iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

It isn’t quite time yet for Aesculus californica to be leafing out, but I do love seeing its silvery branches in the winter when they’re doing their best to look like an indecipherable metal logo. 🌱📷📸

A high-contrast B&W, wide-angle photo of a California buckeye shrub (or small tree, depending on how you draw the line). The convoluted tangle of branches are a stark whites and light greys against a nearly black forest floor, with only a small portion of white sky visible near the top of the frame.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

A 10-minute monster performance of Fläsket Brinner playing (when Bo Hansson still in the band!) at the Stockholms Konserthus back when they were supporting the Mothers of Invention in late 1970. Krautrock-levels of hypnotic repetition building to fiery intensity! m.youtube.com/watch?v=vSL0...

m.youtube.com

Collage från Konserthuset

YouTube video by Fläsket brinner - Topic

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Fav fungal finds of 2025, vol. 6: Hericium erinaceus. A real treat to see this one show up growing right in my own yard again, just in time for a holiday feast! 🍄📷📸

Growing out of the rough-barked trunk of a dead Quercus lobata is Hericium erinaceus, a “lion’s mane mushroom”. Its fruiting body is a dense cluster of hundreds of downward-dangling soft “spines”, and is a cream white color with touches of light brown on the more aged portions at the top.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

While not the greatest of photos from a technical standpoint due to not having any time to align my phone with the binoculars any better, but this does, at the very least, give a good idea of just how ridiculously dense that flock of geese was.

Over a flooded field, thousands of snow geese take off in a highly dense flock, their white feathers yellowish in the evening sun.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Literally the first thing I thought when I saw it happen was “I’ll bet Hollie would love this…”

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

“Just a few” snow geese taking off after a bald eagle made a low pass over the flooded fields down in the Central Valley.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

[Oh look, it’s me forgetting to tag posts to show up in the Fungi Friends feed again. I’ve been away half a year; I’m sure I’ll remember more consistently again soon enough…] 🍄📷📸

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Fav fungal finds of 2025, vol. 5: Gymnopilus ventricosus. A related east-coast species, G. subspectabilis (the so-called “Big Laughing Gym”), is psychoactive, but this west-coast counterpart apparently is not. It is, however, supposed to be a great mushroom for making a gold-colored fabric dye.

Against the rough, greyish-brown bark of Pinus ponderosa is a cluster of four young mushrooms of varying sizes. The entire basidiocarps are a rich golden yellow with a brownish fibrillose texture. The caps have an inrolled margin with a cottony partial veil.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Ugh. Fingers crossed that this situation resolves itself “Dicky from ‘The Beyond’”-style.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Ah! Well some of the upcoming ones I found might be more up your street, then: Lactarius has an un-mushroomlike texture more like a firm artichoke heart, and my sister and I battered & fried some Laetiporus and it was astonishingly close in texture to chicken tenders!

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

It’s so weird in that it’s *specifically* frozen OJ concentrate rather than just a generic orange scent. Its flavor is nothing like that, though, as the scent and color sadly disappears when cooked, so if you aren’t a fan of the classic mushroom flavor, this one probably won’t make you a convert.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Fav fungi of 2025, Vol. 4: Collybia nuda. It’s not in Clitocybe anymore, but with that vibrant purple and a distinctive scent which somehow smells EXACTLY like opening up a can of Minute Maid frozen orange juice concentrate, there’s no mistaking it for anything but a blewit. Quite tasty, too! 🍄📷📸

Against a background of decaying oak leaves and pine needles is a lilac-colored mushroom. Its gills are the most vibrant purple, with its smooth cap a slightly warmer hue and its stipe a cooler and paler tone.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

The random wheel has just been spun again and it gave us… the Swedish stoner rock group Bad Acid. I kind of forgot this band existed, as they only put out this one album a decade ago before calling it quits, and other things caught my fancy more that year, but I think I’ll give it a revisit it now.

m.youtube.com

Bad Acid "Amnesia Haze"

YouTube video by MrStonebeliever

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Another from the 2025 fungal retrospective: Clavaria fragilis, a ghostly white little saprobe with the charming colloquial name of “fairy fingers”. 🍄📷📸

From a forest floor consisting of a mix of decaying wood and other dead vegetation is a tight cluster of numerous thin, white, club-like basidiocarps, some with the occasional little fork at the end like the antler of a young buck, but never fully branched out into many tips. They’re almost totally opaque, but have just a little touch of transparency to them in thinner areas that make them look like they’re made of milk glass. One cluster of dozens stands erect and packed together, while a second smaller cluster curves out and upward in a jaunty fashion.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I can still hear at least ¾ of these in my head on sight of the title, as it was VERY much the prime of my commercial FM radio listening days before I found file-sharing & college radio! Plenty that I thought were just fine, but these post-grunge years got rapidly worse, esp. when nü-metal arrived.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

All of this rain certainly has Deer Creek looking rather vigorous.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Next up in the look back at this season’s favorites: good ol’ Stropharia ambigua. Between their color, form, size, and sheer numbers, these never disappoint. 🍄📷📸

A Stropharia ambigua mushroom growing next to a blackberry plant. Its stipe is white, floccose, and sinuously curved. Its umbonate pileus is the pale, warm yellow color of a Meyer lemon and is lightly viscid. The margin of the cap is fringed with dangling white remnants of the partial veil, like frosting icicles on a gingerbread house. Its gills are a purplish grey with lighter edges. The three leaves of the blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) to its left are a much paler yellow (less Meyer lemon and more lemon chiffon pie) with green radiating from their veins. The ground is covered in the leaves and needles of Quercus kelloggii and Pinus ponderosa.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

I *almost* made it through this week without getting Shadow’s title theme for ‘New Year’s Evil’ stuck in my head, but it managed to sneak up on me on the last day and that riff has been firmly wedged in there ever since.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

My low-effort resolution this year was to start posting over here again, so… I’m back! Apologies to anyone who follows me elsewhere for the re-runs, but I figured I’d share a few of my favorite mushrooms I’ve encountered over my absence. Kicking things off: Amanita calyptroderma! 🍄📷📸

A large Amanita mushroom emerges from the forest floor. Its pileus is an ochreous tan fading to dull gold at the prominently striated margin. This is capped with a solid white patch of its universal veil on top, like a fresh snowfall on a well-rounded hill. The stipe is a cream color with a somewhat shaggy veil, and is growing out of a large, free volva.

Another large Amanita mushroom emerges from the forest floor again, viewed from a lower angle. Its pileus is a light ochreous brown fading to dull gold at the margin, which is somewhat less prominently striated than the first picture, as this one is a bit younger. The veil remnant on top is not visible from this angle, but you can see the gills, which are a pristine white. Its stipe is similarly bright white, with a ruffled double annulus. The volva at the base is just barely visible, but is mostly submerged in the soil.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Halloween was good here! I kept planning on returning here, but you know how that goes. Soon (I SWEAR!), I’ll be back with a big fat backlog of photos to post, as well as what I watched this spooky season.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Haha, that was originally a XXX feature called ‘ Devil’s Due’, but I did source it from the JX Williams version! Someone should make a Geocities page that IDs all the various movies that JXW drew from, like that ancient page that figured out every single clip used in Skinny Puppy’s “Worlock” video.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Thank you! I can’t wait for the Pacific tree frogs to start seeking shelter under my loose bark.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

As of yesterday, I have officially reached the “Breaking Down” stage of the Snag Cycle. Yay for 40, I guess?

An informative plaque shows what happens to a tree after it dies, in a process called “The Snag Cycle”. It begins with a freshly deceased tree (“The snag”), followed by “Bark falling off”, then “Snag breaking down”, “The snag has fallen”, and finally, “The stump”.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I always called them Otter Pops regardless of if they’re off-brand. The secret is that the knock-off “Helados Fun Pops” version is WAY better than the real name brand. Superior flavors, and they melt into a more satisfying slushy texture compared to real Otter Pops, which melt more like a popsicle.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Pollinator time out in the garden. I know it’s a rare thing for me to be posting something cultivated, but with a bloom like that, I couldn’t resist. 🌱🪲📷📸

A honeybee perches on the black disc florets of a “Midnight Rouge” sunflower. Its ray florets are burgundy red with a proximal burst of golden yellow.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Same here! I always love monotypic stuff, especially when it’s family level or above. Whenever I see one, it’s like “Hell yeah — you keep doing your own thing, ya little weirdo!”.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

It’s the only member of Paeoniaceae in my area, so the first time I saw one, the weird morphology really threw me for a loop! According to this paper, it’s primarily pollinated by wasps, Syrphid flies, and sweat bees, although I did see a fat bumblebee rather awkwardly clinging upsidedown to one.

pollinationecology.org

View of Pollination ecology and floral function of Brown’s peony (Paeonia brownii) in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

Paeonia brownii. These native peonies have such striking flowers, yet they can be easy to miss while walking down a trail, as the flowers face downward, showing only hints of burgundy petals from the side. If you you flip them over like this, however, they are quite a sight to behold! 🌱📷📸

Against a background of dried Pinus ponderosa needles and a few incised, celadon-green leaves from the plant itself, is the upturned flower of a Western Peony. It has eight petals which fade in color from white proximally, to brick red centrally, to a dull, faintly greenish yellow distally. At the center of the flower is a ring of a dozen or so little green lines with three large, green, almond-shaped carpels emerging from the center of them. If that wasn’t enough, it finally takes thing completely over the top by having a profusion of dozens of bright yellow stamens shooting out in a ring around the outside of the lobes.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

A fungal flashback from earlier in the year: Verpa conica, a not-quite-a-morel in Morchellaceae. Quit giggling at the back of the class — it looks like a daikon radish wearing a cloche and *certainly* not like anything else. 🍄📷📸

Against a background of Quercus chrysolepis debris is an “early morel”, which isn’t truly a proper morel at all, as its cap is freely connected. The pileus is brown, campanulate, not wrinkled like a true morel, and is relatively small in proportion to its long, thick, cream-colored stipe.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Aphyllon franciscanum. I’ve been wanting to see these golden weirdos for a while now and I lucked out and found multiple clusters in the same ultramafic hillside where I saw the Brodiaea sierrae, as they’ve also adapted to handle the harsh, nutrient-poor conditions of serpentine soil. 🌱📷📸

Two clusters of solid golden yellow plants consisting only of stems and flowers against a background of dry grass. Each highly glandular pedicel ends in a narrow, downward-curving, trumpet-shaped flower. Like most plants in Orobanchaceae, these are parasites. Their lack of chlorophyll (or even any leaves at all!) is the big clue there — I mean, if they aren’t photosynthesizing, they’ve got to be getting their energy from *somewhere*, right? In this particular case, they predominantly parasitize Eriodictyon or Phacelia, and given that these were all growing in the vicinity of big stands of Eriodictyon californicum, that isn't a big surprise.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Been enjoying the debut release by The New Eves quite a bit. A blend of post-punk and English folk revival that reminds me at times of ‘Furia’ by The Fates, the short-lived group started by Una Baines of The Fall. Bonus points for the descending “Holiday in Cambodia”-inspired riff on this track: 🎧

m.youtube.com

The New Eves - Highway Man

YouTube video by TheNewEvesVEVO

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

(This and the next few posts are presented with apologies to those who follow me elsewhere for being repeats, as I’m slowly trying to catch this place back up since my absence here!)

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Rhododendron occidentale. A ubiquitous shrub of Pacific forests, it may not have the giant blooms of its cultivated cousins, but it more than makes up for it by having one of the most divine scents you’ll ever encounter in the woods. You’ll smell it before you even see it yards down the trail! 🌱📷📸

A lovely white flower with five petals, the topmost of which has a prominent yellow patch at its center. The stamens and style are both heavily exserted.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Happy International Cat Day from this ridiculous beast.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Sleazy as hell, but aesthetically my sort of sleaze. Definitely passes my “EW Test” (whether or not a horror/exploitation film looks like something that the members of Electric Wizard would have playing muted on a TV somewhere in room while rehearsing).

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Okay, last pic of Brodiaea sierrae, I swear! This time, however, it’s my attempt to immortalize it through my rusty and questionable ink & watercolor skills. Remind me next time to not to wait until the last day to try to make something like this for a gift, especially when I’m so out of practice.

An 8×10” ink & watercolor illustration of the inflorescence of Brodiaea sierrae. The flower consists of a magenta-purple perianth with six narrow tepals, a central column of closely-spaced white stamenodes with bent tips, and yellow reproductive junk in the middle. It is isolated against a simple abstract background consisting of splotches of green with a few spatters of yellow and tan, vignetted darker at the corners. It was made with a 0.30mm Micron pen and watercolors (a hodgepodge of brands–Winsor & Newton, Grumbacher, and a few Sennelier) on Baohong cold pressed paper.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Jokes on you: any time you deem my puns to be that terrible, owl just take it as a compliment.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Jesus Christ, is the Village Diner holding his family hostage or something? Hooo did this to him?

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

I’m not sure what I love more—the terrified-looking owl waiter or the parking lot palimpsest.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Never seen one on a Plantago before, how cool! My childhood home would get big patches of “not quite dandelions” (I’m guessing now that they were Leontodons?) and it would be rare to find any that *didn’t* have a stem gall! Unfortunately no ID for your Plantago, but this is still a neat resource:

gallformers.org

Gallformers

The place to ID and learn about galls on plants in the US and Canada.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Brodiaea sierrae again, but with a little something extra—a mystery gall on its stem. From what I’ve read, this is formed by an undescribed species (!) of midge in the genus Lasioptera that seems to have a preference for Brodiaeoideae. 📷📸🌱🪲

Against the dark background of an early evening landscape consisting of dried grasses, the orbicular sage-green leaves and rusty-red stems of Arctostaphylos viscida, and the distant silhouettes of Hesperocyparis macnabiana, is a large Brodiaea sierrae. It has one flower at full anthesis (six narrow, purple, recurved tepals with a greenish abaxial central stripe, arranged is a vase shape) and seven unopened buds (striped green and cream), arranged in an umbel. Its stem is sinuously curved and the top ~8cm is swollen by ~8–10mm from the gall of a species of midge so new and understudied that it doesn’t even have a name yet.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

I’ll bet if you read the fine print that it’s somehow connected to the business that was doing the Lorena Bobbit psychic readings from the other ad.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

“One suction” has the unsettling implication that it somehow accomplishes the deed in one fell swoop, which honestly sounds kind of terrifying. I feel like there are active dismemberment lawsuits for this device.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

What a fluffy little angel! Looks like something in the tiger moth family; likely the sort that are equally cute ”wooly bear"-type caterpillars when younger.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Brodiaea sierrae, a rare plant with limited distribution which occurs only in four counties in northern California and nowhere else in the world. Formerly considered B. californica, but it turns out that it’s not only a different species, but actually more closely related to B. leptandra. 📷📸🌱

Against the mottled background of a serpentine outcropping is the inflorescence of Brodiaea sierrae, a member of the Brodiaeoideae subfamily of Asparagaceae. Well, according to AGP IV, at least—Jepson still calls the subfamily Themidaceae. I prefer the former due to the novelty of having to say a word with five vowels in a row. It has three narrow, linear petals and three sepals, all of which are on the magenta side of lilac. At the center of the corolla are three white stamenodes, spaced tightly enough that they are almost (but not quite!) touching each other, and each are bent at a jaunty angle a few millimeters from their apeces. Within those can be seen three anthers and a stigma, all of which are lemon yellow with a bit of white.

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

For some of the more doom-inclined among you, this genus may look familiar due to it being featured in the artwork of Christian Mistress’ 2011 album ‘Possession’. I’m assuming the ones on the cover art are probably A. caudatum from their heavily filiform sepal apeces:

m.youtube.com

Possession

YouTube video by Christian Mistress - Topic

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🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄 @mocata.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Asarum hartwegii. What a fuzzy weirdo! (Yes, I know... “turn on your monitor”) Here in California, Aristolochiaceae only has a few species of Asarum and one equally weird Aristolochia, but there are hundreds more species in the tropics. 📷📸🌱

Against a background of forest floor debris (mostly dead Quercus kelloggii leaves and Pinus ponderosus needles) is the flower of Asarum hartwegii—a California endemic commonly known as Hartweg’s wild ginger due to the scent of its foliage, but bearing no relation to actual ginger, which is a monocot. The flower consists of three brownish-burgundy colored sepals which are triangular with filiform-attenuate apices, faintly striated, and HEAVILY hirsute. And the stems are somehow even hairier!

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