Boletus

I came across this mushroom near the crypt of copper magnate Marcus Daly in Green-Wood Cemetery on Saturday during Angels and Accordions, a free event where men and woman dressed in archaic white or black gowns created tableaux throughout the cemetery to the music of accordions, as we, the onlookers, traipsed after them, or, if we got tired, retired to a warm and relaxing trolley ride. It was kind of a preamble for the haunted walk that happens on Lookout Hill every Halloween, which spikes morbidity with a healthy smattering of gore. Angels and Accordions reminded me of the Jane Austen or Edith Wharton novels in which society wandered around the estate, toting amusing props if feeling particularly frolicky. During the show, the parrots ardently piped in a layer of twittering dissonant percussion which added a feeling of tension to a deliberately subdued event. The green of their plumage was the liveliest thing around, you had to wonder how they could get away with so much vitality in a cemetery. The honking of the geese flying over livened things up as well. More of the cemetery pictures soon.

The mushroom is one of the only boletus I've seen this year. The boletus have pores under the cap as opposed to gills. Writing this reminds me that it would be fun to make a gill print with the kids, or by myself, or maybe with the Brooklyn Mycological Printing Meetup Group, sometime. I wonder if the boletes make good prints as well.

Double click below for a closer look at a parrot outside one of the freaky, awesome nests they've built on the cemetery gate. That's the closet we get to thatched roofs around here. The blobby things on the spire resemble frogs to me. I wonder what they really are.