The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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May 29, 2019
Salish Sea, PacificNorthwest
These phenology observations are a couple of weeks out of date but are still valuable in the big picture of what and when, so I’m posting a picture gallery of what was blooming and active out at the south-facing bluff near my home on that day. And of course pretty flowers and bugs are always fun to gaze upon. These are all native wildflowers.
The names I’ve copy-pasted from the Pacific Northwest Wildflowers website (www.pnwflowers.com). I’ve noticed their taxonomy is not always up to date though. I’ll make corrections as I see them. A good plant list for this National Monument site is here: kwiaht.org/...
The blue camas was done for the year and the Chocolate lilies were down to just a few. Death Camas was going more to seed than in flower by now but still quite a few in bloom.
Residual soil moisture in some areas was keeping the grasses green. Where the soil is shallow the grasses have turned summer brown already.
Many of the purple native wildflowers were in bloom now.
I tried to find a spot where both the brodeia and onion were blooming next to each other for a color comparison, but they don’t really grow in the same areas. The onion likes the rocky headland and cliffside more than the brodeia.
The tiny bicolor lupine was pretty much done but the lovely furry Chick lupine, also quite short, was just coming into bloom. Usually Chick lupine is purple, but here we have a white version. Like many of the native wildflowers these tend toward bare rocky spots like the cliffside or along the path where tall nonnative grasses don’t shade them out.
Vole trail through the meadow. The greyer-green foliage of Oregon Sunshine shows up as a contrast to the more typical greens.
Puget Sound Gumweed was just starting to bloom (ASTERACEAE, Grindelia integrifolia). The Calif buttercups were done. Seaside Plantain is flowering. I love its purplish foliage.
Not sure who this bee is. Busy on the Cow Parsnip.
In the trees behind the open meadow Twinflower was just starting to bloom. Its evergreen foliage carpets the pathsides but only in this season does Linnaeus’ favorite flower open up. It’s a favorite for me too.
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High overcast cloud layer today and much cooler after the “marine push” yesterday. Windy most of yesterday, about 30 knots, blowing the record hot air from earlier this week over to east east of the Cascade mountains. Calm now. Temps in the 60s.
What’s the nature news in your neighborhood?
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Friday, Jun 14, 2019 · 6:03:08 PM +00:00 · OceanDiver
Editing title to clarify this site is a headland not an actual berg.
Re the name of this site:
The smooth rock face in the picture below has not been eroded by ocean waves nearby, although you can tell by the washed-up driftwood that waves pound this little cove. In fact, it was thousands of years of glaciation that has ground this solid rock smooth. Tectonic forces have fractured the bedrock of the islands but you can see grooves carved across the surface intersecting the cracks. In some places the grooves are enormous, like the one below. Some large boulder embedded at the base of a mile-thick icesheet ground through the bedrock creating this channel. It’s oriented north-south. If you look closely you can see small grooves aligned with the large one. Imagine the force that could erode this groove into solid rock! Such features were so impressive the U.S. Coast Survey of 1854 named this headland Iceberg Point in recognition of these “remarkable deep and smooth marks of glacial action.” (Washington State Place Names, Phillips, 1971).