Nacre colors

[Zeide Erskine]

I'll compile some links to particularly pretty freshwater mussels under this thread.

Here's no. 1:
http://www.univ-ovidius.ro/faculties/Nat_Science/main/anodonta.jpg

Here's no. 2:

http://outdoorplace.org/shells/graphics/Pink_Papershell_Lewisville2000_sm.jpg

 

[Caitlin]

Those are pretty.Can you tell me what this shell is? I like the rainbow around the edge.

 

[jshepherd]

It looks a bit like a Heelsplitter or a Lightfoot. A freshwater mussel, definitely. The cumberlandia monodonta is a little "thinner" and tends to bow in, not out.

This type is commonly used for blister pearls in China.

 

[jshepherd]

Is the back of the shell brown and circled starting darker and the edges and lightening up toward the center?

 

[Caitlin]

I think so, though it has been peeled. Photo of back below. edit: It looks just the opposite, dark at the center, but who knows with the peeling?


I tried to adjust the green bias, in photo shop, but don't have a consistant formula of adjustments that work.

Adjusting photos is like choreography, you have to remember a series of steps.....

I forget when or where I got it- probably in a second hand store long before I got into CFWP- but I guess the lust I have for for iridescence drove my liking of this shell.

Heelsplitter, lightfoot- those both American species?

 

[jshepherd]

The Lightfoot (Elliptio complanata) is a very common mussel on the Eastern seaboard. It was once used to make buttons. After seeing the back of the shell, however, I do not think it is.
There are several different Heelsplitters, and yours looks more like a creek or a Carolina to me (Lasmigona decorata). But this is really just a guess as I have not studied shells much.