🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄
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mocata.bsky.social
🍄Ipsissimus🍁Mocata🍄
@mocata.bsky.social
250 followers 25 following 770 posts
A doomed forest hermit with too many cats. Original photos of NorCal natural history with an emphasis on mycology & native botany, but occasionally posting stuff about heavy music and weirdo cinema. ☭

https://linktr.ee/mocata
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mocata.bsky.social
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”.
August 25, 2025 at 4:06 AM
mocata.bsky.social
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.

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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.
August 22, 2025 at 2:49 AM
mocata.bsky.social
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!

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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.
August 15, 2025 at 12:34 AM
mocata.bsky.social
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.

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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.
August 12, 2025 at 12:16 AM
mocata.bsky.social
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.

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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.
August 10, 2025 at 11:42 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Horrifying.
August 9, 2025 at 8:02 PM
mocata.bsky.social
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!

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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.
August 9, 2025 at 7:59 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Happy International Cat Day from this ridiculous beast.
August 9, 2025 at 3:22 AM
mocata.bsky.social
Someone found a sunbeam.

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A close-up of the ear of a grey tabby cat which is backlit by a ray of sunlight shining through the window of an otherwise dark room.
August 7, 2025 at 1:54 AM
mocata.bsky.social
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.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 PM
mocata.bsky.social
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.

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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.
June 16, 2025 at 2:38 AM
mocata.bsky.social
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.

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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.
June 15, 2025 at 3:06 AM
mocata.bsky.social
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.

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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!
June 10, 2025 at 7:03 PM
mocata.bsky.social
I mean, look closely from the side view—that’s not even a pedicel, it’s the corolla tube of the flower! The calyx is down in the basal leaves! Probably only a few millimeters of stem down in there, if even that.

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A lateral view of Diplacus angustatus. The yellow patch from the previous photo shows fine hairs; possibly the site of a nectary? The calyx tube is distally a duller magenta than the lobes and is green proximal to the calyx. The pedicel (not even seen here) is rudimentary and the whole dang plant is nearly acaulescent; just a showy little trumpet-shaped flower emerging from a ground-level calyx surrounded by narrow leaves, the latter being the source of its species name.
June 9, 2025 at 8:44 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Diplacus angustatus, a CA endemic. Phrymaceae (if your field guide is old, you’ll find most of ’em in Scrophulariaceae as the genus Mimulus) is a family that never disappoints me, especially when it comes to the short ones with proportionally big flowers compared to their compact foliage.

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A close-up of the flower of Diplacus angustatus. The zygomorphic corolla consists of five fused lobes, the top two of which are larger than the bottom three. They are magenta in color, fading to white at the center, with a burgundy spot at the base of each lobe, burgundy speckling inside the throat, and there is a U-shaped yellow patch covering the base of the bottom three lobes.
June 9, 2025 at 8:41 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Finally saw a Delphinium nudicaule! Larkspurs are abundant in my area, but all of the local species are purple/blue, so the thought of seeing a red one has always excited me. This species is out of my range, but I found it on a steep hillside during a day trip NW of me earlier this season.

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Against a dark background of green vegetation is a Red Larkspur (Delphinium nudicaule), a very striking member of the Ranunculaceae family. Its inflorescence is a raceme with at least ten open blooms and eleven buds in varying states of maturity, along with three spent blooms that are now fruiting. The flowers are scarlet red with an orange inner corolla and possess that prominent nectar spur that you would expect from the genus. The fruits are green, glabrous, and tipped with just a little bit of purple.
June 1, 2025 at 8:19 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Cicadidae sp., cf. Platypedia putnami.

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A cicada perched on the lichen and moss-covered trunk of a large Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Its body is mostly black with an occasional thin stripe of orange, and its wings are transparent with thin black veins. It’s nestled into a small mossy patch, the sporangia of which are roughly proportional to the cicada as a small stand of tulips would be to a human.
May 23, 2025 at 8:56 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Even before it blooms, Calochortus albus still manages to be thoroughly elegant in form.

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Against a background of Aesculus californica leaves is Calochortus albus, commonly called the Fairy Lantern or Globe Lily. It's three nodding buds are unopened and spring green, while its stem and lanceolate leaves are a pale celadon green.
May 22, 2025 at 8:25 PM
mocata.bsky.social
One of the oddest and least poppy-ilke members of Papaveraceae, Dicentra formosa never disappoints. They’ve faded out at lower elevations now, but still look great in shady spots above 4000ft or so.

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Against an out-of-focus background of green vegetation and softly lit coniferous forest is an inflorescence of Dicentra formosa, the Pacific bleeding heart. Its panicle has seven pendent flowers, each of which is vaguely cordate in shape, flaring out to a narrow opening. The sepels are purple and petals a rosey pink tinged with occasional purple.
May 19, 2025 at 7:27 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Quercus kelloggii is widely known for its beautiful golden-brown hues in the autumn, but I feel like the incredibly vibrant magenta protective pigmentation of the margins of the new leaves in spring (and that downy texture!) is underappreciated.

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Against a background of green vegetation is a young leaf of California black oak (Quercus kelloggii). It is pinnately lobed, each lobe three tipped, with deep sinuses between the lobes. The leaf is green proximally and along the central vein, but rapidly fades to a dull purple and finally to a bright magenta at the margins. Its texture is HEAVILY pubescent with fine white hairs that are quite soft to the touch.
May 18, 2025 at 7:11 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Triteleia bridgesii. Easily mistaken for T. laxa from a distance, but T. bridgesii’s anthers are always attached at the same level and T. laxa is typically a more uniform purple without a lighter region at the center of the corolla.

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Against a mottled green background of vegetation is the flower of Triteleia bridgesii. It has three lanceolate-linear petals and three elliptic-linear sepals, both of which are ~15mm in length and are a lavender purple that fades to a much lighter shade proximally, with hyaline vescicles in the tube of the corolla giving it a glittery, glassy appearance. And if all of that wasn’t enough to excite you, get this—its six anthers are a lovely shade of cobalt blue!
May 15, 2025 at 8:45 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Dermacentor occidentalis. Heading down a trail the other day, I decided to turn around when the number of ticks visible on grass stalks reached the dozens.

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Against the background of my palm is the head of a green stalk of grass (don’t ask what type; Poaceae is out of my wheelhouse) are three Pacific Coast Ticks (Dermacentor occidentalis); two facing upward, the bottom one facing downward.
May 14, 2025 at 1:01 AM
mocata.bsky.social
If anyone needs me, I will be hanging out in this rather sizable Quercus chrysolepis.
Against a blue sky and green vegetation is a massive, candelabra-shaped canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis). Perched around four feet up the branches is the idiot whose posts you are reading. He is wearing olive drab pants, a teal shirt (which looked a MUCH nicer sage-green in the eBay listing, but the seller’s photo was horribly white balanced and I was too conflict-avoidant to raise a fuss about it), a khaki vest, and an old dove-grey Resistol hat.
May 11, 2025 at 10:52 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Clarkia sp., cf. C. arcuata.
One thing I really love about Clarkias is how they can look like they’ve got a tiny palm tree growing inside their flower in the species where the stigma is exserted so far up above the anthers.

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Against a soft background of mottled greens and the occasional splash of yellow from out-of-focus Jensia rammii is the bowl-shaped flower of a Clarkia. Its four broadly obovate petals are colored bright pink which fades to white proximally and are very finely striated with a ragged terminal edge. Inside are four visible purple anthers (there are eight total) with a pale yellow stigma shaped like a reflexed × on a mottled red style.
May 5, 2025 at 11:42 PM
mocata.bsky.social
Apatensis ornata. The first tiger moth of the season!

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Against the vibrant green of a zucchini leaf is a delightfuly gaudy Apatensis ornata, commonly known as the ornate tiger moth. Its head is fuzzy, antennae feathery, and its wings are folded against its body. The entire moth is a peachy orange with geometric blocks of black (or black with angular streaks of peachy orange, if you prefer), hence its name.
May 2, 2025 at 10:16 PM