Just white flowers

Almost all the flowers I saw in the forest on Friday were white.

Serviceberry/Saskatoon. These were high on a tall shrub, in dim woods. Note the long beetle on the upper left.

Starflowers, Trientalis latifolia. The flowers are just slightly pink. The greenish bud beneath is a  trailing blackberry.

Thimbleberries, Rubus parviflorus, buds and flowers and brand new leaves.

Vanilla leaf, Achlys triphilla.

Wild strawberry, with black fly.

And another thimbleberry. Just because.

The elderberry stems now hold tiny green berries. A few deep pink salmonberry flowers were still on the branches, but most have started to form berries, too. And all along the highway (so it doesn't count as in the forest), the horribly invasive Scotch broom is flowering enthusiastically. Yellow flowers: pretty but not a welcome sight.

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Casi todas las flores que vi esta semana en el bosque eran blancas.

1. Serviceberry/Saskatoon. Estas estaban en un arbusto muy alto, en penumbra. Hay un escarabajo largo en una flor a la izquierda.
2. Flor "estrella". El botón verde abajo es una mora indígena.
3. Thimbleberry, "frutilla de dedal". Da frutillas muy suaves, muy dulces, en forma de dedal, de ahí el nombre.
4. Hoja de vainilla. Las hojas secas de esta planta tienen un olor a vainilla.
5. Fresa silvestre.
6. Y otra "thimbleberry".

Las ramas de saúco ahora llevan frutillas muy pequeñas, todavía muy verdes. Hay todavía algunas de las flores color de rosa de salmonberry, pero también la mayoría de estos se están haciendo fruta. Y a lo largo de la carretera (así que no cuenta entre las flores del bosque) el "Scotch broom", Cutisus scoparius, que en una plaga enormemente invasiva, está floreciendo con entusiasmo. Tiene flores amarillas, muy bonitas, pero no es una vista que se recibe con gusto.

Sweet root

When the rains begin and the sun goes south, it's time to tramp through the soggy woods looking for mushrooms and mosses. And licorice ferns; the wetter and cooler, the better, the ferns say.

Licorice ferns, Polypodium glycyrrhiza, on mossy fallen tree. A rainy day in September.

Usually, I see them high on a mossy big leaf maple, or in a dripping bed of moss on a cliff face. Sometimes, though, their trees come down, bearing the ferns with them. These were in the hills above the Upper Campbell Lake, on the Berry Creek logging road.

The genus name, Polypodium, means "many feet", referring to its habit of growing out from many locations along a rhizome under the moss. And glycyrrhiza, the species name, means "sweet root"; the rhizome is licorice-flavoured and sweet.

Huckleberry spider

Our red huckleberry, common in our deep rainforests, is evergreen, after a fashion. It sheds its leaves in the fall, like the rest of the deciduous plants, but the stems and branches stay bright green all winter. And now, with the warm winter that we're having, they are deciding it's spring already, and sending out bright pink buds.

Huckleberry shrub, Canyonview trail

Zooming in to see the pink buds.

Moving around the bush, looking to find a less busy background, I almost put my nose through a spider's web.

Long-legged trapper.

I haven't seen many spiders, or insects, either this winter, although I've been searching for them, so I was glad to see a spider, and I hope she's had better luck with insects than I have.

Blurry; she's noticed me, and is pretending to be a bit of twig or dry pine needle twisting in the wind.

And maybe it will be safer over here on the branch.

I had frightened her, so I backed off and went my way. At least I hadn't broken her web.

Burnt salal

Salal is an evergreen native of our rainforests. It likes shade, water, acid soil, cool weather. Under a dense canopy of coniferous trees, it makes tall, almost impenetrable thickets.

But in the open, dry forest around Oyster Bay, it hugs the ground and burns when the sun is bright, turning red, then a deep purplish-blue.

Three pale gilled mushrooms and sun-blistered salal. The mushrooms are about 3 inches tall, judging by the spikes of lichen.

In deep forests, the berries are edible and delicious, but out here in the open, very few are produced, and those are usually dry and bland. I picked a couple of clumps this summer, tasted two, and threw the rest away. They're better left for seed.

UPDATE: I have been told that this plant is probably kinnickinnick, a salal relative, also native to this region. That is probably correct, although I also know that salal grows here, struggling in the sun. I must go back and collect samples of both and identify them properly.

UPDATE 2: It was kinnickinnick. I misjudged the size of the mushrooms.

Pink, fading to brown

Hardhack is one of my favourite shrubs. It grows profusely along streambanks, in soggy soil, on dripping hillsides, forming dense thickets up to 2 metres tall, crowned in season, with showy pink flower spikes. When picked at the height of bloom, these flowers fade to a dusty rose, and last all winter in a dry vase. With pearly everlasting, they make a beautiful winter bouquet.

Spent blooms, left in place, dry to a warm brown, and last all winter on the plant. The leaves drop, leaving wiry stems and the brown heads.

This year has been too hot and dry for most of the hardhack thickets; I saw very few pink blooms, although they must have flowered, passing quickly from bloom to brown seed head.

I picked two flowering heads that I found within reach; they're well past their sell-by date, and dried to brown seeds overnight.

Hardhack is well named: the much-branched, wiry stems form dense tangles that are almost impossible to break through without proper tools. A wall of salal and hardhack, a common combination in our forests, is as effective a barrier as a brick wall with glass on top.

Stars underfoot

The coastal forests at this time of year are sprinkled with white flowers.

Starflower, Trientalis latifolia.

These perennials may have from 5 to 9 petals. The name originated because the flower stalks are so fine that the flowers seem to be floating in the air above the plant.

Such glossy leaves! Western lily of the valley, Maianthemum dilatatum.

The flower stalks stand above the layer of leaves, one per pair of leaves.

Prickly! Our native blackberry, with Oregon grape leaves.

The Oregon grape spines are hard and sharp. The blackberry's spines are soft, insidious. They don't pierce a glove (Oregon grape does), but can embed themselves in bare skin.
 

Trailing blackberry, a native. Rubus ursinus. Male and female flowers are on different plants, the male flowers slightly bigger, sharper-petalled.

Thimbleberry. Not a ground-dweller. The shrub grows up to 2.5 metres tall. Rubus parviflorus.

All the thimbleberry flowers I looked at near Lake Roberts were hosting a collection of bugs, mostly tiny brown beetles.

Yummy pollen! The beetles look like tiny rove beetles; their jackets leave the last half of the abdomen bare.

Also seen; foam flowers, vanilla leaf, chickweed, all white, all blowing in the wind.

Hanging millipede

"Don't touch this," our guide said. She was pointing at a fallen branch covered with small, purplish-brown leaves. "Some people are allergic to it," she added. We clustered around, looking, but keeping our distance.

Frullania nisquallensis, "Hanging millipede liverwort".

It's not a moss, but a liverwort*. It grows on alder and maple; in this particular bit of forest, the large deciduous trees are mostly maples. And it may cause contact dermatitis, which gives it an alternate name: "Woodman's eczema".

Good to know, if you're scrambling about in the rain forest. I Googled it and read a few reports; contact with the wet bark or with fallen fragments of the liverwort can cause an eczema that lasts several weeks. Gloves are no protection, unless they're waterproof and no water seeps in through the wrists, but most eruptions are on the face and other exposed areas. It seems to be no problem in dry weather.

Frullania nisquallensis, commonly known as Hanging millipede liverwort, is a reddish-brown species of liverwort in the Jubulaceae family. It is found in western Washington and British Columbia, including Vancouver Island. The plant grows in mats, sometimes in mats that hang from tree branches (particularly those of alders, or maples), or growing close to the substrate. (Wikipedia) (My emphasis)

That explains the "hanging" part of the name, "hanging millipede." It doesn't look much like a millipede to me, though. There's a whole page of photos on INaturalist, which may be helpful if you're planning to go looking for firewood on a wet day. But stay dry!

*More on this, later.

Wet and wild

I spent much of my childhood in the rainforest. The wet, dripping rainforest. And still, so many years on, it calls to me.

I went to see what was happening at the upper end of Woodhus Creek, where last summer we basked on the warm sandstone in the bed of the river, where caddisfly larvae rested in the pools and fallen leaves spun lazily in the eddies. Now, after the recent rains, it is a tumultuous, thundering torrent.

From the end of the road, a path cuts through the woods to the creek. I dawdled there, looking and listening.

Almost the end of the trail. The sign reads, "WARNING Stay off fishway. The fishway can be extremely dangerous." (About that, later.)

It had rained in the morning. Out in the open, at least on paved roads, the ground was dry. Not here, under the trees; everything dripped. Everything glistened. Drops fell from above, leftover rain. Wandering about down side trails, I was soon soaked from the knees down.

Moss on a stick. The green twigs are huckleberry branches.

It is dark under the trees, even on sunny days. On a fall afternoon, the sun reaches in almost horizontally, touching and highlighting a branch here, a wet leaf there.

Stretching out wet arms towards the light.

And there is a strong sensation of silence. Odd, with the continuous roar of the creek, its bass notes audible even from the far end of the trail. But still, the drops falling from the branches overhead played a silvery tune, "ping, ping, plop". Leaves rustled wetly as I passed. There are no other sounds. In between the swishes and the pings, a profound stillness hangs over the wood.

Lichen hair caught on bare twigs.

Fallen salal branch, turning red as it dies.

In every direction, trees hem me in, stretching out restraining arms.

Mossy branches. The moss collects the rain, so it falls to the forest floor in easy installments, like timed-release supplements.

At the foot of a tree, a mushroom pokes through the wet moss.

Another mushroom, well past its prime. I thought it was interesting, the way it has split from the centre, while the gills are still intact.

A small green caterpillar makes his way over a wet rock. About half an inch long.

A clump of hair lichen on the ground. This grows on the branches, but often falls off.

Dripping and bedraggled fern. By spring, it will have crumbled into the ground, fertilizer for the next generation.

Coming out of the wood, I was somehow surprised to find the sky clear, the car dry. I got in and turned on the heat to dry my feet.

Pink ghosts

When I was a very small child living in Tahsis, some sixty-mumble years ago, our house was one of a dozen or so along the Tahsis river bank. In front of us, the road and the river; behind us, nothing but empty tide flats, then the bush. Impassible bush, all intertwined salmonberry and salal, rotting logs and slippery moss.

We went over that way in the canoe once, past the tide flats and up the mouth of another river. When the canoe kept getting stuck in the reeds, Mom insisted that we turn back. People said there were horses over there, and apple trees; I only half believed them. There were none in Tahsis.

Now, of course, there's a highway. And walking trails cut through the bush, winding along the banks of the Leiner River. Easy going, in most spots. Someone had been through just ahead of us, hacking down the everlasting salmonberry canes; they can erase a trail in a few months.

But off the trail, the bush is still the same; tangly, dense, interlocked berry bushes; salmonberry, huckleberry, salal, thimbleberry. Where there's a bit of space, the evergreen ferns take over.

Under this mess of branches and leaves, we found several clumps of Indian pipe plants. Where I could scramble or climb close enough, I took photos.

Indian pipe plant, Monotropa uniflora, aka ghost plant, corpse plant. About 6 to 8 inches tall.

These plants, like the gnome plant, are parasites on fungi that in turn, parasitize trees. They have no chlorophyll, which makes other plants green. Usually they are white, with hints of black or pink. A few may be red.

These are more pinkish.

Flower heads. Each stalk bears one flower only. The flowers hang down at first, then stand upright once they are pollinated and are making seeds.

We passed a few plants that had been broken by the trail maker; they had quickly turned black.

In an abandoned clearing, I found an old apple tree. I didn't see any horses.

The Leiner River trail is just west of our campsite.

Campsite mushrooms

The (free) campsite we stayed in just outside of Tahsis runs alongside the Liener River, in deep rainforest under Douglas firs and cedars. The only amenities offered are picnic tables, one per cleared site, and small fire pits, plus a couple of outhouses. We hadn't brought our own firewood, and soon found that all the fallen wood in the area, even bordering the river and road, where the sun occasionally reaches, is soaked through. We had to go into town to collect fire starter and driftwood.

The far side of the river; a dense wall of boundary plants, ferns, salmonberries, and thimbleberries, and beyond them, old evergreens, standing and fallen, moss-covered.

It's always dusk under the evergreens, and the mosquitoes are enthusiastic morning and evening. There is a distant smell of bear; old fish, ancient urine, leftover meals, stewed together in two-inch deep fur.

It's prime mushroom country, even in midsummer.

Polypore with a thick, whitish lip. On the side of a mossy log.

More shelf fungi on the end of a log. Conifer-base polypore and resinous polypore?

A white, oozy shelf fungus on well-rotted wood.

This tiny one was inside a stump. I couldn't get in to see the underside. Note the grey springtail on the edge, and in the centre of the dried evergreen needle, an even smaller globular springtail.

Lichen or mushroom? On a small twig I brought out into the light, resting on the grey picnic table. The mushroom is about 3/8 of an inch tall.

Looking down into the cup. One side has been knocked out.

Yellow slime mold, scrambled egg slime. On well-rotted log.

These are awkward critters to photograph. They grow in dark places; even though it was 11 AM when I took these photos, it was still twilight under the trees. And they don't respond well to flash; the colours change, even fluoresce. So it's handheld, wobbling on precarious, slippery ground, in the dark. And even so, my camera does better than my eyes. It manages to see texture; I didn't.

Scrambled egg, up close.

These were all taken at the same place as yesterday's lot:

GPS coordinates: 49.91553, -126.62502

Horrid!

The area I've been exploring for the past couple of weeks follows the valley of the Oyster River. On the map, it looks simple; empty forest or grassland with a winding blue streak through it. But zooming in, and zooming in further, it gets bluer. Water is everywhere; there's the Little Oyster River, a bunch of creeks and mini-creeks, sloughs, bogs, miniature lakes, pools, and at least one beaver pond. Any little dip in the terrain is full of water.

And where the ground is always wet, I keep seeing stands of Devil's Club, its wide leaves serving as stern "Keep Off" signs. Oplopanax horridus, they call it; it's well named, both in English and scientific notation.

The leaves get up to 15 inches across.

And the plant can be 15 feet tall, or more. This one was a new plant at the edge of a recent clearing, and only about 8 feet high.

The whole plant is covered with vicious spines.

Really vicious. Up to an inch long, very sharp. They break off easily to an incautious touch, sting and fester.

Even the leaves are spined, top and bottom.

"A piece of Devil's club hung over a doorway is said to ward off evil." (Wikipedia)

But you'd need thick gloves and strong boots to harvest that piece safely. I think I'll stick to vanilla leaf.