Neuroscientist Mayaan Levy has sent in a second batch of photos, which are below. I’ve indented her captions and IDs, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
Come on, feel the Illinoise!
During my years in Chicago I traveled out-of-state often. I longed for the mountains: the Rockies, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevadas, the Smokies, the Whites (NH) and the Catskills. On busy weekends or when we ran out of money, as it tends to happen to grad students, we would stay home in flat yet wondrous Illinois. Blasting jazz or Sufjan Stevens in my then-boyfriend’s (now-husband) ’99 Chevy Lumina with magenta velvet seats, we’d hope to get somewhere where we would see some nature. Only when we left Chicago I realized how much I miss Illinois woods. This is a small, nostalgic tribute.
Our favorite destination was probably Shawnee national forest, which was quite a stretch for the Chevy. Here are some Shawnee turtles:
Box turtle (unsure whether Terrapene carolina or Terrapene ornata, I believe the latter is considered threatened):
Midland painted turtle (Chrysemys picta marginata) – Illinois State reptile!:
Common Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) hanging out on trail:
What I find fascinating about turtles is their brumation: I get it that metabolism slows down considerably like in hibernation, but how do they deal with the anoxia underwater?
Shawnee also has world-class mushroom forging. The place is a mycologist’s paradise. As amateurs, we were always after choice edibles – fry them in butter, add them to risotto, throw them into Chicago style stuffed deep-dish. Despite eating nuts, seeds, fruit and eggs, I find it quite weird sometimes that when we eat mushrooms we actually eat their reproductive organs.
Black morels (Morchella elata). Spotted in early April, they are among the first mushrooms to pop up, and boy, are they tasty. If you’ll be nice in the comments maybe I’ll disclose the exact location. While I’ve been told to never eat morels with booze (you’re welcome to weigh in on this if you know more), I’ve seen many moonshiners and rednecks with beers in hand forage for them:
Pear-shaped puffballs (Apioperdon pyriforme). Edible as well, but when mature the puffballs burst and spray spores right into your face:
We think these are a type of honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea), but we’re not sure. Please let me know in the comments if you can identify:
An epic chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) haul from Shawnee in early July 2020. They are my favorites but they are not fun to clean. Unfortunately, this trip was cut short upon discovering scores of deer ticks on our clothes;
Moving west, the Hennepin canal, nowadays an awesome biking trip, started as an ambitious project to link the Mississippi and Illinois rivers to ship goods. It’s a really interesting piece of history, so here’s the Wikipedia page about it
As for wildlife, if you camp you’d be serenaded by frogs and toads, water birds live around, and mosquitos are unfortunately a problem.
One of the locks on the canal (it has about 30, some of them are still functioning!):
Dusk, right after rain, on the Hennepin canal:
The closest destination, and therefore holds a warm spot in my heart is Busse woods. It has a mini-lake / swamp, and I’ve often seen people there taking photos of birds. As usual, we’re after the food: mulberries, black walnuts, and:
Huge Chicken-of-the-woods spiral (Laetiporus sulphureus), a summer mushroom:
Kankakee river state park is where we’d go to put our feet in the water, look at some pretty conic shells and pretend to be pirates on an epic adventure for an afternoon. Several years ago a new pedestrian bridge was built across the river, resulting in a large pile of debris which is overlooked by most. However, rocks in this pile are rich in fossils. I’m unsure from what period exactly, but I (amateur naturalist) would guess Cambrian / Ordovician when aquatic life flourished and before the first big mass extinction. If you know more about the geology of the Illinois basin, but please share your knowledge.
Some sort of crinoid impression fossil:
“Come on, feel the Illinoise!”
I love you
Thanks for the chelonians!
Both of the first two photos are box turtles– no painted turtles shown. The first is carolina and the second a beautiful male ornata.
Snapping turtles do not generally “hang out” on land. It was nesting or migrating to another water body.
Painted turtles survive anoxia in winter by going anaerobic and buffering the consequent lactate with minerals from the shell. It is an amazing ability.
I would think they have to periodically revive enough to reach up for a breath of air. But I don’t know.
They do not.
“Together, the metabolic and buffering mechanisms permit animals to survive for 3–4 months at 3 °C with no O2”
https://doi.org/10.1113%2Fjphysiol.2002.024729
Nice turtles!
The first two turtle photos are both of Eastern Box Turtles, Terrapene carolina. The natural history of this southernmost part of Illinois is very interesting, with the “Illinois Ozarks” (a geologically similar to the “true” Ozarks) and the northern limit of more southern species and communities, such as cypress and cottonmouths. Thanks for the pics!
GCM
Great photos, but those mushrooms make me drool-sorry for the rudeness.
They look wonderful. I hope you enjoy cooking also!
Thanks!
What a wonderful post! I love seeing the variety of mushrooms but those black morels and chanterelles look delicious.
Great fossils!
Very nice! This summer, Illinois was also treated to the double emergence of 13- and 17-year cicadas, and it was amazing.
From what I’ve read, the trilobite fossil is likely a caste shell from a trilobite. This being the rear part of what they shed. They apparently would molt en masse, leaving lots of exuvia to fossilize. Lost worlds and vanished lives ….
So that has already occurred? Did you get out and witness it? I’ve not heard a single cicada here and I’m missing them. Many are annoyed by their sounds, I love them. I associate their racket with the monsoons though it usually preceeds the actual rains. I’d thought someone here would tell us about their experience with the 13 and 17 year emergence. Hopefully that’s in our future here on WEIT.
Great pix! After seeing this photos I want to trilobite o’ mushrooms…
I believe that your first fossil may be some sort of elongated horn coral. What appears to be segmentation could be the transverse tabulae that these animals laid down, like a series of floors across the shell, and if you look closely there appears to be longitudinal septae within each of the chambers.
I’ve never seen or heard of such a long horn coral, but I’m no expert. Palaeozoic inverts are weird.
Do you know of Chicagoan Joey Santone creator of the YouTube channel “Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t”? He does videos all over the world and he does the Chicago area from time to time.
He’s an amusing guy who knows a lot about plants. I can’t keep up when he’s giving out all the info! I need to check out his “Kill Your Lawn” series, where they replace standard landscaping with native and less resource intense plants that are beneficial to the the environment they are in, a trend that seems to be picking up. Currently there is the Prairie Lawns Act that’s working its way through the Illinois legislature, which would encourage individuals and communities to install native pollinator-friendly plants, and prevent HOAs and the like from prohibiting them.
He is funny and eloquent (with a Chicago accent) about the amazing evolutionary journey that all plants have made. He has led me to take notice of plants and landscapes that I would have taken for granted.
Yes, I definitely am more aware of how truly ignorant I am when it comes to botany! The Chicago accent is a great familiarity bonus for me. And that he came about this knowledge not through formal education but just a driven interest to learn, wherever he can. For the academic ne’er-do-wells like myself who still want to know stuff, it’s some sort of comfort.
I would be collecting the fossils.
Wonderful reminder of the Midwest’s subtly special biodiversity. Thanks!
Both the “Dusk after rain on the Hennepin canal” and the Chicken-of-the-woods mushroom photos are beautiful! Thank you. Love your narration.
I appreciate this post about Illinois and it reminds me I should go on a road trip of my state! And even more because you mentioned and referenced Sufjan Stevens. The Illinois Tourism Board is even using a clip of his “Chicago” in their commercials now, which I think is pretty neat, for a nearly 20-year old indie album.
I recently read through a field guide to the edible mushrooms of Illinois, which so happened to be right next to a copy of Why Evolution Is True at my local library (in McHenry County, and no cicadas here, which disappoints me a little, but also grateful for the relative quiet).
I have mixed feelings about the fungi—I suffer D&V if I eat a mushroom (which might be due to a deficiency of trehalase*), but I can eat morels without harm. I suffered so many times before spotting the common factor that now I am conditioned and feel nauseated at sight or sound of mushrooms!
*trehalose is a disaccharide made by fungi as both an energy source and as antifreeze (famously also used in the tissues of polar fish for the latter). Trehalase is the enzyme in the brush border responsible for splitting it into glucose molecules.
OH what suffering…being able to eat only morels and no other mushrooms. My condolences ……
I have never heard of morels and alcohol causing ill effects if ingested together But it is well known that eating Coprinus with alcohol definitely causes trouble.