Wildflowers

[Turtle]

now back to east of the cascades and a native wildflower. the aster-like flowers can be dogs to id (:artgallery:), but there is no mistaking the hoary foliage here.

 

burke herbarium - Dieteria canescens

 

hoary-aster - Dieteria canescens

july 26, 2010

pasco suburbia

franklin county washington - native

 

bloom:

 

whole-plant view:

[Turtle]

:bwa: turtle down!!! help me obie-wan-freeztabee! this is my only flower find on a short hunt on a long ride to lewis county washington. this was growing adjacent to the burlington northern santa fey railroad tracks -a twin-set at this location so you definitely don't want to jump off the wrong side of the car - and i saw maybe 5 or 6 other plants like this in the immediate area but not in bloom. over the short stretch of a 1/4 mile that i explored, i saw only this one patch. :bwa: i have tried diligently -you know i have :bwa: - for several hours now to id this but to no avail. :bwa: i searched the entire Brassicaceae family on the burke site - 100+ entries- as well as searching them for all herbacious yellow flowers -nearly 400 entries- and still i don't find a good match. :lol: i really wish now i had dug it up & bagged it, but these few rather substandard photos will have to suffice. :crash: the attached photo at the bottom i included to clearly show we have 4 petals here. and uhm...the plant was about 12 inches high. guess that's it. :doh:

 

so, won't someone like you, help a poor turtle like me identify this wildflower? :crash:

 

yellow-4-petal flower unidentified

august 28, 2010

adjacent to bnsf tracks

lewis county washington

 

 

blooms:

 

whole-plant view:

[Turtle]

the season is drawing to a close so i have to get while some gettn' is good. these beauties are growing in my garden from seed i collected in the wild. :bouquet:

 

 

burke - grand collomia -Collomia grandiflora

 

grand collomia -Collomia grandiflora (aka large-flower mountain-trumpet, large-flowered collomia )

september 12, 2010

garden; from seed collected in the wild

clark county washington - native

 

blooms:

 

whole-plant view:

[Turtle]

so thens, fall has fallen. :autumnleaves: today i started a project to print an index card for every species i have identified. from this thread alone i ended up with 82 cards, which is almost 1/4 of the 400+ species recorded in the county. not too shabby i think. :bouquet:

 

i really did not want to acquire more "stuff", but i think the cards make a better record than a database or a list on sheets. so far i have just printed the text information using the caption format that i have used in this thread. ultimately i want to print the bloom & whole-plant view photos of the flowers on the back side of the cards, but i'm a little iffy on how much colored ink i have right now.

 

some advantages to the cards include the ability to take them into the field, as well as sorting them alphabetically by common name, scientific name, location, bloom date, and color. :smart:

 

i now have restored the photos in the thread except for the first 9 pages, and i should have them fixed up by the end of next week. if i get out anymore afield i expect few flowers, but it's a good time to gather seeds. reports to follow of course at my usual pace. . . . . . .

[Turtle]

barely in to february and i'm starting to see flowers. yay!! unfortunately, this one is introduced. booo!! :angry: so it goes. . . .

 

hairy bittercress @burke herbarium

 

hairy bittercress -Cardamine hirsuta

february 11, 2011

suburbia

clark county washington - introduced

 

blooms:

 

whole-palnt view:

[Turtle]

my enthusiasm may have been a little premature; it snowed today. :snow: nevertheless, i have enough from hairy to warrant another post. no doubt now that one reason cardamine hirsuta is so successful an invader & competitor for native species here is its early blooming. (i have seen some chickweeds blooming too, but that's for another entry as there are a number of species. ) there is also the basal leaf habit of hairy bittercress which, other than grass that i have observed, inhibits other plants. having pulled these for years from my garden beds, they have another habit which makes pulling problematic, which is their exploding pods, or siliques in the botanistic vernacular. if you even look hard at a mature pod it bursts, and while the seeds are extremely small, you can feel them pepper your hand as you rip the plant up by the roots.

 

so anyways, i had captured one of the little devils in a small pot to get that shot of the open bloom and decided to let the plant go a while & get some shots of the seeds. rather than using the camera however, i opted for a vivesection, sliced off an inflorescence at the peduncle, and scanned it @ 1200 dpi. (the attached image is scaled down to fit the screen.) i count about 14 seeds in the prominent silique.

[Turtle]

we do have some native chickweeds here in pnw, however i captured the chickweed i mentioned & it's another invader. :bouquet: :naughty: i noticed after i got the shot of the bloom on the screen that i also captured some aphids. :doh: won't be keeping the weed specimen on the sill long as i have some seedlings going there too & i jolly well don't want aphids on them. :fly: attached image is detail of bud and the unusual line of hairs on an otherwise glabrous stem.

 

here we goes thens.... . ..... .

 

 

 

Stellaria media @ burke herbarium

 

common chickweed - Stellaria media

february 18, 2011

suburbia

clark county washington - introduced

 

bloom (with aphid):

 

whole-plant:

[Turtle]

well thens, mother nature saw fit to put the kybosh on flowering for the past 3 weeks. :weather_rain: :winter_brr: :weather_snowing: :weather_rain: :weather_snowing: :weather_storm:

 

i forgot to mention that the last weed, common chickweed, is edible. my sample raw tasted strongly of lettuce and i have read that cooked chickweed tastes spinachy. i will have to wait 'til they recover to cook some, as we hit 17ºF a week or so ago - an all time record low high - and it turned the foliage blackish. :omg:

 

some trees have started blooming; indian plum & alders that i have seen. i will try & get shots of the alder flowers - both female & male- as i haven't bagged that yet. i can't remember if i posted the indian plum in this thread or not. i shot it last year on feb 7 in lechtenberg park on my final visit to that rare bit of climax forest.

 

i'll leave off then with that photo and one of the not-quite-ripe fruit and invite you all to join in here with your stories & photos.

 

indian plum - Oemleria cerasiformis (aka oso-berry and skunk bush)

february 7, 2010

lechtenberg park

clark county washington - native

 

indian plum - Oemleria cerasiformis (aka oso-berry and skunk bush)

collected june 2, 2008

lechtenberg park

clark county washington - native

[Turtle]

while waiting out weather, i've whiled a while on my personal field-guide card set. i have 60-70 done and another 40 or so to go. photos on one side, and data on the other, with room for annotation with the text. i can sort them alphabetically by common name or scientific name, by genus, by color, by bloom season, by location, to name just a few. not gonna happen with a book i'll say. i'm thinking maybe to use a hole punch to key flower color along one side and maybe other keys on other sides of the cards. it might make the sorting & locating in the pile a bit quicker. here's what i got so far. >> :bouquet:

[Turtle]

alas, another invader. :doh: despite the name "pansy", this is a violet. rain & unseasonably cool temps continue here.

 

european field pansy @ burke herbarium

 

european field pansy - Viola arvensis (aka wild pansy, cult pansy)

april 8, 2011

suburbia

clark county washington - introduced

 

bloom:

 

whole plant:

[Turtle]

still little to no relief from the cold & wet. currently hunkering down for a coming wall of thunderstorms with rain & hail in the valleys & snow from 3,500 ft & up. :weather_storm: :weather_rain: :weather_snowing: nonetheless, it cleared a while yesterday mid-day & i checked out a new county park that i found while persuing google earth. let's hope it doesn't turn out the way lechtenberg park has. :rant:

 

anyway, it is 30+ acres of largely second-growth douglas fir -and no garry oaks that i saw- and plenty of understory stuff that is familiar with a mix of both native and introduced trees & wildflowers. as luck had it though, i found a native shrub that is new to me.

 

here's a link to the county's page; get it while it lasts! :lol: Orchards Park

 

i needed my hitchcock & cronquist flora of the pacific northwest to get onto the sub-species arborescens; some of the "shrubs" i saw stretched 15 to 20 feet or more in height. one of my guides said the fruit were toxic, though many other sources say they only need cooking to be edible. indeed, the berries were and are made into wine & jam.

 

the roots, flowers, bark, and berries seem to be widely used by native americans medicinally. Native American Ethnobotany (University of Michigan - Dearborn)

 

oh yeah; this year i am smeelling the flowrs, and these have a sweet & slightly sharp smell that doesn't seem to travel far and you have to rub your nose in them to get. the attached image is a detail of the bark on the trunk.

 

red elderberry@ burke herbarium

 

red elderberry - Sambucus racemosa arborescens (aka coast red elderberry)

april 27, 2011

orchards park

clark county washington - native

 

blooms:

 

whole-plant view:

[Turtle]

went walkabout...yada yada yada.

 

 

burr chervil @ burke herbarium

 

burr chervil - Anthriscus caucalis

april 30, 2011

suburbia

clark county washington - introduced

 

blooms:

 

whole-plant view:

[Turtle]

i collected some samples from the roadside as i went & came; some whole, some pinched, some rescued, some prisonered. this particular prisoner i took whole as it was rather too much in traffic to stop & shoot it in situ. :steering: :omg: i planted it in one of my beds just long enough to get my photos & id it, & then on finding it introduced i introduced it whole to my compost pile.

 

so we go. . . ... . . .. .... .. . .

 

 

field mustard @burke herbarium

 

field mustard - Brassica rapa (aka wild turnip, common mustard)

april 30, 2011

suburbia

clark county washington - introduced

 

blooms:

 

whole-plant view with leaf detail:

[Turtle]

i might never have id'd this one if not for the Plant Identification Key function at the burke herbarium site. none of my picture guides have it & as good as hiccup & krunktwist are, their book is no key. anyways, this plant is from saturday's walkabout & another introduced delicate beauty now headed for hades. :evil: :lol: ... . . ..

 

 

>> lewiston cornsalad @burke herbarium

 

lewiston cornsalad - Valerianella locusta (aka lamb's lettuce)

april 30, 2011

suburbia

clark county washington - introduced

 

blooms:

 

whole-plant view:

[Turtle]

so thens, this is the last wildflower from saturday's walkabout. i noticed i posted the same species last year, but on review i think i may have mis-identified it and that what i really had then was a Lomatium. :shrug: no matter. :lol: weather is breaking a bit so hoping the hunting improves soon. :smilingsun:

 

beyond the hunting, i'm nurturing some wildflower seedlings in my window-sill & hoping to get the timing right on putting them out so they don't croak. i have some large-leaf avens - Geum macrophyllum, bi-color lupines - Lupinus bicolor, western buttercups - Ranunculus occidentalis, and a california poppy - Eschscholzia californica. outside it's the second year for my big-leaf lupines from seed, Lupinus polyphyllus ssp polyphyllus & i'm hoping they bloom this year. :bouquet: that is all. . . . . . . .

 

 

american yellow-rocket @burke herbarium

 

american yellow-rocket - Barbarea orthoceras (aka american wintercress)

april 30, 2011

lacamas heritage trail

clark county washington - native

 

blooms:

 

whole-plant view with leaf detail:

[Turtle]

it's a drizzly mizzly bright drab day & the best i had in me was a hobble to my garden. fortunately good is as good gets & i found it a good day to find buds on my Lupinus polyphyllus polyphyllus . this has taken only 2 [math]\frac{1}{2}[/math] years. :clock: i gathered the seeds for them from the summit of the cinder-cone named green mountain & i have some suspect purple asters from seeds i collected at the foot & still have not identified. no buds on said "asters" yet, but the foliage is distinctly not the smallish basal clumps of last year.

 

anyways, i can run on, but have to run off. did you know lupines are nitrogen fixing plants? another new one on me. attached is the rest that there is to say about the botany of desire.

[Turtle]

so thens, apparently a native nitrogen-fixing lupine can actually facilitate an establishment of invasive weeds!! i feel so used. :doh: here's a paper on it. >> A native nitrogen-fixing shrub facilitates weed invasion

 

i have grown lupinus polyphyllus pallidipes for a number of years; got that seed in a commercial wildflower mix. while they are larger than my polyphyllus, they have no buds yet. see attached.

 

sky. see attached.

 

possible aster. i may have a shot somewhere of the flower...still looking. new foliage...see attached.