Good excuse

In my Plants of Coastal British Columbia guidebook, there are 90 species of mosses with photos, not counting the 10 club mosses, which are not mosses, even if they look like moss. In my files, I have another 25 photos of moss from a guided moss walk; some correspond to the ones in the book; most don't. On the web these same species show up, with many more, still in the same area. BC, and note, that's Coastal BC, is a mossy place.

E-Flora BC, in their introduction to the mosses informs us that:

In British Columbia reasonable estimates indicate the following diversity of genera and species of bryophytes:

(With a list of 7 genera, which include about 958 species.)

This means that British Columbia possesses the richest diversity of any political division in Canada. It is also greater than the combined bryoflora of all of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains.

And my eyes are burning after staring and squinting at hundreds of photos of moss, looking for a match.

Even the same species can look different depending on its stage of growth, if male or female, and on the conditions in which you find it. (Squamish Environment Society)

I give up!

But they're beautiful; I don't need a guidebook to tell me that. These are growing on a rock in a clearing in the forest; they get a moderate amount of sunlight.

Curly moss with red stalks.

And fuzzy tips.

Just the basic moss.

The photo I found on the web that is most like these is labelled, "Moss of different species and life stages" (BCWrite). So helpful!

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Mi libro guía, "Plants of Coastal British Columbia", incluye 90 especies de musgo, cada una con su foto. Eso no incluye los llamados musgos de club, que no son musgos, aunque se parecen. Entre mis fotos a raiz de un paseo con una guía experta en musgos, hay otros 25, algunos de las especies del libro, pero la mayoría distintos. Buscando en el internet, encuentro muchos más, sin salir de esta esquinita del globo. BC, y hay que notar, que el libro cubre la zona de la costa de BC, es un sitio repleto de musgos.

El sitio web de E-Flora BC nos dice que: 

En la Columbia Británica, cálculos razonables nos indican la diversidad siguiente de géneros y especies de briófitos: 

(Y nos dan una lista de 7 géneros con sus aproximadamente 958 especies.) 

Esto quiere decir que BC posee la diversidad más rica de todas las entidades políticas de Canada. También sobrepasa el número de todos los briófitos de los Estados Unidos al oeste de las Montañas Rocosas.

Mis pobres ojos arden por haber estado buscando entre cientos de fotos de musgos, buscando uno en particular.

Aun las mismas especies pueden parecer distintas, según su etapa del crecimiento, o si son machos o hembras, o según las condiciones en que se hallan. (Squamish Environment Society)

¡Me rindo!

Pero son hermosos. No necesito tener un libro guía para saberlo. Estos musgos crecen encima de una roca en un sitio un poco abierto donde les llegan los rayos del sol.

Fotos: musgos sobre una roca.

La foto que encontré en el web que más se parece a estas fotos trae el título — Musgos de especies y etapas de vida distintas. — ¡Muchas gracias! ¡Eso lo aclara todo!

Biodiverse, very biodiverse

 We have some beautiful low tides coming up, but they're going to arrive here after dark. (Sunset these days falls around 7::30 PM.) I followed the tide as it started out in the late afternoon, and found anemones, feeding happily, then closing down as the water disappeared.

Window into a tide pool.

The surface of the water in the tide pool reflected the sky, but the shadow of my head revealed a pink-tipped green anemone, Anthopleura elegantissima, fully open. With it in this little tide pool are several rockweeds, and three red algae; a feathery, delicate one, a narrow-bladed species, and a broad blade; the white algae is a red that has been sun-bleached. On the right are strands of the brown Sargassum. And there are several fragments of the green sea lettuce, Ulva spp. Also present: periwinkle snails, limpets, and something orange, probably a sponge. And unseen, but always there in great numbers: the worms. And a clam on the sand nearby was spitting at me.

 

Still underwater, still waving those tentacles.

The colours of this anemone vary; the tips go from barely pink to red. The columns and the oral disc are sometimes bright green, in others they may be more of a yellowish cream. The green colour is usually due to the presence of single-celled green algae, but the anemone may also produce its own colour. The green algae are photosynthetic and provide a large part of the anemone's energy needs.

"Although the green colour present in some specimens is produced by the animals themselves, this process can only occur when the unicellular symbiotic alga Chorella is residing in their tissues." (Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest)

The lichens aren't the only composite species.

Very pink. The column is always covered by rows of tubercules, seen here as pale green bumps.

As the water recedes, the anemones start to shut down.

Edge zone; open tentacles on the right, closing, closed out of water.

And when the water is gone, they turn into yellowish donuts with cherry filling.

These anemones grow on rock. The sand has collected around them. As the sand dries, they will all shrink back to their base, and disappear from the surface, leaving only slight depressions. Until the tide comes in.

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En esta temporada, nos llegan unas buenas mareas bajísimas, pero (mala suerte) por este rumbo, la bajamar toca ya bien puesto el sol (que desaparece a las siete y media). A media tarde llegué a la playa y seguí el agua mientras se retiraba, encontrando unas anémonas, contentas con los tentáculos abiertos mientras había agua, y luego encogiéndose cuando se iba.

Foto #1: Una vista en un pocito mareal. La luz se reflejaba en la superficie del agua, pero mi sombra abrió una ventanilla, mostrando una anémona clonal, Anthopleura elegantissima, y varias algas. Se ven aquí, primero Fucus gardneri, luego tres algas rojas: una delicada, una de una hoja larga, y otra de hoja ancha. Las algas blancas son algas rojas quemadas por el sol. A la derecha hay varios hilos de Sargassum muticum, un alga marrón, invasiva. Y luego pedazos del alga verde que llamamos lechuga marina, Ulva spp. ¡Hay más! Varios caracolillos, unas lapas, y unas masas anaranjadas, probablemente esponjas. Y no se ven, pero los hay en gran número; los gusanos de varias especies. Y al lado del pocito mareal, una almeja me estaba escupiendo.

 Foto #2: Varias anémonas, todavía bajo agua, todavía agitando sus tentáculos.

Los colores de estas anémonas son variables; las puntas de los tentáculos van desde color de rosa hasta rojo fuerte. Las columnas y el disco oral son verdes, a veces brillante, a veces pálido. El color verde se debe a la presencia de algas unicelulares verdes, aunque a veces la anémona puede producir su propio color. Las algas verdes son fotosintéticos y proveen gran parte de los requisitos de energía de la anémona.

"Aunque el color verde presente en algunos de estos animales es producidos por los mismos, este proceso solo puede operar cuando la alga simbiótica unicelular reside en sus tejidos." (Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest)

Los líquenes no son los únicos que viven unidos con algas.

Foto #3: Una anémona con tentáculos de un color más vívido. La columna está siempre cubierta de estos tubérculos verdes.

Mientras desaparece el agua, las anémonas empiezan a cerrarse.

Foto #4: Mitad en agua,  mitad en seco. 

Foto #5: Y cuando el agua se ha ido completamente, las anémonas más bien parecen donas rellenas de jalea de fresa.

Estas anémonas crecen en la roca. La arena se acumula alrededor. Cuando esta arena ya se secó, las anémonas se habrán encogido aún más, dejando apenas una leve depresión en la superficie de la arena.

Hasta que suba la marea de nuevo.

Slowing down

The trail down to Elk Falls comes, after a steepish drop, to a dip passing a swampy area, before the final rise and the long staircases down to the suspension bridge and the viewpoints. The trail goes on, down and down to the rocks beyond the falls. But I have to stop to look over the swamp first.

I can smell it before I round the final curve. Skunk cabbage, strongly aromatic even after the flowers have faded. Now their huge leaves begin to fill in the whole muddy clearing. And now I can hear it: the buzzing of bees, the hum of an early mosquito looking for a meal on my neck. Something chitters in the trees, a squirrel, maybe.

There is a gap in the trees over the swamp, but they stand tall all around it; it's still too dark down there, even on sunny days, for my camera. But I have to take a photo anyhow.

A busy little swamp

Skunk cabbage, forest. But wait! There's more, much more.

 

In the open swamp area, caught in the photo, I see evergreen ferns (those pale brown curly tips, just unfolding), bracken ferns, (the evergreen sword ferns have long stipes with triangular leaflets on opposite sides of the central vein; brackens have opposite stalks branching out from the main one, with the leaflets along the sides of these branches). Just beyond the first ferns, a few sapling big-leaf maples are getting underway. In the centre, with their feet on a log, huckleberries. If you look closely, you can see the red berries, already tempting the birds. On the left, a clump of salmonberries still carries a pink flower or two. And of course, there are logs, fallen from the sidehill above and covered with moss. If I could get down there, I'd probably find a few mushrooms, as well.

And the skunk cabbage. Off to the side, just beyond the photo, one slow bloomer still showed the remains of the yellow spathe; the rest are all leaves, still only half-grown.

The short-stalked leaves are the largest of any native plant in the region, 30–150 cm long and 10–70 cm wide when mature. (Wikipedia)

Moving on to the forest: The first trees are alders; they tend to skirt the edges. Behind them, near the centre, the large tree with vertical lines of bark and its companions are cedars. Most of the rest of the trees are Douglas-firs.

A fallen tree, showing us its root mass still full of soil, is growing a pyramidal garden of evergreen ferns.

The moss growing on these trees, cat-tail moss, is not the same moss as that below, on the logs.

And the soil (or better, the duff, made up of twigs, dead needles, shredded cones) under the trees is dry and reddish-brown. Under the skunk cabbage, it's mud, soggy, sticky, and almost black. And you can be sure there will be slugs, banana, black, or brown, among the cabbages.

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El sendero que baja hacia las cataratas Elk llega tras una bajada algo empinada, a una depresión en el terreno, un pananito. De ahí sigue otra subida, y luego las escaleras que bajan hacia el puente colgante y las plataformas. Y el sendero sigue aun, bajando, bajando hasta las rocas atrás de las cataratas. Pero hay que detenernos primero para mirar el pantano.

Se nota el olor primero, antes de llegar a la última vuelta en el sendero, donde salta a la vista el pantano. Col de pantano, Lysichiton americanus. Con un fuerte olor, hasta ahora aunque las flores ya desaparecieron. Ahora sus hojas grandes empiezan a llenar el espacio. Y puedo oir ahora el zumbido de abajas, el canto de un mosquito buscando su comida de mi sangre. Algo chirría entre los árboles, tal vez una ardilla.

Hay un espacio abierto sobre el pantano, dejando entrar un poco de luz, pero los árboles alrededor son altos y sigue demasiado oscuro allí abajo, al menos para el gusto de mi cámara. Pero saco una foto de todas maneras.

Foto: el pantano y el bosque, bastante llenos de vida.

Linterna de pantano, bosque. Pero, ¡espera! ¡Hay más!

En el area abierta del pantano, lo que capturó la cámara, veo los helechos perennes, Polystichum munitum — esos espirales de color café claro, al frente, los helechos apenas abriéndose — los helechos de hoja caduca, Pteridium aquilinum — los helechos perennes tienen tallos largos con las hojuelas triangulares a cada lado del tallo central; los helechos "aguila" tienen ramas laterales que salen del tallo central, y de estas, las hojuelas salen a cada lado. — Detrás de estos helechos, unos arces de hoja grande empiezan a crecer, tomando ventaja del aumento de luz en este espacio. En el centro, con sus raices en un tronco caído, los "huckleberry", arándanos rojos, Vaccinium parvifolium. Si miras con cuidado, podrás ver sus frutillas rojas, ya listas para los pájaros. Al lado izquierdo hay un grupo del arbusto "salmonberry", Rubus spectabilis; todavía luce una que otra florecita. Y como siempre, unos troncos caídos, cubiertos de musgo. Si yo podría bajar hasta allí, seguro que encontraría unos hongos, también.

Y la linterna de pantano: a un lado, fuera de la vista de la cámara, había un solo flor, ya medio desbaratada. Las otras plantas ya traen solo las hojas, todavía a la mitad de su tamaño maduro.

"Las hojas, de tallo corto, son las más grandes de cualquier planta de la región, de 30 a 150 cm. de largo y 10 a 70 cm de ancho, al alcanzar la madurez. (Wikipedia)

Adelante. Hacia el bosque. Los primeros árboles son alisos rojos, Alnus rubra; acostumbran situarse a las orillas del bosque. Atrás, a su derecha, el árbol grande con la corteza con lineas verticales, con sus compañeros, son cedros rojos, Thuja plicata. La mayoría de los otros son abetos de Douglas, Pseudotsuga menziesii.

Un árbol caído, mostrándonos solamente las raices, sirve de jardín piramidal para unos helechos perennes.

El musgo que crece en los árboles del bosque, musgo "cola de gato", Isothecium myosuroides, no es el mismo que crece en los troncones en el pantano.

Y la tierra del bosque, mejor dicho la "duff" ya que consiste mayormente de palitos, hojas secas, y piñas desbaratadas, es seca, de un color rojizo. El suelo del pantano es casi negro, empapado y pegajoso. Y allí, puedes estar seguro, habrá babosas, amarillas, negras, y cafés.

Too much to see

 It has been said that, "coastal BC has a greater species diversity than anywhere else in North America". (Raincoast Conservation Foundation, in BC’s coastal biodiversity: the highest in North America, an article that completely bypasses marine invertebrates, but does pay attention to seaweeds; "In British Columbia, more than 500 species of macroalgae have been recognized, making up about 4.5 % of the world’s total marine algal species.")

Nowhere is this biodiversity more apparent than on the intertidal plain. With every cautious step at low tide, I crunch the shells of tiny animals, slip on seaweeds pink, red, green, brown and yellow, send critters scuttling and splashing for shelter, or squirting small fountains at my legs as clams and worms retreat deep under the sand. A tidepool is a multi-coloured, multi-textured collage, too varied to be sorted out on the fly.

I am reduced to taking photos at random, hoping something will come into focus on my computer screen.

Tidepool about 2 inches deep; my shadow at the bottom right.

At first glance, examining this photo, I see 9 separate species of seaweed:

• green sea lettuce
• red bladed algae; smooth, wide, translucent blades.
• pink crustose coralline algae, coating stones
• a green hairy seaweed
• a red seaweed, with stiff central blades, from which sprout thinner red "leaves"
• rockweed
• old eelgrass, with
• encrusting fuzzy algae along the blades (or these may be hydroids, an animal)
• yellowish algae coating an old clamshell and a snail (or hermit crab) shell.

But that's not all: under every stone, under every shred of seaweed, crabs and hermits, worms and small fish and assorted isopods and hunting whelks hide from the sunlight, and from my moving shadow. And, of course, hundreds of eggs. Among those not doing so good at hiding, I can see:

• a burrowing anemone, Anthopleura artemisia,
• snail shells which may house the original shell, or just as likely, a small hermit crab
• several limpets
• and a couple of legs of a kelp crab who thinks he's out of sight.

What looks like a single-culture mass of seaweed turns out to be another collage:

Bad (green) hair day.

In this photo the algae are the green hair, green sea lettuce, and that red-bladed alga. In the background; rockweed and a fuzzy brown seaweed. Snails and barnacles dot the rocks.

And I know I'm missing half of what's there!

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Se ha dicho que —las costas de Colombia Británica contienen una mayor diversidad de especies que la que se presenta en todo lo demás del continente — (del sitio Raincoast Conservation Foundation, en un artículo que olvida por completo el reino de los inveterbrados marinos, pero si nota de las algas marinas, que —en las costas de Colombia Británica se han reconocido más de 500 especies de macroalgas, constituyendo aproximadamente un 4.5 porciento de las especies de algas marinas mundiales.) 

En ninguna parte se nota más esta diversidad de especies que en la zona intramareal. Con cada paso que doy, tan cuidadosamente, aplasto una variedad de animalitos, me resbalo sobre algas marinas rojas, verdes, amarillas, color de rosa o de café, espanto varios animales que se apuran a esconderse bajo las piedras o que, retirándose dentro de la arena, hacen pequeños fuentes que bañan mis piernas. Una poza intramareal hace un "collage" de una multitud de texturas y de colores, tan variado que no se puede capturar a simple vista.

Me veo forzada a sacar fotos al azar, esperando que al verlas en la pantalla, se puedan entender.

La primera foto es de una poza intramareal, más o menos de 4 o 5 cm. de profundidad. 

A primera vista, veo hasta 9 especies de algas marinas:

• lechuga marina, Ulva spp.
• una alga roja de hojas anchas, lisas, translúcidas
• una alga coralina incrustante, color de rosa
• una alga verde en forma de pelos
• una alga roja con tallos tiesos, de los que brotan hojas delgadas
• sargaso vejigoso, Fucus spp.
• hierba marina Zostera madura, cubierta de
• una alga encrustante a lo largo de las hojas (o puede ser un hidroide, o sea un animal)
• una alga amarillenta creciendo en una concha abandonada de una almeja y en un caracol.

¡Pero eso no es todo! Bajo cada piedrita, bajo cada hoja de alga, se esconden cangrejos y ermitaños, gusanos y pescaditos, isópodos variados y bocinas cazadores, fuera de la luz fuerte del sol, y también huyendo de mi sombra. Entre los que no se escondieron perfectamente veo:

• una anémona, Anthopleura artemisia
• conchas de caracol marino, que pueden contener los caracoles mismos, o si no, cangrejos ermitaños
• varias lapas
• y un par de patas de un cangrejo "kelp" que cree estar bien escondido.

Segunda foto: lo que aparece una masa de una sola alga resulta ser otro collage. Las algas aquí son un pelo verde, lechuga marina verde, y la alga roja de hojas anchas. En el fondo se ven sargaso vejigoso y un alga café. Caracoles y bálanos toman el sol en las piedras.

Y por seguro, mucho se me pasa sin observar.

Biodiverse

This is the meadow at Oyster Bay Shoreline Park. It is a protected area; the sign towards the centre warns people to stay off. I stick to the few paths across and around it, or sometimes take one careful step to the side to dodge people coming the other way or to take a photo of a plant.

Looking towards the ocean, from beneath the old apple tree.

At this time of year, the main plants growing here are the yellow gold stars, red sorrel, wild strawberries, hare's foot clover, assorted dune grasses, and yarrow (all those white flowers, but some are pink.) Later, the yellow flowers will be gumweed; now, at the end of June, the plants bear small green, sticky buds.

Around the edges, various wild fruit trees and shrubs border the evergreen belt. Yesterday I found and ate a handful of huckleberries, the first of the year. There are wild cherries, a few escaped apple trees, saskatoons, hawthorns, blackberries (native and imported), wild roses and ocean spray, salal and kinnikinnick. The trees are maple, Douglas fir, hemlock, cottonwood and alder.

Wild rose, Rosa nutkana

And under everything, in the woods and in the meadow, a crispy blanket of moss and lichens.

Overhead, there are birds and bugs. Bees, flies, butterflies. Swallows and crows and gulls and eagles. Purple martins. A kingfisher, sometimes. Assorted peeps down on the shore (to the left here). Ducks and Canada geese at high tide, or crossing overhead. Chickadees and juncos and, of course, sparrows.

Very tiny grasshopper. I couldn't see him once he settled down, so I just pointed the camera in his general direction.

And every time I visit, it has changed. So I keep going back.

Maple "wings".

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Este es el campo protegido en Oyster Bay. Un caminito lo cruza; otros siguen los bordes. Pero en el area central se prohibe entrar, para dejar crecer la vegetación natural; hay algunas plantas que se ven raramente en otras partes.

Hice una lista de las plantas que se ven hoy en el campo. Hay fresas silvestres, estrellitas de oro, acederilla, hierba de goma, rosas silvestres, perejil bravío, poaceas de las dunas, tréboles. En el bosque alrededor, árboles frutales nativos e importados; manzano, cerezo, rosa silvestre, moras, y muchos otros. Muchas de estas plantas no tienen nombre en español, pero las voy a estar presentando una por una en los días que vienen.

Y siempre hay pájaros; golondrinas, gaviotas, águilas, cuervos, patos, gansos, gorriones, juncos, carboneros, y muchos más. Y abejas y mariposas, claro.

Y cada que visito, algo ha cambiado. Así que vuelvo frecuentemente.

La tercera foto es un saltamontes muy pequeñito. Cuando se aterrizó ya no lo podía ver, así que no más apunté la cámara en la dirección hacia donde saltaba. La cámara ve lo que mis ojos no alcanzan.

La cuarta foto son semillas de maple madurando en el árbol. Cuando estén listas, caerán pero dando vueltas con el viento como si tuvieran alitas. Así no caen directamente bajo el  árbol progenitor.

It's a jungle in there

"Rugged". That word comes up repeatedly in descriptions of Vancouver Island's terrain. And with reason.

Bear Creek wetland creek, off Oyster River. The circles in the water are from resident salmon.

Processing photos from Tuesday's trip to the salmon hatchery, I was impressed again by how impenetrable our bush is. The photo above is in an area that has been logged off repeatedly, cleared, cleared again; "managed". It is barely a dozen steps from the holding tanks for salmon fry (I was standing on the plank bridge beside the first tank), a stone's throw (thrown by me, with my old, gimpy shoulder) from the fence and the Oyster River Enhancement Society main office.

And yet: try walking through that! Scrambling, rather, sometimes using both hands as well as feet. Carefully, though; there's Devil's Club in those bushes, amply deserving of its name, and cunningly disguised as harmless thimbleberry bushes. And sudden pit traps, hidden under coats of moss or dead leaves. And trailing blackberry vines to grab your ankles and tip you over. And fallen trees barricading any clear spaces, clear only because the tree knocked over the Devil's Club on the way down.

The creek looks walkable, but watch out for waist-deep silt pools, looking as if they're only inches deep. And slippery, slidy slime. And more fallen branches, only half-anchored in the mud, ready to roll underfoot or to jump up and swat you. You'll need a good, sturdy stick; two feet aren't enough.

A few steps up the slope: cleared space beside the gate. Maple, cedar, evergreen fern, young alders, and blackberries. There are always blackberries. Give it a couple of years, and you'll need a machete to get to the sign.

It's the rain that does it. The rain, and the mild seasons, never too hot, never too cold. The rain and the mildness and the "intricate topography" (another synonym for "ruggedness"). And the isolation: a ten-minute drive from the populated coast takes us into bush untouched by anyone but the occasional loggers and fishermen. Who mostly stay on the trails, because it's too hard to cross that bush without land-clearing machinery.

It's bear country. The bears had been at the tanks the night before we arrived, leaving the leftovers from their breakfast for the ravens and the crawdads. They walk through this bush as if it were a highway. On all four feet, of course. And wearing thick, protective, furry armour against the Devil's Club.

Twilight at Black Creek

It had been a cool, grey day; not raining, but likely to at any moment. I was busy, and not able to get out until after 7:30. But sunset doesn't come until after 9 these days, so I grabbed the camera and went out. Towards the south, a gap in the clouds allowed a few rays of sunlight to warm the trees; I headed that way. But as I went, the light moved south and south again, and then went out.

I found myself near Miracle Beach, passing a trailhead on Black Creek. I parked and went into the bush.

If the light was blue-grey out in the open, here under the trees it was twilight already. A green twilight.

Greens and browns. Present and visible here: evergreen trees (Douglas-fir, cedar), Big-leaf maple, red elderberry, thimbleberry, salmonberry, Vanilla leaf, evergreen ferns, huckleberry, mosses, Ocean spray (white patches in the distance, behind the trees). Not visible, but present; foam flower, salal, polypores.

The trails wind through the bush down Black Creek, connecting with Miracle Beach, the campsite, and two parking lots. When I came to the first parking lot, I turned back; it was already getting dark.

Red-belted polypore. I had to use flash for this; in the dark, it was a greyish blob.

Salal flowers.

At one point, the trail led underneath a canopy of Ocean spray. I'm short, and I had to dodge this one, at face height. Flash used.

In a dark corner on top of a stump, a brown and black mushroom, looking a bit the worse for wear. Flash, of course.

And on a future nurse stump, two baby evergreens in a blanket of moss.

Mossy snag. Out in the open, as I crossed the road to the second section of the trails. I still needed the flash.

8:49 PM. More moss. I call this a "zoo tree". I see mossy critters everywhere: a rabbit, a gopher, a frog, a sleeping sloth, a bird face, a big snake winding itself around the trunk.

A tree ladder, the lowest rung too high to reach. Why?

Black Creek. A wide spot; at other places, it's a trickle under a bed of ferns and fallen trees. From the road in, not the trails.

The rain started as I returned to the car. Just in time.

Biodiverse

From shoe-top height, the July meadow at Oyster Bay Shoreline Park is a place of wonder. I had been examining miniature mosses, too small for the camera I was carrying, and then turned to look at the landscape from that vantage point. Mind-boggling variety!

Present and identifiable: wild strawberry, yarrow, red sorrel, assorted grasses, moss, Queen Anne's lace, white clover, black cottonwood, red alder and various evergreen trees, patches of lichen, silver burweed, Nootka roses (between the trees and the meadow). Not identified (so far) that woolly, bluish plant in the foreground, tiny seed pods just above the moss, small yellow flowers, past their prime, and that round gall on a tall blade of grass.

Behind me, not shown, the gumweed is just coming into flower, masses of hare's foot clover are fading to the palest pink, and some almost blue, stiff grasses fill in the gaps nearer the trees.

I've taken more photos of the woolly blue plant, and will post them soon. Maybe someone out there can identify it.

Green, fading to black

One of the pleasures of summer along our shores is to wade at the low, low tides, knee-deep in the eelgrass beds, watching the swirl of the deep green blades reaching up to the surface and floating there. We watch our step carefully; among the stalks, good-sized, maybe toe-pinching crabs scuttle. On the long leaves, if we look closely, we can see large green isopods and small snails. Sculpins and other small fish dart away at our approach, no matter how stealthily we tiptoe.

Most of what lives in these green forests, though, we don't see. Kozloff, in his chapter on sandy beaches, lists, among the inhabitants:

• On the leaves: the tinies; diatoms and other microscopic plants, invisible alone, but in mass, forming a brownish "fur" or long threads; bacteria, protozoa, algae, microscopic worms, crustaceans, copepods.
• The small critters: amphipods, including skeleton shrimp, hydroids, flatworms, ribbon worms, jellyfish, anemones, chink snails, sea slugs, including Melibe leonina, two species of isopods.
• On the mud, sand, roots: bubble shell snail, clams, sea stars, sea cucumbers, five crabs; Dungeness, red, two spider crabs, and helmet crabs.

Another list adds sponges, bryozoans, spiral tube worms. I would add the limpets and their cargo. There are many more, and we must not forget the fish.

So important is Zostera's role in this food cycle that estimates reveal that more than 20 species of commercially valuable fish species feed in these eelgrass meadows at some point in their lives. (R.I. Sea Grant Fact Sheet)

 That's the summer.

Summer eelgrass, waiting for the return of the tide.

In the fall, the eelgrass begins to die back. Stormy seas rip up the plants by their roots, and propel them toward the shore. The waves, coming and going, roll them up in dense masses, metre-long tough leaves wound and knotted around each other, and push them onto the beaches. There, they gradually die and blacken, always pushed further up the beach by the next tide's eelgrass roll-up, until they form great mounds of black, sharp-smelling gunk.

Drying eelgrass, caught on driftwood log. Boundary Bay.

But their useful life isn't over yet! First, while they are drifting ashore, Canada geese congregate to eat the green stems that they usually can't reach.

Geese and gulls, watching the eelgrass come in. White Rock.

I collect handfuls for my aquarium critters from the fresh rolls, disentangling the greenest, the ones with bits of root still attached. In the winter, the low tides usually fall well after dark; I can't wade out to what's left of the eel-grass beds. I'm glad it comes to me, instead.

In summer, any eelgrass I harvest is well checked over for other life. I always find limpets, usually quite a few snails, occasionally an eel-grass isopod or two. There may be amphipods along the leaves, often polychaete worms in the roots, and always the fuzzy diatom communities.

In the fall and winter, the eelgrass looks bare until I run a finger down a leaf; then I notice the hard, raspy bryozoan communities, the thickening where a cryptic limpet is attached, and maybe an isopod will transfer his clingy feet to my finger. All of these go into the aquarium where I plant the eelgrass.

I don't bring home the black stuff. Some people do; I have seen gardeners with wheelbarrows and big barrels on the shores of Crescent Beach and Boundary Bay, filling their containers (once a pickup truck bed!) with nutritious mulch for the winter garden.

But I do roll it over, to watch hundreds of beach-hoppers leap every which way. (I remember, back when Laurie didn't know me quite so well, I called him over to see. "Look!" I said, and turned over a heap of dead eelgrass. He wasn't prepared; the hoppers ended up on his legs, and he jumped back, annoyed. He got over it, and now is as enthusiastic as I am. Sometimes more.)

Inside that rotting mass, worms, fungi and bacteria work at reducing it to fine dust, which will sift slowly out to sea, returning the nutrients to their source for another round. In the meantime, tiny black flies swarm over the surface, feeding and breeding in the relative warmth from the decomposing grass. Nothing ever gets wasted.

Bryozoan colony on dying eelgrass.

In my aquarium, fall eelgrass only lasts a couple of weeks before it dies and turns black. I doesn't look good, and eventually will disintegrate and clog the filters, so I remove it. But first, I make sure I'm not removing live animals. Most of the limpets have moved on to greener pastures; so have the isopods and amphipods. But there are still patches of bryozoans and hydroids.

I wondered, the other day, whether the bryozoan colonies were still alive, so I brought them out to a tray of shallow water and examined them under a microscope. All the tiny, glassy barrel shells were empty; the makers were gone.

Each little tube was the home of one zooid.

If you were seeing these photos live, you would also see tiny specks of light moving between the shells, barely visible transparent threads weaving back and forth, white dots that seem to have legs scuttling across the green spaces. The bryozoans have died, but the colony is still very much alive. And the spiral tube worms are still busy catching the specks and threads for supper.

Bryozoan colony with feeding tubeworm.

I replaced the eelgrass in the aquarium. These industrious hunters and gatherers deserve their full life span.