Volvariella bombycina (Schaeffer) Singer [The cap is] oval at first, becoming bell-shaped to broadly complex or nearly flat; whitish or tinged yellowing to brownish in age; the margin not lined; […]
Category: natural history
Mushroom time begins with the puffy Morganella pyriformis
Morganella pyriformis (Schaeffer) Kreisel & D. Kruger The habitat on wood and the abundant white rhizomorphs make this puffball easy to identify. Morganella versus Lycoperdon. It’s the mycologist’s version of pepperoni or […]
Backlist Bop: May Berenbaum on what’s the buzz
It’s spring, and the insects have returned in force. Though, unless you live in Antarctica, it’s doubtful you go a day without seeing an arthropod even in winter. These creatures […]
It’s spring! Embrace the psychology of mycology
Feel the breeze as you wander among the cottonwoods. To your left, the burble of the great river. To your right, forests busy with rabbit and beaver, where bald eagles […]
200 Years of Illinois: The long and writhing road
Clear LaRue Road. Today marks the day officials close the storied roadway to assist of one of Illinois’s majestic natural wonders: the spring snake migration in Shawnee National Forest. The limestone bluffs […]
Release Party: The Science of Sympathy, by Rob Boddice
The new UIP book The Science of Sympathy takes readers back to the Victorian Era and into the arguments over sympathy’s place in Darwinist reconsiderations of science and humanity. Charles […]
200 Years of Illinois: The other black gold
On November 8, 1810, the first recorded load of Illinois coal reached the market in New Orleans. The event may sound ordinary, but it represented a significant pivot in state […]
200 Years of Illinois: White Squirrel Roundup
This weekend, citizens in Olney will begin the annual census of the town’s famous albino squirrel population, to see just how the white varmints have fared over the past year. […]
Ghost Stories for Darwin awarded Fleck Prize
Banu Subramaniam is the winner of the 2016 Ludwik Fleck prize for her book Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity. The Fleck Prize is […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: Call of the Mild
Until climate change renders snowball fights the exclusive preserve of those able to climb K2, May will remain the most welcome of months, for have mercy, it is spring. Natural history, […]
Volvariella bombycina, a silky haired and stately mushroom
Volvariella bombycina (Schaeffer) Singer [The cap is] oval at first, becoming bell-shaped to broadly complex or nearly flat; whitish or tinged yellowing to brownish in age; the margin not lined; […]
Mushroom season! Get up, get into it, get your Morganella pyriformis
Morganella pyriformis (Schaeffer) Kreisel & D. Kruger The habitat on wood and the abundant white rhizomorphs make this puffball easy to identify. Morganella versus Lycoperdon. It’s the mycologist’s version of pepperoni or […]