April 2, 2016 Salish Sea, Pacific Northwest
Onward with my chapter of the “Illustrated Year-Catalogue of Tiny Life”, this time at another rugged south-facing grassy bluff on my island. This headland is a few miles east of Iceberg Point and there’s some overlap of flowers, but there are some differences, mainly due to topography and soil. It’s also a week later, and as we know, the parade of blooming wildflowers marches rapidly on in spring. I want to get in as much observation as I can before I leave town for a couple of weeks.
The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group. It is a place to note any observations you have made of the world around you. Rain, sun, wind...insects, birds, flowers...meteorites, rocks...seasonal changes...all are worthy additions to the bucket. Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the patterns that are quietly unwinding around us.
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As at Iceberg, most of the wildflowers are native. They are also mostly tiny and close to the ground, so I was crawling or lying flat to take these photos.
These first few are wildflowers that range widely, and you may see them where you live, or related species in their genera.
Some are much stranger. These next two don’t even have green foliage.
This tiny plant below is the size of your thumb. We only saw it in contrast to its mossy background. One of the common names for this close relative of Miner’s Lettuce — Serpentine Spring Beauty — comes from its being frequently found on serpentine soil, a notoriously difficult nutrient setting for plants. In Besame’s recent Bucket about a serpentine ecosystem in California she mentioned there’s a database for how much affinity a plant has for serpentine environments, ie. is it an indicator or endemic? My readings about the geology of the Point Colville area say it has a shallow soil layer over greenschists and phyllites, and while there may be some serpentine minerals, they are not dominant right here, although they are in terranes a few miles across Rosario Strait, visible from here.
Update: CalFlora lists it as 3.4, a “strong indicator” (thanks Besame!)
The feathery reddish plant below is Dwarf Owl’s-clover, a parasitic plant deriving at least some of its nutrients from the roots of other plants. The flowers are the same color as the reddish leaves, tucked into the axils by the stem.
My one non-native wildflower today is the Redstem Geranium or Filaree. Like its close relatives the Dovefoot and Cutleaf geraniums, the Redstem is of European origin, but it’s more abundant on this kind of dry bluff grassland rather than in lawns and along roadsides as the other are, so I’m including it as being distinctive to this kind of habitat.
The rest of these wildflowers have not quite bloomed yet, but I’m including them to mark this moment: first time to show color.
This last wildflower is still a long ways to flowering but I think you’ll like the color emerging from its green stem. The reddish knobs are vegetative buds, new sections of the cactus that will readily pop off and root in new locations if some hapless animal bumps into the mother cactus. Brittle Prickly Pear is tiny: each mother cactus is thumb-size.
There’s some lovely vegetation in the woods at Point Colville too, behind this open bluff. Perhaps I’ll post a Bucket of that part of my hike at a later date. We’d be turning away from the sea at this spot below to wander through an old forest.
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The Daily Bucket is now open for your nature observations. Tell us what you’re seeing in your own natural neighborhood these days. Seen any new wildflowers where you live?
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