What Color Is This Mushroom?
In Alabama, we’d say it was ray-ud.
All I know is that on an overcast chilly day last week, it was dazzling in its contrast to an otherwise lifeless monochrome forest floor already starting to get its carpet of fallen leaves.
This lovely fall fungus is known by some as scarlet hood or scarlet wax cap.
We call it that ray-ud one that comes up on the middle path in the late summer when the leaves begin to fall.
Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.
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