Mountain Ash at Dusk
As the sun goes down the colors our eyes perceive, as well as what a camera records, changes. These Sitka Mountain Ash (Sorbus sitchensis) berries were along the paved path at Picture Lake last Saturday. I photographed them about 7:00 pm, which was just a few minutes past sunset. However, the sun had descended below the adjacent ridge long before, plunging my subject into deep shade. With a digital camera it’s easy to compensate, but in this case I left my camera’s white balance set to daylight, letting the color go a little blue.
Is this an accurate representation of what my eyes saw? Probably not, but color memory is a fickle thing so it really doesn’t matter. If the color of the berries was far around the color wheel from red then we’d know something was wrong. But since they’re red then we accept the color as more or less correct.
Mountain Ash is in the rose family. The fruits are reportedly edible, sour but becoming sweeter after a frost. I’ve never tried them. One website even talks of making Mountain Ash Wine. I suppose one can ferment almost any fruit so why not this one. The berries are certainly abundant this time of year, more so than the huckleberries for which so many people go foraging.
Monday our busses took us to the 
Right now the showiest plant in bloom is one of our nasty invasive weeds, Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum). There’s some question about the taxonomy, so what we have may well be Bohemian Knotweed (Polygonum × bohemicum), a hybrid species. Regardless, it’s a tall showy plant with drooping panicles of white flowers that forms large masses at the side of the road. It prefers moist places like ditches and streambanks and spreads by underground rhizomes. It’s very difficult to eradicate as any tiny bit of root will start a new plant and spraying common herbicides seem to only slow it down. The preferred method of attack is to inject herbicide directly into the stems, which is very labor intensive.
Another pretty roadside weed, not nearly as widespread around here, is Common Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris). It’s only a foot or so tall and covered with attractive yellow flowers. I saw a patch of it along Slater Road near the railroad tracks yesterday. It’s not on the Washington noxious weed list, but its cousin Dalmatian Toadflax is.
The farther out the trail I went the cloudier it got, so mountain vistas were out of the question. I crossed a few short snow patches without taking my ice axe off my pack. Then rounding a corner in the rather barren rocky and gravelly alpine habitat I spied several clumps of bright golden flowers at my feet. I could tell at a glance that they were Senecio, but I didn’t recognize the species. I pulled out my plant list for the trail and the one book I carried, Mountain Plants of the Pacific Northwest by Ron Taylor and George Douglas, and turned to the ragworts. There was my plant, Senecio elmeri, which was new to me.
Colors on the opposite side of the color wheel make great contrasting combinations, like this Mountain Arnica (Arnica latifolia) blossom set against Broadleaf Lupine (Lupinus latifolius). This pair also shows a contrast between the radially symmetrical ray flowers of the Arnica and the pea flowers of the Lupine. Spiky vs. rounded. Sharp foreground vs. soft-focus background.
Those of us who live on the wet west side of the Cascades learned quickly that if we stay home because it’s raining we’ll never get out and do anything. That doesn’t mean it’s more fun to go out in the rain, just that it’s a fact of life. The hike to Mount Townsend was a Botany Washington field trip to see the diverse alpine flora, including the rare and endemic Olympic Milkvetch (Astragalus cottonii). We found it before the rain started, but glistening with dew drops from the cloud that enveloped us. This was the first time I’d seen this species in bloom, although I’d seen its very showy inflated seedpods a few years ago on another Olympic hike.
There are some things that the little camera does very well and others that are more challenging. This shot, of Fairy Wands seeds, is one of those things that’s more difficult to do with a pocket camera for a couple of reasons. First, it focuses closest at the widest setting of the zoom lens. Second, the sensor is pretty small. Both factors generally lead to great depth of field so blurring the background is hard to do.
I spent the last week, from July 7 to 14, photographing gardens in Bend, Oregon and wildflowers in the Western Cascades. It was a very productive 8 days with repeat visits to some gardens I’d photographed last August and several new gardens that I’d been told about since then. On the days I was shooting gardens I started work at 5:30 am to take advantage of the soft early morning light before the sun rose above the trees. I took a mid-day break for breakfast and scouting locations, and then worked from about 5:30 pm until nearly dark. After returning to the place I was staying I had to copy all the day’s work over to my computer and back it up, so I didn’t get to bed until after 11 pm most days. That made for very long work days.