Plant of the Month: Pinesap

Posted on July, 2015 by Mark Turner

I ran across a near-perfect specimen of another one of our mycoheterotrophic plants on a hike up to Excelsior Ridge in mid-June. This one is pinesap, Monotropa hypopitys. It’s fairly common in our dry forests, growing under Douglas-firs or hemlocks. If you’re following along each month, you’ll recall that I introduced you to a rather uncommon mycoheterotroph last month, California broomrape.

Pinesap is in the same family as heather, rhododendron, and huckleberries. But unlike those big and showy plants, pinesap doesn’t have any chlorophyll and can’t make its own food. It depends on a complex relationship with fungi in the soil to connect its roots to those of a host plant from which it derives its nutrients. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: California Broomrape

Posted on June, 2015 by Mark Turner

During the blooming season people often send me photos of plants they’ve found and can’t identify. A few days ago I received a photo of a plant I’d never seen before. It’s not in my book, Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest, nor in the Washington Wildflowers smartphone app. But I instantly recognized the genus, Orobanche. There aren’t many species in the Pacific Northwest and they’re rather distinctive. Continue reading →

Sunset in Our Meadow

Posted on May 21, 2015 by Mark Turner

Tufted Hairgrass, Meadow Barley — Tufted Hairgrass and Meadow Barley with Sicklekeel Lupines

Last summer we planted a native seed mix instead of a traditional lawn in front of the studio. We got them from a contest we entered at WeedEatersCentral.com. It has a bit of a wild look, and now that the grasses and lupines are coming into bloom I think it’s becoming very attractive. The seed mix is called Coastal Grasslands and came from Sunmark Seeds in Oregon.

When I stepped out of the office at sunset last night I was immediately struck by how nice the grasses and lupines looked in the late afternoon light. I ran back inside and grabbed my camera and 70-200mm lens and went to work in the few minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon. Continue reading →

Vendovi Island Forest

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Mark Turner

Harsh Paintbrush and Oregon Sunshine at Paintbrush Point on Vendovi Island.

Last Saturday I joined a boatload (literally) of Washington Native Plant Society friends for a field trip to Vendovi Island. It’s one of the smaller of the San Juan Islands, located a few miles south of the southern tip of Lummi Island and northeast of Guemes Island. Up until 2010 it was privately held. Then the San Juan Preservation Trust purchased it and has opened it to the public from May through September.

We’d hoped to enjoy spectacular meadows of wildflowers on a couple of west-facing balds, but with our very warm and early spring the flowers were well past their prime. There was still a little camas blooming, and quite a bit of harsh paintbrush, Oregon sunshine, and death camas. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Redwood Sorrel

Posted on May, 2015 by Mark Turner

1003907 Redwood Sorrel foliage [Oxalis oregana]. VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver, BC. © Mark Turner — Redwood Sorrel foliage

Redwood sorrel, Oxalis oregana, gets that common name because it grows prolifically under the giant redwoods in northern California. But you don’t have to have redwoods to grow this attractive groundcover. Other common names for this plant are wood sorrel and Oregon oxalis. In the wild its also common in the understory of low-elevation Douglas-fir forests. It is native from British Columbia to California. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Skunk Cabbage

Posted on April, 2015 by Mark Turner

One of my favorite harbingers of spring is the brilliant yellow skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus), which also goes by swamp lantern. Both names are quite descriptive and appropriate for this common wetland plant.

Skunk cabbage got that name because the blossoms have a slight skunky odor and the leaves resemble cabbage leaves when young. I’ve never found the odor of our northwest skunk cabbage to be particularly strong. There’s an entirely different skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) that’s native to eastern North America that has a much stronger odor and dark purplish-red flowers. The foliage of the two plants is similar, but ours has much brighter blossoms. Continue reading →

Red-flowering Currant

Posted on March 20, 2015 by Mark Turner

A few days ago my friend Annie called to say her red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) was about to burst into full bloom, inviting me to swing by and photograph it. She has a couple of nice shrubs against the fence in her backyard and when I visited on March 16 one of the two was in full bloom. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Hazelnuts

Posted on February, 2015 by Mark Turner

Sometimes a native species looks just like a non-native. One example, blooming now in the Pacific Northwest, is the hazelnut or filbert.

Beaked Hazelnut male catkins with a tiny female flower at the upper right.

Corylus cornuta, beaked hazelnut, is our native species. On the west coast, it’s variety californica and in the rest of the continent you’ll find variety cornuta. It usually grows as a mid-sized multi-stemmed shrub but occasionally becomes a small tree.

Almost indistinguishable, Corylus avellana or European filbert, grows in the same habitats and except when it has nuts in late summer and early autumn you’ll be hard pressed to tell them apart. It’s grown commercially in Washington and Oregon for its very tasty nuts. In orchards this species is a medium-sized tree, but escaped to the wild it usually takes the same shrub form as our native hazelnut. There are also garden cultivars of Corylus avellana, particularly the very popular contorted filbet, var. contorta that’s been blooming for a while this winter. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Mountain Hemlock

Posted on January, 2015 by Mark Turner

Lichen-draped Mountain Hemlocks — Lichen-draped mountain hemlocks on Cougar Divide in the North Cascades.

I have a lot of respect for mountain hemlocks (Tsuga mertensiana).

They’re tough, living at high elevation in the mountains where they get hammered with wave after wave of winter storms. Young trees may get buried completely by snow, hidden for months by a deep white blanket. Old trees take on a grizzled appearance, encrusted by rime ice after nearly every storm.

Mountain hemlock in a snowstorm near the Mt. Baker Ski Area.

If you ski at any of Washington’s west-side ski areas you’ve seen mountain hemlocks, together with subalpine firs. You can easily recognize younger hemlocks by the characteristic nodding top, bent over whether under snow or not. Old trees may have their tops broken off. When you stop to catch your breath at the side of a ski run, look for the furrowed brown bark of the hemlock, in contrast to the smoother silvery bark of the firs. Upon even closer examination, notice that the hemlock needles are short, just a half-inch or so long, and arranged all around the twigs, with a somewhat ragged appearance. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Scouler’s Willow

Posted on November, 2014 by Mark Turner

Scouler's Willows in fall color — Scouler’s Willows in fall color among Snowbrush

I spent a lot of time with our native willows while photographing for Trees & Shrubs of the Pacific Northwest, but never really thought about them as a spectacular part of our fall color palette. Maybe that’s because I was looking for them in flower and with fresh summer green leaves.

That changed when I drove across a Forest Service road on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest west of Lake Chelan, Washington last fall on the recommendation of a fellow nature photographer. Road 5090, the Shady Pass Road, connects Lake Chelan with the Entiat valley. It climbs to around 6,000 feet and we weren’t able to make it all the way across the pass because we ran into some early season snow compacted into ice on the road. Continue reading →