Goat's beards and creambush

The woods and hillsides are softened this month with large sprays of tiny white or cream flowers.

Holodiscus discolor, aka Ocean spray creambush, or ironwood, against a background of the cliff face below Elk Falls.

Goat's beard, Aruncus dioicus. Beside the trail, Elk Falls. Also known as "spaghetti flower".

When I was a kid in summer camp at Ferrer Point, on the west coast of Nootka Island (to the west of Vancouver Island), one of the cabins had a signpost: "Ocean Spray Cabin," it said. I always wondered about that; the cabin was at the top of a long, steep hill down to the hidden beach below, a beach not suited for swimming, where the waves rolled in from the open ocean. But they rolled, they didn't spray, and anyhow, the spray would never, ever reach anywhere near the cabin. So the name didn't make sense to me.

It wasn't till decades later that I discovered the plant that gave the cabin its name. By the time we arrived for camp, the flowers would have dried on the branches, so I hadn't noticed them. My interests at the time were the edible berries in abundance in the forest; huckleberries, salmonberries, thimbleberries, salal. (It was long ago, before the invasive blackberries had made their appearance.) Tiny dried flowers were not on my radar.

The alternate name, ironwood, refers to the hardness of its wood. First Nations peoples used it for a variety of tools, including halibut hooks, bark scrapers, and as pegs for carpentry, before nails were available.

Why the goat's beard, which kind of, sort of, looks goat's beard-y enough, is also called "spaghetti flower" is a new wonderment.