Slatsz' Wildflower Walks 2012 - two: June 12, 2012 - blanket flower, dogbane, snowberry

Two hours and ten minutes. 217 photos, lots wasted chasing bugs. 90 keepers.

The day was dark. There was thunder in the distance. I didn’t see lightning. Occasional sprinkling rain, not wetting. I attempted a cloud photo, late, but it was not successful.

I went to the west end of the park to see if the mysterious tiny Vicia looking plants with the hairy white tufts were developing. I thought I had seen a bud in the computer. Didn’t even see a bud today.

There were a couple of meadow mushrooms on the edge of the road as I entered the park. Near them a well developed Grindelia squarrosa, curly-cup gum-weed.

I noticed that the patch of Eriogonum heracleoides, parsnip flowered buckwheat with a dominant red look were still red. I wondered of they would bleach and be white. They have not.

I headed toward the Opuntia fragilis, prickly pear cactus to see if it was developing. Its buds were developing but there was no sign of color as yet.

On the way I checked the Eriogonum umbellatum, sulfur buckwheat in the round dark green patch. They are developing slowly.

A few steps away there was a patch of buckwheat with similar leaves, taller and much scrawnier. I recorded them. A bit farther along I saw patches of the scrawny yellow buckwheat in the edge of a patch of the healthier looking yellow buckwheat.

I was on the lookout for broad leaved pinnate Potentilla and found them. Grant had noticed the difference when we walked together but I didn’t record it at that time. So it seems there are three Potentilla in the park. I am calling these Potentilla recta, sulfur cinquefoil.

I found a piece of somewhat dehydrated prickly pear a considerable distance from the patches in Import Corner.

I recorded the Antennaria species in that area.

I walked up to check the patch of Orobanche uniflora, naked broomrape. Still nothing showing at all. Grant thought it was possible that they don’t bloom every year. We didn’t find his patch, when we walked together.

I walked over to check the patch of Apocynum androsaemifolium, dogbane west of the south end of Long Rock Ridge. The main patch in deep apparently sub-irrigated grass showed a few buds but none blossoming. A couple of little plants in the shallow soil on the edge of the outcrop were in bloom.

There was a nice bug on a branch I had cut. I probably made thirty exposures trying to catch the little darling racing about.

I attempted another bug earlier. I think it was just an aphid. It was on my black towel but it was too quick for me.

The little apparent Vicia were everywhere, even so, I started south and west to check the patch I had seen first. Nothing was happening with them, either.

Only a short distance from the dogbane I found a couple of Gaillardia aristata, blanket flower in bloom.

While photographing the blanket flower I noticed a Holodiscus discolor, ocean-spray in bud. While I was photographing it, I noticed a scrawny little shrub that I thought was dog bane, spreading away from the main patch but I recorded it, thinking it didn’t look quite right. The color, size and shape of the blossoms was similar and the leaves were opposite but I thought I remembered that the dogbane leaves were ‘flat’ and glossy and these leaves were not glossy and they were in sort of a whorl around the branch.

I remembered that there was Symphoricarpos albus, snowberry in the patch of ocean spray I was looking at so I check them and they were in bud. I still wasn’t confident it was snowberry, though. But I checked a patch on the east end of the park later that I was sure was snowberry and its leaves and blossoms corresponded to these.

My ‘portable stump’ got into a couple of the photographs.

I had forgotten that I used to carry a bucket with supplies in it when April and I walked the wildflowers in the 1991 burn. I found it in my closet and put it back to work.

I have a 2 x 4 in it so I can sit on the bucket rather than kneel down for my photos but it doesn’t work very well. It’s dumped me on my back twice and a couple more times the 2 x 4 has slipped out from under me and I have fallen into the bucket. It seems that I ‘push back’ in some sort of stress response when I am making photos.

If I place it carefully with a bit of an uphill slant it’s fairly safe.

Grant loaned me knee pads. I haven’t tried them yet. I’ve taken to avoiding kneeling down when I can avoid it.

I stumbled into the patch of Antennaria I thought were Antennaria luzuloides, woodrush pussy-toes or silvery brown everlasting, earlier in the year and then lost. For some reason I couldn’t find them when I thought they might be blooming. Now they seem to be mostly in seeds and beyond, in husk. However, I think my not very good photographs might show signs of blossoms and even buds. I need to check again and make more careful photographs.

I saw the opportunity to frame a cloud photo with Ponderosa but, as I said …

I noticed a single blossom in a patch of Phlox caespitosa, tufted phlox on the edge of White Bitterroot Rock on the way back to the car.

I drove to the east end of the park to photograph the probable escaped domestic I saw and forgot to photograph previously in the row of boulders near the Euphorbia cyparissias,

Cyprus

spurge.

It has gone to seed. No telling how long ago it was in bloom. It was past bloom when I first noticed it a week or two ago.

I photographed the snowberry blossoms among the boulders for comparison to those I had photographed before. The leaves were different but I’m sure that is environmental.

The snowberry thickets seem almost always to be at the base of trees or tall shrubs. There is one large thicket out in the open on the east end.

This seems to be true of other shrubs. I talked to Ken about that. This is my paraphrase of what I think he told me. The birds roost in the trees and plant seeds with their morning poop as they fly off looking for breakfast.

I wanted to check Philadelphus lewisii, Syringa or mock orange, for buds … or possible blossoms but that was a long walk and I was already late for dinner with Rose. It would have to wait for next time.

This from the internet:

http://www.portlandnursery.com/plants/natives/philadelphus.shtml

“Flowering for several weeks starting in late May or early June, the tall, arching branches are covered with a multitude of snow-white blossoms of usually four petals, bright yellow in the center. After the petals fall, the sepals remain in a way that looks like a second, different type of flower, providing some longer seasonal interest.”

I have to remember to record the left-over sepals.

On the way back to the car I stumbled into the patch of strange, yellow blossom flowers. Their petals, such as they might have been, have withered but the disk seems fresh. The leaves have a familiar look. I can’t come up with the name of the other plant … ‘silver …’ something. The flowers were very different but the veining in the leaves was similar.

I had a lot of trouble photographing the leaves. The curl in them is a problem. I couldn’t keep them from rolling. Even creating a fold in the towel didn’t help me get the significant scalping of the edges of the leaves. I had to make do with a ‘side’ shot.

I am taking more time with my photos but I run out of patience as I run out of energy.