Finn Slough: First, the Flowers

... and I do love alliteration!

A fascinating find; a chocolate lily. We finally made it to Finn Slough yesterday, and it was all that I hoped, and more; no wonder they make it the topic of an annual photo and artists' competition!

Painting the slough, the first necessity would be to lay in a good store of green. Reeds and grasses cover every flat spot; along the slopes, shrubs tower overhead.

Here's Laurie, down one of the walkways. At the entrance to this walk, among the rampant grasses, salmonberry bushes and roses, I discovered these.Chocolate lilies! Fritillaria. I had never seen them before; that's a lifer, as birders say.
These used to be eaten by the BC natives, who dug up the bulbous roots and boiled or dried them. Now, of course, we wouldn't dare; they are "shy-flowering", meaning that they don't flower for the first 3 or 4 years, and the land available to them is always at risk of being paved over. This could happen in Finn Slough; the residents are fighting a desperate battle to keep the developers out. (More on this later.)

Black twinberry, Lonicera involucrata: the yellow flowers have gone and the berries haven't shown up yet, but the bracts look like flowers themselves.
And red osier dogwood, Cornus sericea. Not a dogwood, though. I read that the name comes from "dague" or "dagger", because the wood supposedly makes good skewers. I am not exactly convinced.
Comfrey. Probably a purposeful import. Often used as a home remedy for what-ails-you.
Skunk cabbage. No longer in flower, but I couldn't resist photographing it from the vantage point of an elevated walkway. It's not often I get anything but a side view.
The grey around the base shows the high-water level for the slough.

Next: history and old boats. And older buildings.