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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July 11, 2019
Pacific Northwest
I was going to run a Bucket with the pictures I took of beautiful Oceanspray and Red Elderberry a couple of weeks ago in their peak glory, until I went out yesterday to see how they were doing, the first time I’ve been out walking since then.
Rats.
They have both faded. Here’s what the Oceanspray looks like now, flowers gone brown, heading toward dry, limp and crispy.
And the Elderberry bushes have been stripped of their yummy berries. Yah I’m looking at you Ms Bushtit and your chums.
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Oh well what the heck, I’ll run my pretty pictures anyway. Consider most of this Bucket a tribute to peak season for these abundant local native shrubs.
June 29, 2019
The second half of June is peak season for one of our most exuberantly flowering native shrubs, Oceanspray (Holodiscus discolor, www.fs.fed.us/... ). These huge bushy plants are so abundant in these parts that from spring to fall they provide a general green background in our open woods and roadsides. As a pioneer species, Oceanspray does well in cleared, burned and developed sites where there’s full or partial sun. It doesn’t mind dry, shallow, nutrient-poor soil so we see it all over out here on our glacially scraped islands. In their glory time, they explode in froth of creamy white masses of flowers.
Oceanspray leafs out early but flowers later than most shrubs in our area. In late June, the earliest flowers were dropping their petals.
A couple of interesting facts about Oceanspray:
— Its foliage is relatively unpalatable to browsers. They’ll eat almost anything else in the area before making do with that less nutritious greenery.
— Its wood is very strong, which accounts for another common name it’s known by: Ironwood. It was
used for many tools and utensils by natives. It was made even harder by heating it over a fire and polishing it with horsetail stems. It was used for roasting tongs “because it won’t burn,” for digging sticks, fishing hooks, needles, canoe paddles, bows, and spear, harpoon, and arrow shafts, Oceanspray pegs were used in construction, when nails were not readily available.
nativeplantspnw.com/...
The other native shrub that stands out at the end of June is Elderberry, with its sprays of bright red berries. Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa, plants.usda.gov/...) prefers damper deeper soil than Oceanspray, but it also prefers at least partly sunny sites. Hummingbirds feed on Elderberry’s flower sprays earlier in spring and then robins and lots of other birds feast on the berries as they ripen. I hear constant rustling and crashing around in the Elderberry thickets in early summer.
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Other native shrubs in my neighborhood are maturing too.
Salmonberries are fruiting:
Snowberries are finishing their flowering and fruits are beginning to ripen.
Thimbleberries are just starting to get ripe now. It’s hard to catch a view of fully ripe berries since birds and chippies and all pick them immediately, but here’s one.
Plants change fast at this time of year. Worth taking walks around your neighborhood frequently to catch what’s in bloom or fruiting.
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Partly cloudy this morning in the PNW islands. Warming up after several showery foggy days.
What’s the nature news in your neighborhood?
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