The end of autumn

I was in Berkeley yesterday for the 43rd Annual Fungus Fair at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley.

This was my favorite fungus, Clathrus ruber. The egg-like enclosure, lined with a gelatinous anti-freeze material, cracks open to reveal the rank, red brain.



Deadly Amanita also emerge from an egg-like enclosure, called a "universal veil". I am told the universal veil is a characteristic of the amanitas. It remains underground and shrivels into a volva once the mushroom pops up.





I loved these sulfurous yellow mushrooms, Hypholoma fasciculare. Bitter and poisonous, they are not for eating.



There were several tables of specimens, all collected in the last day or two following recent heavy rains.



Northern California is quite soaked, as three (four?) big storms have moved through one after the other in the last few days. I think this is the last of it today.



You can barely see San Francisco through the weather.



The Golden Gate Bridge is a thin horizontal in the distance.



I thought I'd go home after lingering at the Fair for an hour or two, but decided to give the Botanical Garden a quick visit since I was there and my membership is current. I'm glad I did. It was a riot of color.







It must have been lovely (erm, lovelier still) before the recent rains brought down the leaves.































Somewhere near here the scent of Cercidyphyllum japonicum stopped me in my tracks, like toasted marshmallows or cotton candy this time of year, when the leaves senesce.

Even the rose garden was full of interest















Another one that stopped in my tracks: Myrtus communis. All chartreuse foliage and blue berries. Annie in Austin informs me this is a popular one in Austin, TX. Well, you don't see it much around here.





I'd forgotten this was here, an art installation using glass tubes recovered by artists from the Solyndra debacle (National Review readers hate it). Step inside the dark room...



Full of natural light carried in by glass.





Different effects depending on where you stand.



Here is a picture using the camera flash so you can see what you're looking at.

The garden of scarce blog posts

I apologize for the scarcity of blog posts recently, but I've been distracted by non-garden stuff. I'm not as tweeting much either.



The garden really slows down this year and it's tempting to think "nothing is happening". Also, the light is mediocre most of the time. There's a very narrow time interval when you can take pictures.



You can see what I mean from the deck.



But things are happning; there's no confusion about that.



I learned about the crimson-flowering fava beans from Michelle.



I forgot the name of this tiny Gladiolus





Echium pininana may be the closest thing this garden will ever get to a "structural plant". I have five of them in the ground, and sixth one on the way. The first batch grew vigorously from fresh seed, but seed sown later seems less so.



Anyway, they grow straight up and become towering spikes of blue flowers in the spring and summer. I'm not sure if that will happen in 2010 or not, so I have a wait-and-see approach.

Lots of things are sprouting from the ground, besides mushrooms.







And some trees have flowers.



And some of the trees that don't have flowers will have flowers later, like this Ceanothus with Rosa 'Moonlight' climbing up into it,



an idea that occurred to me while I was writing a note to Frances about what I should do with Rosa 'Moonlight'.