Bravely blooming underfoot

So tiny! I was looking at lichens on old logs on the Oyster Bay dunes, when I realized I was kneeling on a carpet of flowers smaller even than the lichens.

Draba sp., possibly Draba verna.

The flowers of Draba verna, the common draba, have 4 white petals, each petal divided into two "Mickey Mouse ears" (says my guide book). The petals are about 2.5 mm. long, not much bigger than a grain of sand. That looks about right.

Some are going to seed already; look in the lower right corner of the photo for one. Here are more:

The silicles will be up to 1 cm. long, 4 times the size of the petals.

I submitted the photos to iNaturalist.

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¡Tan minúsculos! Estaba observando líquenes en los troncos viejos de las dunas de Oyster Bay, cuando me di cuenta que estaba de rodillas encima de un tapete de flores más chicas aun que los líquenes.

1. Draba sp., probablemente Draba común, D. verna. Las flores de esta especie, según mi libro guía, tienen 4 pétalos, cada uno de estos divididos en dos. "Orejas del Ratón Mickey" los llama el libro. Los pétalos miden 2,5 mm., aproximadamente el tamaño de un grano de arena grande.
2. Algunas flores ya están formando semillas. Las silículas llegan hasta 1 cm. de largo, 4 veces el tamaño de los pétalos.

Subí las fotos a iNaturalist.

Flower spotting

 April showers (of which we had plenty) bring May flowers, so the saying goes. And it's May, so I went flower hunting down by the river.

There were salmonberry flowers:

Looks like something has been feasting on a leaf already.

And bleeding hearts, all very pale this year.

Dicentra formosa

Always one of my favourite flowers.

Hiding under the leaves, I found the yellow flowers of twinberries, and some buds:

Lonicera involucrata

The flowers grow in pairs, each pair surrounded by a cup of large bracts. The berries will be blue-black, also in pairs.

And down in the grass by the riverside, many small white flowers with lilac markings:

One of the drabas?

Overhead, by the parking lot, wild cherries line the river bank.

I know they're cherries because last year, I picked and ate a few. They were sour.

And I'm still sorting the rest.

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Las lluvias de abril, dicen, traen las flores de mayo. Y estamos en mayo, así que fui a caminar al lado del rio para buscarlas.

Fotos: 

1. Había flores de salmonberry, Rubus spectabilis; sus frutas son parecidas a las frambuesas.
2. Y corazones sangrantes, siempre una de mis flores favoritas. Este año salieron muy pálidas.
3. Más. Son flores nativas, Dicentra formosa.
4. Escondidas bajo las ramas encontré las flores amarillas de Lonicera involucrata, la baya gemela.
5. Las flores crecen dos juntas en en cada bráctea. Las bayas son casi negras.
6. Entre las hierbas y pasto junto al rio, crecen estas florecitas blancas, una de las Draba.
7. Y el cerezo nativo alza sus ramas cargadas de flores al lado del estacionamiento. Sé que es un cerezo porque el año pasado coseché algunas cerezas y las comí. Eran amargas.

Y sigo revisando las demás.

Shelter

Ma Nature gets an early start on the spring growing season; a crack in a log makes a good cold frame.

Moss and the earliest tiny flowers (Draba sp.?) Tyee Spit

A knothole works, too. Moss and Cladonia lichen, Oyster Bay

Mosses, already bearing sporophytes,

Moss, lichen, and sprouting plants with red leaves. Oyster Bay little wood.

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Cuando, al finales del invierno, la madre Naturaleza quiere adelantarse a la primavera, un buen sitio para establecer su invernadero es en las grietas de un troncón viejo.

Fotos:

1. Musgos y las primeras florecitas (parece que son Draba sp.) en campo abierto en Tyee Spit.
2. Un nudo en la madera sirve muy bien. Líquenes Cladonia y musgos.
3. Musgos que ya llevan sus esporofitos.
4. Musgos, líquenes y brotes de una pequeña planta con hojas rojas. En el bosquecito de Oyster Bay.

Unexpected glory

You're looking at a weedy, stony bit of disturbed ground sandwiched between logging road and logging slash; nothing to see here. And then you stop and look again. Look down.

Better still, kneel down.

So tiny!

I think these are one of the Draba species, although I can't find a match. The flowers; four mouse-ear petals, white with yellow markings; match the drabas. But the leaves march up the stem, with flowers sprouting from the axils. Most of the Drabas I know carry the flowers atop bare stalks.

Update: it is Euphrasia nemorosa, Common eyebright. Good name!

The largest of the leaves, measured at home, was 8 mm long.

Unusual leaves, with spent flower base.

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Estás viendo un terreno abandonado, cubierto de hierba mala y piedras, entre un camino para camiones madereros y un bosque destrozado por esos camiones. No hay nada que vale la pena observar.

Y entonces miras otra vez. Miras hacia tus pies.

Te pones de rodillas.

Porque aquí ves estas flores miniaturas.

Creo que son una especie del género Draba; las flores blancas tienen los cuatro pétalos en forma de oreja de ratón. Pero las hojas suben por todo el tallo, con flores brotando en las axilas. Las otras Draba que he visto llevan sus flores sobre un tallo sin hojas.

La hoja más grande, medida en casa, alcanzó a los 8 mm.

Not a prickly pear

In the new planters that make up the "garden" in the hospital's "Garden Walk", the gardeners' choices - native salal and white azaleas - are struggling. The soil is too dry; the spring rains evaporated quickly in the warm weather. Salal, especially, is a rainforest plant, and thrives on cool, dripping cliff faces. Only one of the azaleas has managed to produce flowers: two small flowers.

Tiny Drabas are pinch-hitting; each planter holds several, all blooming merrily. No water? No problem! Morning dew will do; or last night's brief fog.

Draba sp. One of 400+. White, four-petalled flowers, long, purplish siliques. 

Most of the leaves are basal. And very hairy.

Those white blobs looked interesting. Zooming in: 

A white, plastic-looking foam. Under the microscope, they're the same; blobs of foam, some with a torn top.

And look at that prickly pear imitation! No wonder whoever added that white stuff chose the underside of the leaf!

Why we kneel in vacant lots.

Taking a shortcut across a vacant lot this afternoon, I noticed a tiny moss, barely the height of my shoe soles.

Funaria hygrometrica, Cord moss.

I have probably seen it before; it's common enough. But I had never noticed how the stems curl. I thought it was from the weight of the ripening spore capsules; the brown, dry ones are standing upright. I was jumping to conclusions, and got it wrong, as so often happens.

Half an inch high, if that. That big green leaf in back is a small cloverleaf.

This moss is also known as Water-Measuring Moss, because in dry weather, the mature stems curl and twist. "Dry weather", here in the spring, probably means any day it's not actively raining. These plants were on a smear of gravelly soil, hard-packed, and thoroughly dry.

Green capsules, fat and luscious, and brown capsules, wrinkled and open at the end, the spores already dispersed.

Companion flower, Common Draba or Whitlow grass. About as tall as my little finger.

If you look closely to the right of the flower; you can see the base of the moss, like small brown vases with one stem apiece.

Looking for info, I found a nice site with almost 200 photos of mosses arranged in alphabetical order. A quick, easily scanned reference, very handy.