White, white, white

 More on the theme of "everything blooming out in the bush this week is white": now I'm looking up. These four are shrubs or small trees.

Saskatoons, aka serviceberry, Amelanchier alnifolia.

These are everywhere right now. Later, they will have delicious purple berries.

Red elderberry, Sambucus racemosa.

The flowers don't last long; this is one of the first plants to produce their red berries, a great favourite of the birds, domestic and wild. The bears and raccoons and squirrels like them, too. For humans, they're sort of edible, cooked, although they're bitter. The flowers, though, are fine; Dad used to make pancakes with a whole inflorescence dipped in batter, a spring treat.

The flower head, ready to harvest.

Red osier dogwood, Cornus stolonifera, another relative of our provincial flower.

I think these are bitter cherry flowers, Prunus emarginata. Too bitter to be edible. For humans, at least; the bears like them.

These are plants native to the region. Driving along the highways, I see them, on the slopes, in the valleys, along river banks: speckles of pure white among the spring greenery. What am I missing? Mountain-ash, crab-apples and salal, Indian plum, Pacific nine-bark, Devil's club, thimble-berries; all natives, all with white flowers in bloom now.

And now, blotches of yellow are showing up; the horribly invasive Scotch broom, not a native, not following the "rule": this is the month for whites. How dare they?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sigo con el tema de "todo lo que florece esta semana en el bosque lleva flores blancas"; ahora alzo la vista y veo cuatro arbustos.

1. El Saskatún, o fresa de junio, Amelanchier alnifolia. Se ven por todas partes ahora. Más tarde, llevarán bayas moradas, deliciosas.
2. El saúco rojo, Sambucus racemosa. Estas flores no duran mucho; este arbusto produce sus bayas en poco tiempo. Son favoritas de los pájaros, tanto domésticos como salvajes, así como de los osos, los mapaches, y las ardillas. Para los humanos, cocidas son apenas comestibles, muy amargas. Pero las flores si se pueden comer: mi papá las bañaba en masa de crepas, y las cocía en un sartén; una delicia de primavera.
3. La inflorescencia del saúco rojo.
4. Cornejo amarillo, Cornus stolonifera. Otra planta del género de nuestra flor provincial.
5. Y creo que estas son las flores del cerezo amargo, Prunus emarginata. Demasiado amargo para ser comestible. Para los humanos, por lo menos; a los osos les gustan.

 Estas son plantas que son nativas en esta región. Pasando por las carreteras, las veo en el bosque, en los cerros, en los valles, a la orilla de los rios. Estas y muchas más; fresno de montaña occidental, manzana silvestre, salal (Gaultheria shallon), Indian plum (Oemleria cerasiformis), Pacific ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus), el garrote del diablo (Oplopanax horridus), thimbleberry (baya dedal) (Rubus parviflorus): todas especies nativas, todas con flores blancas abiertas en el momento.

Y luego veo las manchas amarillas de la retama negra, horriblemente invasiva. No es originaria de Canadá, no se adhiere a las reglas del lugar, la regla no oficial que manda que las flores de este mes sean blancas. ¿Cómo se atreve?

South Slope flowers, Part 2

By the railroad track west of White Rock, there is a small apple tree, sprouted, probably from someone's apple core tossed into the moist soil at the base of the cliff. The apples are quite tasty, if small and somewhat scarred. I brought home a bag last year, and made myself a batch of good applesauce.

I looked for the new flowers last week, but didn't see them. It may be a bit early yet. But its relative, the bitter cherry, was in full bloom nearby.

Prunus emarginata

The fruit trees from the Rose family, apples, crabapples, plums, cherries, and pears, can be very confusing. The flowers are similar; 5 petalled beauties, white or pink, in showy clusters, blooming around the same time, on trees that vary with location and treatment, and that hybridize easily.  Only the Japanese cherries, like the rest but with double and triple flowers, mostly pink and often weeping, are easy to recognize at first glance.

The bitter cherry produces flowers that grow in small open clusters along the branch, which may be red, greyish, or a reddish purple. The leaves are round-tipped and hairy.

Around 5 to 10 flowers per cluster.

The choke cherry that we sometimes see here groups its flowers in long clusters of more than 10 blooms, at the end of the branch. Its cherries will be similar; small, red to black, and too bitter to eat as is, although the bitter cherry is worse, and sometimes called inedible. Some people, though, make jams and jellies with them, using large quantities of sugar.

I have tasted them, directly off the tree. I like strong flavours, but these were too much for me; I had to spit them out.

More flowers. Just because they're pretty.

Zooming in. I saturated the yellows a bit to show the hairs along the stems.

The bark of the bitter cherry is rot-resistant and could be peeled off the trunk in long strips, which BC First Nations people used in tool construction, for wrapping joints. They were also woven as decoration into cedar baskets. Used "au naturel", it was reddish, but it was also darkened to almost black by burying it in swampy ground for up to a year. Here's a sample basket, made by a Salish native in Washington state.