not especially colorful or spectacular in casual observation. Close at hand, however, they are amazing. I find a special fascination in these minute blossoms, losing sight of my own gross imperfections in their purity of form.

“Willows and aspens produce their flowers in catkins which, at first, are furry, gray, brown shielded ovals best represented to us in pussy willows. As willow catkins develop, four-parted yellow clubs emerge from the gray fur, clothing them in gold and offering a welcome feast to early insects.

Pussy willows produce their flowers in catkins. As they develop, four-parted yellow clubs emerge from the gray fur, clothing them in gold and offering a welcome feast to early insects like this orange-belted bumble bee. Photo by Emily Stone.

“The common old poplar, more formally known as aspen, is so familiar that we scarcely see the tree, much less its bloom. Aspen catkins quickly expand into chenille-like tassels that may not impress one as being extraordinary, but a look through a magnifying glass reveals details that are as fair as the most precious garden flower. Here is a carefully arranged structure of delicate, fringed scales protecting creamy flowers with dark stamens. Their life is short. A little warmth, a little drying, and suddenly the flowers spill quantities of pale pollen to be carried on the wind. Empty, their task fulfilled, the catkins fall away.

“Showier are the maple flowers. The silvery twigs of soft maple are tipped by clustered scarlet blooms with golden stamens. At the height of their blossoming, the trees are a haze of red which quickly fades and is gone by the time the leaves appear. The sugar maples glow green-gold with dangling chartreuse bells bearing rust-colored stamens or two-pronged reddish pistils.

Red maple flowers are scarlet with golden stamens. From afar, they lend a pretty color to the forest canopy. Up close, they are exquisite works of art. Photo by Emily Stone.

“Flowers by the millions, yet so rarely seen,” Lois concludes. “One violet on the ground gets more attention. Each tree blooms in its own time, its own fashion, and each merits greater appreciation.”

May this inspire you to look more closely at the flower of a tree in this bright new season!

Our new exhibit "Becoming the Northwoods" opened May 1st! 

Come in and see the lovely display about the seasons of the Northwoods! 

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place) opens on May 1! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.