Sunny gumweed. And some bees.

Gumweed among the dunes and atop the dike at Oyster Bay. And a few pollinators.

Glowing blooms among the dried logs.

Grindelia integrifolia. Found from BC to Oregon, in areas damp in winter, bone dry in summer. The buds exude a white, very sticky resin that oozes down and makes the whole plant stick to my fingers.

A pair of sweat bees too busy to collect pollen.

As it turns out, sweat bees mate during visits to flowers, making them invaluable as pollinators. (UICharlotte)

So romantic!

Another gumweed, another bee, head down.

And another bee, this one with a fuzzy yellow band on the abdomen.

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

Estas son fotos de hierba goma, Grindelia integrifolia, y algunos de sus polinizadores, en las dunas de Oyster Bay.

    1. Parecen pequeños soles.

    2. Se encuentran desde Colombia Británica hasta Oregon, en sitios que en invierno permanecen húmedos, pero que en verano son bien secos. Los botones exudan una goma blanca, muy pegajosa, que luego se extiende por toda la planta.

    3. Dos abejas de sudor (halíctidos) apareándose.

Resulta que las abejas de sudor se aparean durante sus visitas a las flores, lo que les hace polinizadoras invaluables. (UICharlotte)

¡Tan románticas!

    4. Otra flor, y un abejorro, de cabeza buscando polen.

    5. Y otro abejorro; este tiene una banda amarilla peluda en el abdomen.

Dune walk

Along the dunes at Oyster Bay. Mostly sandy, with logs piled higgledy-piggledy from the high tide line to the forest; grassy, prickly with the seed heads of big-headed carex, dusted with lichens, anchored with tall grasses and assorted salt-tolerant shrubbery; home to garter snakes, grasshoppers, butterflies, and little twittering birds.

Photos in no particular order.

Typical mix. I'm not sure what the shrub is. There are orange fungi on the end of the farthest log out on the left and on the front log on the far right.

Silver burweed, Ambrosia chamissonis, just starting out. By mid-summer they will cover most of the bay end of the dunes.

Trails in the sand.

These trails were everywhere on the bay end of the dunes, well above the high tide line, in dry sand. There were no snail trails below the high tide line; these aren't made by sea snails, nor crabs, nor hermits. They're too irregular to be garter snake trails. If they're made by land snails, it's odd; the trails end abruptly, as if the snail picked up her skirts and tiptoed away. I've seen no live snails in this end of the dunes.

Any ideas?

One of the many grasses. A brome, I think.

Baked tree root.

Growing on logs

Life settles in everywhere, even on old, salt-sprayed, sand-blasted, wind-scoured, sun-dried logs on the dunes.

Fine grasses on a fat log appreciate the extra sunshine the height gives them.

Moss, lichen, grass,and a red-stemmed Ceanothus.

Yarrow taking advantage of a smidgen of soil caught in a cut.

Lichen and a baby salmonberry shrub.

Oyster Bay dunes.

Unpredictable

Prickly. If I had to chose one word to describe the dry zone between the shore and the tree-and-grass line, prickly would have to be the one. It's a place where I walk carefully, watching where I step, occasionally stopping to knock spines out of my sandals, brush ants off my legs. It's where everything is hard-edged, sharp-pointed, splintery. Here, driftwood logs, tossed up long ago beyond the reach of all but the highest tides, slowly crumble into dust and slivers; small plants grow, dry out, twist, break, and die, leaving random sticks and straws helter-skelter.

It's a zone of fantastic shapes.

Log end, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park

Pixie-cup lichens along a crack in a log.

Typical mix: splinters, dead sticks, lichen, yarrow, peppergrass. And an old spike, part of an ancient, crumbling dock or float.

Large-headed sedge, Carex macrocephala. Even the leaf edges and tips are sharp. And the head is vicious!

More lichens.

And more. I have trouble making sense of this one. My eyes cross.

I just don't know... Book, as I found and left it, with an ant as only reader. Quote from the page: "... a place within the great scheme of things ..." "... unpredictable ..."

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.