Archive for the 'Native Plants' Category
This past weekend was the beginning of the first real winter we’ve had this season. I took a couple of hikes to keep my blood circulating and to visit a couple of favorite local haunts. Saturday I zipped up to Pine and Cedar Lakes in the Chuckanuts and on Sunday I ambled along the Whatcom Creek trail to Whatcom Falls Park, returning via the Railroad Trail.
Saturday was the beginning of our current snowfall. There was just a bit of slush at the Pine & Cedar trailhead, but by the time I’d gained the roughly 1500′ to the lakes the snow was 5-6 inches deep, relatively light and fluffy. continue reading »
January 16 2012 | Fitness and Native Plants and Photography | 1 Comment »
How can you lose a lake? In the Chuckanut Mountains south of Bellingham you just bury the thing in a deep valley beneath a high sandstone cliff and ring it with lush Douglas-fir, hemlock, and cedar forest with a dense groundcover layer of salal, sword ferns, and low Oregon-grape. Add a muddy trail and you’ve got a perfect place to lose yourself for an afternoon.
That’s just what I did this afternoon under a sodden gray sky and chilly temperatures. Well, I didn’t actually get lost, but I did pay a visit to Lost Lake. Here’s the DNR map of the Chuckanut trail system I carried in my pack. You definitely want a map for the maze of trails up there, but it’s definitely worth it. continue reading »
January 07 2012 | Fitness and Native Plants and Photography | No Comments »
January 1st, New Year’s Day, I donned shorts and boots and headed for Oyster Dome. That’s the prominent rock outcropping rising a couple thousand feet above Chuckanut Drive at the south end of the Chuckanuts or the north end of Blanchard Mountain. It’s a popular hike, despite being steep and muddy. I went for exercise and to rekindle old friendships with the inhabitants of the winter forest.
The view from the top out over the San Juan Islands is spectacular. I made this photo handheld with my little Canon G12 pocket camera, planning to stitch the frames together later in Photoshop. continue reading »
January 02 2012 | Fitness and Native Plants and Photography | 2 Comments »
The latest Rock Garden Quarterly arrived in my postal mailbox today with a bunch of my photos from Deception Pass State Park to help promote the upcoming Western Winter Study Weekend. There’s a link to this blog, so I figured I’d better get busy and write something new for the hoards of visitors coming my way.
I’m working on selecting photos for the new Trees and Shrubs of the Northwest book due out in 2013. Today was Polemoneaceae day, or in plain English, a day of selecting pictures of Phlox.
The beauty at right is Yreka Phlox, Phlox hirsuta. It’s a certified rare plant that only grows in a few locations on the outskirts of Yreka, California. I photographed it back in the spring of 2004 when I was working on the wildflowers book with Phyllis Gustafson. It’s one of the plants that ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor and got left out of the first book. Ellen and I plan to include it in the trees & shrubs book. continue reading »
December 20 2011 | Native Plants and Photography | No Comments »
Western Wahoo, otherwise known as Western Burning Bush or Euonymus occidentalis, is an uncommon shrub in the forests of southwest Washington. In fact, it’s considered a sensitive species and the online herbarium records withhold the exact locations of the specimens.
In Oregon, Western Burning Bush is scattered in northwestern counties and occasional elsewhere west of the Cascades. A friend pointed me to a roadside population along Oregon Route 6 northwest of Forest Grove.
Wahoo is more common in California where it’s found in several counties, mostly in the northwest and along the central coast. But it’s not common anywhere in the region.
Wahoo grows in shaded forest habitats as a rather straggly understory shrub. It would be easy to miss it if you weren’t looking for it. Which is exactly what I was doing last Tuesday. continue reading »
July 15 2011 | Native Plants and Photography | 1 Comment »
