Archive for the 'Native Plants' Category
A couple of weeks ago I was over to Ellensburg for the semi-annual board meeting of the Washington Native Plant Society. It’s an all-day business meeting dealing with important affairs of the organization, but not near as much fun as getting out and poking around among the plants.
The next day Don Knoke, one of the most knowledgeable plant guys in the area, led a field trip along the Old Vantage Highway with stops at Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area and a couple of places in Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. We ambled among the grasses and sagebrush, meandered across the lithosol, and threaded our way among the plants on the sandy dunes along Wanapum Reservoir on the Columbia River.
This photo was made near the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park visitor center at Vantage, just a hundred yards or so off the road toward the river. Showy Phlox, Phlox speciosa, and Carey’s Balsamroot, Balsamorhiza carreyana, are what’s blooming here. In mid-April you’ll find Showy Phlox carpeting the hillsides in many places throughout central Washington. It truly lives up to its name. Carey’s is just one of several species of Balsamroot. Just over the hill to the west of Ellensburg you’re more likely to find Balsamorhiza sagittata which has somewhat fuzzy leaves and distinctly hairy bracts below the blossoms. continue reading »
May 01 2010 | Native Plants and Photography | 3 Comments »
Using native plants in your garden is becoming more and more popular, and for good reason. They’re hardy, adapted to your climate, and resistant to many diseases and insects. Plus, we’ve got a lot of really gorgeous and desirable plants that are native to our part of the world.
Several days ago one of my gardening friends who lives a few miles outside Bellingham invited me out to see and photograph her early spring garden. These western trilliums, Trillium ovatum, are what greeted me as I came up the long gravel driveway toward her home. This patch has obviously been growing here for many years and is slowly spreading. They’re in a woodland habitat, but get morning sun.
If you’re fortunate to have this plant in your garden, which I do, look around at the base of the big plants for the babies. Note how the first-year plants only have a single leaf, two-year olds have two leaves, and those three and over have the typical three leaves of an adult plant. It may take more than three years from seed for a trillium to flower so your patience will be rewarded.
There’s no gardening rule that says you have to use either all natives or all exotics in your garden. Here Sherri has planted lungwort, Pulmonaria sp., in the same bed with the trilliums. I like the contrast of the speckled foliage and blue blossoms of the lungwort with the dazzling white trillium blossoms behind.
One of the keys to garden design is to mix complementary colors and textures together. I think this pair combines very nicely. Both are perennials with foliage that will look decent through most of the summer if they don’t get too hot or too dry. The blossoms will disappear but that’s OK. We’ll enjoy them now and move on to some other part of the garden later in the season.
One of our nicest native groundcovers is redwood sorrel, Oxalis oregana. It isn’t truly native here in Whatcom County, but it is a northwest native that grows very well here when planted. In fact, it can become invasive if you don’t watch out. In this photo it’s the plant toward the back at the base of the big Douglas-fir. The other two prominent plants here are wood anemone and a Corsican hellebore.
Again, Sheri has combined natives and non-natives in the same bed, taking advantage of contrasting textures, leaf shapes, and foliage colors.
These photos were made fairly late in the afternoon under overcast skies, with more wind than I would have liked. I cranked the ISO up to 400 to get a higher shutter speed. Some of the newer high-end cameras have low enough noise to go even higher, but I start to notice the noise with my Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II when I go above 400. Even so, coming from shooting Fuji Velvia at ISO 50, being able to use ISO 400 reliably is a blessing. That’s a three-stop improvement, which can make all the difference needed to stop plants blowing in the breeze from blurring in the frame.
April 15 2010 | Gardens and Native Plants and Photography | 1 Comment »
Thursday I drove across Washington from Bellingham to Spokane to speak on wildflowers at The Inland Empire Gardeners Club meeting. I could have stuck to the freeway and made it across in about six hours, but I chose a more leisurely route and spent about 9 hours. The photo above was made just east of Davenport along US 2. I’m not sure why this thin grove of Douglas-firs was growing in the middle of the wheat field but they caught my eye as I headed down the highway. Conveniently there was a small road running along the field so I could get off the highway easily. The sky was dramatic with big billowing clouds so I shot with my widest 16-35mm lens to include as much sky as possible. It’s still very early in the spring on the east side of the mountains so the winter wheat is just starting to green up and begin growing. continue reading »
April 02 2010 | Native Plants and Photography | No Comments »
Sex was in the air all over Pass Island and West Beach at Deception Pass State Park this weekend. Bright red female Douglas-fir cones standing tall on branch tips were calling out to the pollen-laden male cones hanging below. “Hit me with some of your dusty golden pollen,” they seemed to be saying. And with every stiff branch-shaking breeze (or human hand) the air would blaze with the pixie dust so essential to the Pseudotsuga menziesii mating ritual.
Courtship among trees is obviously a bit different than it is among more mobile species, but the basic process is the same. Sperm and egg come together, fertilization occurs, and a new member of the species begins to grow. The female, carrying the eggs, somehow has to attract the male. Plants have evolved myriad ways for this to happen, often involving third parties like insects or other animals.
Conifers are wind-pollinated. Look closely at the Douglas-fir bough. There are just a couple of red female flowers near the branch tips while there are many more males hanging down below. Since cross-pollination, mixing genes between individuals, is valuable in a long-term evolutionary sense the species has developed a mechanism to keep self-fertilized embryos from completely developing into viable seeds. I don’t understand just how that works. Try a web search on “Pseudotsuga self fertile” if you want to figure it out.
The female cones are standing upright, presumably to make it easier for the wind-borne pollen to be ensnared as it drifts by. Once the flowers are fertilized then the cones will turn downward, which is the way we usually see Doug-fir cones on the tree.
This weekend was the first time I’d noticed Douglas-fir in bloom after nearly 20 years of seeing this most common of northwest conifers. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Probably just not in the right place at the right time. I know I’ll be looking for them in the future.
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March 22 2010 | Native Plants and Photography | 9 Comments »
We’ll get to the Camas in a bit, but that was a surprise find, not what I went looking for today.
Last weekend when I was down to the Columbia Gorge searching for Garrya I spent a few minutes at Catherine Creek to check out the earliest flowers, including Grass Widows, Olsynium douglasii. Today Natalie and I headed down to Pass Island at Deception Pass State Park in search of the same flower. Pass Island is one of the earliest spots in our region where the flowers start blooming. It has thin, rocky soil similar to what you find at Catherine Creek and the open slopes face south and west where they can bake in the afternoon sun.
Based on the number of Grass Widows in bloom today I’d say our season is nearly a month advanced from last year. Of course, last year was a cold winter and everything was late. This has been a warm winter. I guess it all works out in the averages over a century.
In any case there were lots of Grass Widows in bloom. They aren’t really visible from the bridge but as soon as we stepped out from under it on the island the bright magenta flowers came into sight at the expected spots.
We continued walking along the path toward the east end of the island, checking out whatever we could find in bloom. There were many bright splotches of yellow Spring Gold, Lomatium utriculatum with its broad umbels nestled among finely divided bright green foliage. There were tall stalks of Western Saxifrage, Saxifraga occidentalis, foliage of Western Buttercups, a single blossom of Beach Strawberry, swelling buds on the Madronas, and new leaves emerging everywhere. Broadleaf Stonecrop, Sedum spathulifolium, rosettes of foliage carpeted many rock faces and masses of Licorice Fern waved gently in the warm breeze.
But the real find was this precocious single stem of Common Camas, Camassia quamash, growing at the side of the trail in a protected spot at the edge of the woods. We hardly saw any other Camas with buds; most of the foliage was still pretty short. I can’t recall ever seeing Camas in bloom this early. Usually it comes out after the Grass Widows are finished. This specimen wasn’t in the most photogenic location as it was coming up through the dormant stems of a shrub I didn’t bother to identify. I cleaned out the dry grass stems, but the shrub had to stay. But it’s the first of the season!
When you visit the same place over a period of years you get familiar with where to look for certain plants. This Red-flowering Currant on the cliff just above high tide has been there for years and is always one of the first to bloom. There’s no way to get close to it and enjoy the fragrance of the blossoms, but I’m sure the bees and possibly the hummingbirds find it just fine. I made this image with my 70-200mm lens zoomed most of the way in. The sun was playing in and out of the clouds and I shot it both ways. This is the sunny version, which I like a bit better because it brings out the color of the blossoms better.
The rest of today’s photos were made with my 100mm macro lens. I used a collapsible diffuser when the sun was out and the natural clouds when it wasn’t. As usual my camera was on the tripod for everything.
Natalie pointed out foliage along the trail that I think may be the first leaves of Chocolate Lilies, Fritillaria affinis. They certainly grow in the area, but I haven’t seen them blooming on Pass Island so I’ll have to check back later in the season and see what the foliage turns out to be.
The other flower we saw in several locations on Pass Island was Small-flowered Prairie Star, Lithophragma parviflorum. The name is a bit of a misnomer because the flowers are actually bigger than those of the other common species in the northwest, Bulbiferous Woodland Star.
After we’d seen all we could find in bloom on the island we headed to West Beach and walked along the dunes trail. Not much was blooming there except the Spring Whitlow Grass, Draba verna and an occasional blossom on Beach Knotweed, Polygonum paronychia. It will be several weeks before there’s much blooming in that part of the park.
I’ll be leading a field trip to Pass Island for the Koma Kulshan chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society on Saturday, March 20. I’ve already had some people sign up, so let me know if you’d like to come along and enjoy these flowers and more in person.
February 28 2010 | Native Plants and Photography | 3 Comments »
