It Rights Itself!

Trail Wood #66 Earl Plato

I remember Bert Miller showing us a small leaning tree. On it were some horse’s hooves fungi. “These fungi on a slant now will right themselves in the weeks ahead until they are parallel with the ground. Why? he asked Finally Bert said that the openings on the bottom have to be level so the spores can fall directly to the ground to successfully reproduce. That’s creation’s way. Teale in the first week of April continued with his log.
“On this day I come to South Woods carrying a red carpenter’s level. Whenever I have seen one of these projecting fungi shelves, its flat bottom has appeared parallel to the ground, its spore-shedding tubes pointing directly downward. When a birch is tilted the fungus grows at an angle to the trunk, still lined up with the ground as though adjusted with a plumb line. When Polyporus betulius appears on the prostrate trunks of a fallen tree its shelf projects out parallel to the trunk its bottom still lined up with the ground below.” Amazing, eh? I know what Teale has observed.