Along the way

A few flowers along the Lupin Falls trail. Shade lovers, all.

Start of the trail.

Thimbleberry, flowers and unripe berry.

Honeysuckle, just getting started.

Another coral root orchid.

A patch of twin flowers. Deep shade.

Most of the flowers along this dry, dark, acid-soiled trail, except the thimbleberries, were small to tiny. Even the native wild roses were miniatures.

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Algunas flores encontradas en el sendero a las cataratas Lupin.

1. El letrero a la entrada al sendero.
2. Thimbleberry, Rubus parviflorus. Flores y frutas todavía verdes. Maduras, son rojas y muy dulces.
3. Madreselva, Lonicera sp., nueva planta, apenas tiene la primera rama.
4. La orquídea Corallorhiza sp.
5. Y un grupo de flores gemelas, en sombra densa.

La mayoría de las flores en este bosque seco, oscuro y con suelo ácido, aparte de los thimbleberry, tenían flores pequeñas o muy pequeñas. Hasta las rosas nativas, normalmente del tamaño de los thimbleberry, eran miniaturas.

Spotty berries

Water makes all the difference. Along the river banks, and the drippy cliffs on the evergreen-clad north slopes, the soil is hidden under a soft, thick cushion of mosses and ferns. Even in warm weather, it stays wet. And where the shade is deep, we can find these curious plants.

Maianthemum dilatatum, aka two-leaved Solomon's seal. With one blood-red aphid.

These are natives here, growing in temperate rainforests, where they can spread to cover the entire forest floor. But each plant limits itself to three leaves at the most. When they are not flowering, they have only one leaf. With two or three, they send up a short stalk with a raceme of tiny white flowers. The berries start out greenish, with pink spots that spread and darken until the whole berry is red.

They are supposed to be edible, but I've never heard of anyone using them as food.

Where the shade is deep

It's been sunny and warm this last week. Too warm for us, coming out of a cool, rainy May. We've been seeking out green places, where the trees screen out the light and heat.

We took the trail down Cougar Canyon again, after several years away. A dim, quiet trail over newly-laid pallet boards squishing into the mud under our footsteps, with the creek murmuring to itself in its stony bed, and the mosquitoes humming over our heads. I'd forgotten those mosquitoes; I'm still itchy.

In a hollow stump, blackened maybe by rot, maybe by long-forgotten fire, we found these:

A sweating shelf fungus.

The stump was dry, or barely moist back in the very centre, but the bottom of the fungus was dripping. I'm not sure if the green colour of the droplets was a reflection of all the green around us, or the colour of the fungal sap.

A large yellow slime mold, directly beneath the fungus.

This seems to be the "many-headed slime", Physarum polycephalum. The saturated yellow colour was startling in that dark hole; it almost looked like something plastic, left behind by careless visitors; but it was real, soft and damp, and living.

These slime molds crawl along, sort of like a flatworm, oozing over their food source, surrounding it, secreting enzymes to digest it before they absorb it. They're not in any hurry, but they can manage a speed of about 1 mm. per hour, or about an inch a day. When they dry out, they go dormant and wait for the next rainy day.

They don't like too much light; the spot chosen by this slime was in a hole on the northern side of a stump in an already deeply shady ravine. The sun never shines directly here.

Another slime mold, on the dark side of a mossy log under an evergreen.

Tomorrow: green, green, green.