Trilliums!

Today, at Cougar Creek:

More on these, plus ducklings, later. For now, back to the salt mines.

More photos added. ..

... to the Flickr Blogger Bioblitz group. (And that's a tongue-twister, of sorts. Or I should have been in bed long ago. Or both.) Including a "Mystery Tree", and some unidentified seedlings.

Help needed. Do you recognize any of them?

And here is another mystery: this is a wild mustard. The flowers are brilliant yellow. (See detail, below.) To the naked eye, this mass of buds looks a dark purplish-brown, as do the stems. I took the photo in lieu of making notes. At home, the photo showed the buds as bright pink. Today I went back, found the plant, and brought a sample home. Took a pile of photos, under different light conditions. Same thing; the purplish mass always turns out a bright pink.

Why? Can anyone explain this?

Loaded a stack of photos...

... to Flickr. And drove Laurie crazy looking up elusive weeds in all our manuals and guide books.

Another couple of days, and we'll be back to normal. Except a bit sleepier.

For now, I have 6 books stacked on the desk, 7 on the floor, 2 back on the shelves as they turned out to be useless, and 3 on Laurie's desk. The invertebrate ones are still waiting in their places. I never realized how many of these books we had!

Just checking in, to make sure she gets counted. Her mate is small and black, and doesn't pose.

Bioblitzing the creepy crawlies

Years ago, I read a book by David Bodanis, The Secret Garden: Dawn to Dusk in the Astonishing Hidden World of the Garden, and was enthralled by this vibrant, busy, teeming world that we so heedlessly pass through. I have since spent many a peaceful evening examining the inner parts of tiny plants and the beasties that live on and under them.

So it was inevitable that I would start and end the Bioblitz with my eye to the magnifying lens.

This, however, is my first attempt at photographing what I am finding. Not the best photos, but definitely better than my scrawled notes and sketchy drawings.

These are all inhabitants of the soil around my back door; most too small to see with the naked eye; some, even with the 40x hand microscope are just little dots with legs. You'll see what I mean here:
The larger beetle-like thing* here was barely visible without a lens. Up on the left, there is a tinier beetle. I found quite a few of them; I could see them walking around, sometimes see that they are green, sometimes even see the two antennae. Nothing more.

About that larger one; they hop, like a grasshopper, whenever they are disturbed. There were many of them in a couple of pine cones. (*Later: these have been identified as springtails, Orchesella cincta. See note below photo on Flickr.)

This one was big enough to track without a lens. I caught him and photographed him on a paper towel. About 1 1/2 cm. (5/8 inch).
A millipede. Very tiny.
A pale brownish mite.
A centipede, the "large" variety. A bunch of smaller ones were impossible; too fast, too pale, too tiny.

A spider on a clay pot.
On the bottom of that pot, collembola, springtails. Isn't this one cute? I love these things; so busy, always, so shiny white, even in a bucket of mud, so irrepressible. (See note by Frans Janssens.)
Miniatures: red, shiny mites. These guys are really, really tough; put a piece of Scotch tape on them to hold them still while you go for a better light, come back and find them walking around in the glue. Pour alcohol on them, to disolve the glue; they slow down a bit, then recover and go on about their business as if nothing had happened. (Other beasties would die instantly.) I don't know if they get a hangover.
And macro-biota; an earthworm, trying to get out of the light. I left this in the larger size, so you can click on it and see the "ribs"; it looks rather like one of those outlet hoses for your dryer.
Not photographed: something that scuttled out of view very quickly. Baby slugs. Sowbugs. And, in the water in the bottom of that pot, some tiny swimming worms, about the length of the springtails, but much skinnier, of course.

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Flickr Blogger Bioblitz Photo Pool

A break from making lists

Abandoned house; Turtle Valley, BC

And an old barn, with light shining through the roof.

Just because.

Notes along the way: Bioblitz homework

Later tonight, animalia from my lawn.

But for now, bits and pieces picked up as I organize and fill out my notes:

• Centipedes have one pair of legs per segment. Millipedes have two (mostly). They move them in sequence, so it looks like a wave moving down the body. So the one I found in the vacant lot was a centipede. One closer to home (and smaller) was a millipede.
• Sow bugs and pill bugs are not the same. Pill bugs form a ball when disturbed; sow bugs do not. (And I always called them all wood bugs, rolled up or not.)
• Google images works, unless you don't know what you're looking for. It helps to have at least a genus name.
• It was Montia exigua. Was. Now it's Claytonia exigua. At least I found it.
• Carex macrocephala is red-listed.
• Something weird: I am not in the least squeamish about assorted bugs and beasties, but whenever I see a photo of a millipede on someone's finger, I shudder involuntarily.
• Bug Guide is a great source. Of bug id, naturally.
• "Although they look white to the human eye, many springtails are beautifully colored. Since they are so small, people can't see the colors without a microscope." From The Field Museum.

Golden blondes, with mud: Bioblitzing the vacant lot

It rained all morning, as expected. Which was just as well, because I had work to do. But around supper-time, the sun came out, brilliantly. I grabbed a sweater and my camera and headed across the street.

There was a young guy, 20ish, poking at something in the leaf litter at our gate. I stopped to see what he was doing, and he came over, holding something on a twig. A small vertebra, he said, probably from a raccoon. How it got to our gate, he didn't know; there were no other bones in evidence.

He wanted me to take a photo, which I did. I explained what I was doing with the camera. "You'll find raccoons over there," he said. "And skunks."

It definitely is raccoon and skunk heaven. A boggy, weedy field, a stand of small weed trees, and a huge mound of blackberry bushes; no human can enter there, no hawk or eagle attack. And all around, houses with garbage cans to raid.

The north end, though, is flat and open, with a trail of sorts. Which I skipped, cutting across along the edge of the blackberry thicket, keeping to the hummocks of grass, where it was drier. (Much good that did me; one of the dry-looking areas turned out to be deep, soft mud.)

The field boasts a grand mix of weeds. Tall bog grass, escaped turf grasses and buttercups form the base, interspersed with trailers of blackberry, on its way to claiming the whole area. Mixed in, thistles, clover, dandelions, vetch, dock, two varieties of horsetail, bindweed, sorrel, broom and young alder trees. There are others that I can't identify, this being the pre-flowering season. In the pools, rushes and green slime.

(I'm going to be busy the next couple of days, just looking up the species names!)

And, as it happens with far too many vacant lots, the area was littered with castaways from the houses around. A bookcase, well rotted. Drawers, likewise. Two tires, car and truck. Assorted remnants of carpet, old fans, a propane tank, moldy lumber, one nice shoe and wind-blown fast-food containers. As expected.

But these additions are often used as havens by the smaller residents. I turned over boards and the small tire, and things scuttled for fresh cover.

Except for the slugs. They oozed. Easily photographed, were it not for the precarious footing. I got a few decent shots, anyhow.

First discovery: a tiny grasshopper on a board. About 1 cm. long.
Slug # 1. More or less a normal slug for this area, but still rather small; it's early in the year. Compare with the sowbug below him.
A black beetle on dry reeds. He didn't stay around for a second shot. 2 cm.
Water striders, on the lower left of the photo. (Click to see the indentations their feet make on the water.) These were at least 2 cm. long; a tiny, blackish one was too fast to catch.
Another slug. This is more like the ones I find in my garden plot, across the street. Brown, but probably the common gray slug, which varies in colour.
A snail shell, the common local variety. The resident seems to have left home.
Here's where things start to get strange.
An earthworm, burrowing through one of those compressed-wood planks.
A sowbug and a -pede (centi- or milli-? I counted 20 legs. Something more to look up.) Hiding in the angle of an up-turned desk drawer.
On that tire, I discovered a blond slug. I had never seen one around here this colour; Googling, I found its mate in the UK.
(And look closely: is that another black beetle in the tread?)
On the same tire, a tiny golden spider, in a big hurry.
A golden beetle. This one was about half the size of the black ones, and in a position where I could barely reach across with the camera. Sorry for the poor quality of the photo.
And the find of the day: an albino sowbug, on the bottom of another board. I didn't know such a thing was possible.
And no, I didn't see any raccoons. Nor skunks. Maybe if I went back at midnight, with a flashlight.

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Flickr Blogger Bioblitz Photo Pool.

Sidetracked! Bioblitzing Boundary Bay

This was not in the plans: the air around home was bad today, and Laurie's lungs were protesting. The best thing we know to do for that is to head to the shore.

So we "blitzed" the Boundary Bay beach, instead of my vacant lot.
On the beach, we found seaweeds, crabs (dead and alive) seagulls and mallards, and millions of small snails. (I have the species written down somewhere; I'll find it soon.) More or less the usual.

Coming back, we cut across the dunes. We had not been there in the spring time before; the dried beach grasses we expected were still scarce. Instead, we found these:
I have never seen these. Does anybody know what they are? Here are two more views: these are all taken from an ant's-eye viewpoint. I had to lie full-length on the sand to get them. It was silky-soft and warm, down there out of the wind.



This one looks familiar. I think I can find it in my books.

Sourgrass sprouts and tiny moss.

The moss, close-up:
More moss, with lichen, on a log:
And tiny yellow and white lichens (I think) on a burnt log:
A miniature blue flower:
And some of the grass-like plants that will cover the dunes later in the season:
Farther up the beach, close to the slough, we found silverweed:
And over the slough, violet-green swallows chased mosquitos. A beautiful end to the walk, but almost impossible to track with a camera. I got a bit of video and this photo:

Supper-time. Tired and happy. And feeling good!

And tomorrow, if it's not pouring rain, the vacant lot.

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Link to Flickr Blogger Bioblitz Photo pool.

Bioblitz: the sites

After a childhood in a remote area of Vancouver Island, in a settlement with around 25 inhabitants, "greenery" was important to me, the crabs and gulls and seals as much my companions as the humans. Since then, I have lived most of my life in urban spaces, including 10 years in that most urban of environments, Mexico City. So I guess it is understandable that I have always paid special attention to those pockets of unpaved wildness the planners and developers and landscapers have somehow missed. I have learned to appreciate the tenacity with which dandelions claim cracks in the sidewalk and the versatility of sparrows which raise an extra brood through the winter, by building their nests in the housing of the lights of a covered parking lot. And the immense variety of life, under these most demanding of circumstances.

So of course, planning for the Bioblitz, I chose two of these forgotten areas.

First, my backyard. A few years back, we sold our property, and I moved into Seniors' apartments (55+; I was barely 55). I am fortunate to have found a place in a small building, and with its own garden space, a lawn and a double row of cedars cutting it off from the next development. Only one other person on my side of the building bothers with her space; the rest is mine and the birds'. A logical place to start.

Next, just across the street is a block-wide stretch of vacant space, half of it semi-fenced for a possible future development project, the rest undisturbed since the years when this was farm area, and that was a bog. What has "Mother Nature" done with this? I aim to find out, starting this afternoon.

Saturday and Sunday, though, I patrolled "my" yard. This is an area about 275 feet by 40 feet. It has been in lawn for some 25 years, and has been mowed regularly, but, apart from the two personal spaces where my neighbour and I have been building shade gardens, nothing else. Clay soil, shady and boggy. As much moss as grass, lawn weeds, occasional mushrooms. Beside it, a row of evergreens, a fence and path, another row. Ivy has taken over and had climbed most of the trees. Last summer, Laurie and I spent a day cutting and pulling it down, so now it is just at the base. There is still a lot of dead ivy up in the trees.

I am ignoring the personal garden areas in this survey; they feature non-native plants which are not expected to invade the "wild" area. The hedges, where they still survive, are box.

The first task was to catalogue the weeds in the lawn and the edging. Quite a list:
Shrubs -

• oregon grape, mahonia aquifolium
  
• salmonberry, rubus spectabilis,
• thimbleberry, rubus parviflorus
  
• wild rose, rosa nutkana
• hardhack, spirea douglasii
• kudzu (what th-?)
  
• rhododendron, rhododendron californicum

The rhodos are native, but purposely planted. The other shrubs are volunteer.

Around the edges -

• bindweed, convovulus sepium
• dandelion, taraxacum officinale
  
• English ivy, hedera helix
• sword fern, polystchum munitum
• lady fern, athyrium filix-femina
• foxglove, digitalis purpurea
• periwinkle
• fringecup
  
• horsetail, equisetum arvense

In the lawn itself -

• wall lettuce, lactuca muralis
• buttercup, ranunculus repens
• red sorrel, rumex acetosella
  
• goosefoot of some sort (probably)
• plantain, plantago major
• self-heal, prunella vulgaris, all over the place
  
• some coarse rosettes that I can't identify; nasty ones that kill everything around them
• hairy cat's ears? (see photo above: if you recognize this as something else, please tell me.)
  
• and three separate varieties of moss.

More variety than I expected; I never really looked all that closely before. This is a good exercise in observation.

Laurie walked me up and down the row of trees, pointing out the different varieties; my head was spinning by the time we'd finished. Hemlock and cedar and some variety of pines, maybe a Douglas fir. A couple of plane trees, a young cherry in bloom, three vine maples, a couple of alder, and a recent addition, just sprouting leaves. I don't know what it is, yet.

Next post: the two, four, six, eight and many-footed residents of this plot. And the preliminary survey of the vacant lot.

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Flickr Blogger Bioblitz photo pool

Busy, busy day, ending with beetles

A quick post, because I am so tired.

17 hours ago, we were on the road. First, the Fraser Valley Antique Fair in Queen's Park, New Westminster. We go to a fair every couple of months; the Fraser Valley one has been a favourite. It's a pity (from our point of view) that it seems to be gradually turning into a "Collectibles" fair. Bottles, postcards, sports cards, toys, "vintage" kitchen stuff. Interesting, in a way, but not the Japanese porcelain that Laurie is hunting.

He did find a nice teapot. Not antique, but old. And I picked up a pair of abalone salt shakers.

And saw this, that I liked, but have no place for: it's big!Laurie says they should have been ashamed, hanging that material up where kids -- kids! -- could see it.

Next, a stroll around the neighbourhood and the park, taking photos.

Coffee and shopping for organic foods, at 6th and 6th.

3:00 PM, a first birthday party. We didn't stay for supper, although the mole enchiladas they were making looked wonderful.

Birthday girl, getting ready to walk.

Home again. Out to do a first walk-around with the camera for the Bioblitz. It was cold and threatening to rain, so I brought in a couple of pine cones, shook them out and examined the beasties scurrying for cover. The usual millipedes, sowbugs, baby slugs. A frantic thing like a mini-daddy-longlegs. A bunch of black and white beetles, about 3.5 mm long. And an even tinier one I had never seen before, green and barely 0.8 mm long.

How to find out what that is, I am not sure. It can wait until tomorrow. I am going to bed.

629 comments and counting ... Response to VTech.

What can one say about the events of last week? That has not already been said? What can one add to the comments on a post that already has elicited (so far) 629 responses? Not much, so I'll just point to that post; it speaks to and for me.

A professor at Virginia Tech writes:

"We believe in people, in their joys and pains, in their good ideas and their wit and wisdom. We believe in human rights and dignity, and we know what it is for those to be trampled on by brutes and vandals. We may believe that the universe is pitilessly indifferent but we know that friends and strangers alike most certainly are not.
...

Those of us with the slightest shred of deceny do not tell widows to deal with it, to get over it. That the world can be callous is no reason to be so myself. I know that no family could ever get over this loss, that no family should ever be expected to get over this loss -- either by themselves, by religious rhetoricians bearing false platitudes, or by inane political pundits -- but that not getting over the loss does not preclude some other kind of happiness, some other source of joy, at some other time. Not now, not in this moment, not when they have moved on, but only when it comes to them one day, like light dawning slowly.

We know the world is cold, and that only people can make it warmer. We believe we can live in this imperfection, like a child can live without fulfilling her desperate wish for wings. We rail against injustice and tragedy, not the absence of deeper guarantees."

Complete post (with 2 Updates, so far) on here, on Daily Kos.

Three AM.

It's the end of another too-full day, and almost the start of the next.

I used to tell myself, back when the kids were growing up, "Just a few more years, until they're teens -- make that gone off to college -- make that settled down -- make that don't need a babysitter -- well, anyhow, soon now, things will slow down. And I will catch up on all the stuff in to-do file."

Silly notion.

A big file landed on my desk this afternoon. On top of a promised-and-deadlined translation. And the weekend was already overbooked.

I was tearing my hair out, when I looked up from the screen and saw this outside my window:
... and put aside my paperwork and went out to pre-survey my plot for the bioblitz. A chickadee was calling, "Here, pretty!" and the robin told me to "Cheer up!"
So I did.

Who wants life to be slow, anyhow? That's boring!

Red Samphire, Salicornia var. rubra, pickleweed, saltwort...

... or you may know it as "swampfire" or "sea asparagus".

I like "swampfire"; that is what it looks like, from a distance.

Driving from Kamloops to Merritt, three summers ago, we passed an area of low-lying ponds and marshes fringed with tall green grasses, a welcome sight in that dry country. And by one of them, a long spill of blood-red. There was a gate in the fence, and a parking space; we stopped and walked down.

I had expected flowers. Or at the least, red seed pods. Not this: segmented, leafless, fat stems, red from the ground up, up to about 8 inches tall. Like a succulent, but not like any one I had seen before. I pulled up a few, roots and all, to take home for identification.

We couldn't find it in any of our BC books, but it showed up in a Canada-wide reference book; it grows, the book said, in the prairie provinces, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. (I have since found it in a BC Online guide, E-Flora BC. And it is common in Australia.) It grows in alkaline and saline soils, near sloughs and salt marshes.

I didn't realize how well aclimatized it was to the salt, until I ran into another variety of the same plant, Salicornia pacifica, on the beach at Boundary Bay. Reading up on this, I found that, not only does it tolerate salt, it needs it to survive.

The plant has a unique way of dealing with the salt; some salt-marsh plants secrete the salt to the surface of the leaves, leaving them covered with shining crystals. Salicornia, instead, moves the excess salt it takes from the soil into vacuoles in the stem tips, where it is contained behind a protective membrane. When the salt content becomes too much, the cell dies and drops off. Which is a good way to get rid of it, but so efficient is saltwort at this job that it needs to replenish the supply. In technical terms, it is an obligatory halophyte.

Samphire, both red and green, is edible, a good source of vegetable oil and can be used as a flavourful addition to salads; Googling around, I found that it is sold in the UK as a vegetable, which can be simply boiled up and eaten with butter, or added to recipes. Market gardeners irrigate it with sea water.

And from my old blog, I copy this recipe, from "Cooks Afloat":

SUMMERTIME WILD PEA-SAMPHIRE-ORANGE SALAD

1 cup sea asparagus
1 cup shelled beach peas
1 orange, peeled and chipped
2 tbsp toasted pine nuts

Dressing:

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp Dijon mustard
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp sugar.

Sea asparagus, known as American glasswort or Pacific samphire (Salicornia pacifica), is a succulent, salty-tasting plant with leafless jointed stems. The blue green plant grows around tide flats and salt marshes.
Beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus or littoralis) is a perennial herb that grows on sandy beaches. The leaves are rounded and japonicus has tendrils. American vetch has similar seed pods-but is toxic.
In early summer, gather only the tender upper stems of sea asparagus, wash thoroughly to remove salt. Cover with water, bring to a boil and drain immediately. Add a small amount of fresh water. Steam until tender-crisp, about 5 minutes. Drain well. Steam the beach peas for 5 minutes.

Toss beach peas with asparagus and let cool. Arrange on plates and top with orange and nuts. Toss dressing ingredients together and pour over salad. Serves 2.

Sounds good, but I think I'll try the samphire on its own, first.