Plant of the Month: Pacific Willow

Posted on November, 2015 by Mark Turner

As I sit at my office computer I can look out the door to the large and majestic Pacific willow (Salix lasiandra var. lasiandra) in our backyard. It’s one of 38 species of willows found in Washington state and one of the easier ones to identify (willows in general are notoriously difficult to key out).

Our Pacific willow is one of the last trees on our property to lose its leaves in autumn. Today it’s still covered, although there are lots of fallen leaves on the ground, too. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Piggyback Plant

Posted on October, 2015 by Mark Turner

Now that our autumn rain has arrived, the forest floor in our woodland has sprung back to life. It’s almost like a second spring even though the trees are beginning to shed their leaves. Underfoot, piggyback plant (Tolmiea menziesii) has greened back up and is busy producing little plantlets atop nearly every leaf. Continue reading →

Plant of the Month: Cascade Blueberry

Posted on August, 2015 by Mark Turner

Cascade Blueberry fruit nestled under fall foliage.

Every year we northwest lowlanders make pilgrimages to the mountains to savor Vaccinium deliciosum, Cascade blueberries (aka blueleaf huckleberry, Cascade bilberry, or Rainier blueberry). This low-growing and widespread blueberry lives up to its Latin name, for the fruit is truly delicious. When you find a patch loaded with fruit you can feast for a long time on sweet tastiness.

In this low-snow, warm-summer year the blueberries have ripened earlier than usual. Last weekend Natalie and I hiked out to Low Pass and High Pass, above Twin Lakes and just south of Mount Larrabee. In many places the trail is cut into a steep slope and we could graze on blueberries at waist level without even having to bend over. It can’t get much better than that! Continue reading →

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 →

Digital Photo Tip: Shoot for Variety

Posted on April, 2015 by Mark Turner

Hawaiian Tree Ferns, photographed from above and a distance.

One of the exercises I give to all of my photo class students is to find a subject and photograph it from different viewpoints. The idea is to expand creativity and explore new ways of seeing a subject. You can apply this concept to almost anything you’re photographing.

Last month Natalie and I spent a week vacationing on the wet side of the Big Island of Hawaii. The weather was mostly overcast, with periods of heavy rain, not the brilliant sun most people think of for Hawaii. We spent a lot of our time exploring for plants and birds, including a couple of days at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Almost all the plants we saw were new to us. A lot of them blended together — mid-sized broadleaf evergreen shrubs and small trees that didn’t have showy flowers. But a few stood out and I made several photos of them with my pocket camera. Continue reading →