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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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.

There aren’t a lot of native shrubs that bloom in the winter. One that does is Fremont’s Silk Tassel, also known as Bearbrush, Garrya fremontii. This species has the northernmost range of any of the Garryas as far as I can determine. Even so, it doesn’t get very close to where I live in Bellingham.

So yesterday I took a road trip down to the Columbia Gorge in search of this shrub. I was armed with location data from the University of Washington Herbarium, so I wasn’t wandering around aimlessly. Even so, it was a bit of a long trip essentially for a single species. By the time I got home I’d put 670 miles on my truck and was gone from 7 am to 11:30 pm. Just a day trip.

The lowest elevation herbarium record said I might find the shrub near the bottom of the southwest slope of Wind Mountain, which is just east of Home Valley along Washington Route 14. I parked, walked around a gate and across a meadow choked with weedy Scotch Broom to the base of the talus and looked up. There, about 30 or 40 feet up the loose rock was a single shrub that looked like it might be the Garrya. I scrambled up and determined that it was indeed what I’d come to find.

This specimen was a female, with its red pistals sticking out all around the dangling tassel that gives the plants its name. I looked around some more but didn’t find any other specimens nearby. It was growing adjacent to a Vine Maple and near Douglas-firs, all somewhat stunted on this loose south-facing talus.

I returned to my truck to get my camera gear and scrambled back up the loose rock. It seemed that every time I planted my foot I knocked rocks loose. I was glad no one was below. Since I’d come so far I spent quite a lot of time photographing the plant. Ultimately I pruned one small stem and carried it to the base of the talus to shoot details in a more controlled environment. One of those is what you’re seeing here.

Bearbrush Silktassel is the only member of the genus native to Washington state, although Coast Silktassel, Garrya elliptica, is cultivated in gardens and there’s a hybrid of the two, Garrya x issaquahensis that is also cultivated. The male plants are grown more often because their tassels are showier.

Here’s the male Bearbrush Silktassel catkin. I found this specimen at the top of a road cut near the junction of Willard Road and Cook-Underwood Road. I was on my way to Willard and beyond where another herbarium specimen had been collected. This plant was at about 1000′ elevation and the male flowers had not yet completely opened. I believe that when they’re fully open the stamens will be showing. I made lots of images of the male plant and then continued up the road.

At around 2200′ elevation, 5.5 miles above Willard on Forest Service Road 66 at the edge of Big Lava Bed, there were many specimens of Garrya fremontii at the edge of the road and in the open woodlands. It was still cold up there, with patches of snow on the ground, so none of the plants were in bloom. I didn’t even see much evidence of buds, but perhaps they’re just small and not very showy.

Big Lava Bed is an interesting geological area, about 20 square miles of lava that oozed from the earth’s crust some 9000 years ago. Most of it is forested with stunted trees and shrubs growing from among the cracks in the lava. The ground is covered in a dense carpet of mosses and lichens. It shows prominently on the DeLorme Washington Atlas if you’re inclined to visit.

Photographic tools used for the Fremont’s Silk Tassel included my 70-200mm, 24-105mm, and 100mm macro lenses. I used a polarizer to cut the glare on the foliage in most of the full plant shots. For some of the male plant foliage photos I bounced fill light in with a big silver reflector (those photos aren’t in this post) and for the closeups I softened the light with my big diffuser. I carry a lot of stuff in my pack and I used much of it on this trip.

After I finished with the Garrya I headed a few miles further east to Catherine Creek, between Bingen and Lyle. It’s one of the best early season wildflower spots in the Gorge and I wasn’t disappointed. The Grass Widows were going strong, along with Piper’s Desert Parsley and Western Saxifrage. As the sun dipped below the ridge I headed for home.