A thousand leaves, a thousand uses

Yarrow, still blooming, between rainstorms:

Achillea millefolium; aka Thousand-leaved clover, Angel Flower, Squirrel Tail, etc.

My guide, Plants of Coastal BC, has the usual brief description, then a long section on the BC First Nations medicinal uses of the plant, broken down by tribal groups. Each one used yarrow for a different purpose: "... as a poultice; ... a sore throat gargle;" for childbirth, to purifiy the blood, for headaches and as an eyewash, for diarrhea and as a bath for invalids. "The Squamish used it to cure measles." Elsewhere, it also repelled mosquitoes and prevented baldness, cured toothache, angina, and flatulence, and drew the venom out of spider bites. And so on and so on ...

My opinion, offered tentatively, is that the plant is so common, so attractive, so pleasantly aromatic, that people everywhere decided it must be good for something. And when they tried it and got better from what ailed them, as people generally do, they attributed it to the yarrow. Either that, or the plant is miraculous, which I doubt.

And it's edible, as well. I found a recipe for pasta with a yarrow dressing, which sounds interesting enough to try some day.

And then, it's just beautiful.

Each "flower" is a cluster of about 5 ray flowers, with the tiny, cream, disk flowers in the centre.

Zooming in. Sometimes the ray flowers are pinkish; these are waxy white.

This specimen found on Tyee Spit.

Along a country road

The inhabited area of Campbell River is a long, narrow strip along the shore. Turn inland on any road, and you either come to a quick dead end, or after a few blocks of housing, wild country. Long roads wind off into the forest, sometimes passing a cluster of homesteads, sometimes just petering out into narrow, rutted lanes. On the map, they often have no name, and seem to lead to nowhere in particular, although they may meander halfway across the island.

Along one of these, I stopped to walk in the sunshine. When I stepped out of the car, I was immediately aware of scents; baking wood, a perfume reminiscent of pineapple weed, the tangy aroma of pine, dry grass. Birds chattered and piped in the bushes, unseen. Far in the distance I could hear the rattle of a helicopter; other than that, there was no sign of other humans.

Nobody's been along here for a while.

A wider section of road, with oceanspray, Holodiscus discolor.

Flower cluster, with ant. The flowers turn brown and stay on the shrub over winter.

Insect gall on ground-level plant, unidentified.

Great mullein, Verbascum thapsus. The flowers are yellow, but few were out yet. The leaves feel like fine suede.

Thistle. Bull thistle, Cirisium vulgare, I think. Those spines are wicked!

Zooming in. Branch with unidentified beetles. Or bugs.

Distressed beaked stump-critter. In thicket of bracken, fireweed, native blackberry, salal and thimbleberry.

I picked a cluster of vanilla leaf to take home. It's drying now beside my door; I can find it by the scent, even with the lights off.

Vanilla leaf, Achlys triphylla.

Fresh leaves have little or no fragrance, but if left hanging from a nail or drying in a basket, before long their sweet odour will lightly drift though the room. Even a scant three or four leaves can perfume an entire room for several weeks. (From BCLiving)

They say the scent repels mosquitoes, too.

Promise

Nestled up against a roadside barrier, a wild strawberry plant gets a head start on the summer's growth.

Come back in June; there will be sweet berries.

Wet feet

Campbell River is a long strip of a town; it stretches some 20-odd kilometres along the shore, but at its widest spot, it's barely 2 km. wide. Going east from my place, within minutes I'm off the pavement, driving on meandering, pot-holed gravel roads, seemingly going somewhere, but as often as not petering out into trailheads or just stopping in the middle of the bush, as if the road builders finally ran out of gas.

I love these roads. Even when the potholes are deep enough to hold goldfish, even when I have to crawl along at barely walking pace to keep my teeth in my head, even when I have no idea where I am -- I forgot my GPS again! Because the slower I have to go, the more I get to see. Birds and plants and beckoning trails and unexpected viewpoints; I keep having to park and walk about a while before I drive on.

On the Iron River Road ( I could never find the Iron River on the map, but for a while the road parallels something called the Lower Lost Frog. I couldn't find the poor frog, either; maybe he's in the Iron River.) ... the road is built up to cross a shallow, muddy pool, mostly mud on one side of the road, deeper water on the other. There, a celery-like plant grows in abundance, with its feet in the water, or entirely underwater.

These are completely submerged.

And these have their feet in water.

Zooming in. I think these are Pacific water-parsely, Oenanthe sarmentosa.

This is a perennial in the carrot family. Later it will have clusters of white flowers, similar to those of Queen Anne's Lace, but it's a water lover, growing in bogs and sloughs, along creeks and marshes.

Closer to home on the same road, but out in the open at the edge of the road, I passed a clump of another carroty plant, the cow-parsnip, Heracleum lanatum.

(UPDATE) Dave Wenning, on Twitter, identified this as Petasites frigidus var. palmatus, the Palmate Coltsfoot. The stem leaves and the hint of pink in the flowers fit the coltsfoot better, although the plants were taller than the 20 cm. given as the maximum height. The photo on Wikipedia doesn't look right, but the drawing does.

The tallest of these were only knee-high. It's early in the season.

But they're all blooming already.

And the soldier beetles are busy pollinating.

This plant is sometimes confused with the extremely poisonous water-hemlock. Plants of Coastal British Columbia gives a helpful tip: the lateral leaf veins of the hemlock end at the base of the teeth along the edge of the leaves; in cow-parsnip and other "carrotty" plants, they end at the tip. (Look at the first photo, above.)

More roadside plants, tomorrow.

Prickly!

Thistle buds, Serpentine Fens

Bull thistle, Cirsium vulgare. Also known as Spear thistle.

Red, red, red.

Along the short access road leading off the main road into Centennial Beach Park, I always drive very slowly, so that we can count eagles, look for hawks, maybe even catch sight of an osprey off in the distance. Sometimes we find something a little closer, a little less fleeting.

Like Crimson Clover.

Clover along the side of the road. Trifolium incarnatum, aka Scarlet Clover, Italian Clover, German Clover.

We saw it first a few years ago, and every year since then, I've been looking for it, without luck. last week, there it was again. I stopped, as I had before, and we got down in the grass and examined it up close.

One stalk, and it looks like 4 leaves; our lucky clover!

This is a European import. On this continent, it grows from southern Canada, down through the US, and, where the climate is warm enough, as in southern BC, is used as a winter ground cover. Planted from seed (or gone wild, as here) in late summer or fall, it grows slowly over the winter, then bursts briefly into bloom in the spring. Then it disappears into the grass. No wonder we haven't seen it every year; we have to be there the right days.

It's a tall, strong clover, when it's in bloom. The heads are large and taller than most clovers.

Zooming in on that gloriously red head.

This road goes through the sandy dunes between the marsh and the beach area; poor soil, rather acid, exposed to drying winds in the higher areas, home to grasses and scratchy shrubs.The clover thrives here possibly because of its strong root system, which reaches down deep and spreads, holding the sand. Like all clovers, it adds nitrogen to the soil.

Some websites tell me it's good for animal forage. Others disagree. Laurie's old book, Fodder and Pasture Plants, from the Canadian Department of Agriculture (a 1913 book!) says it's "especially suitable for those (farm animals) doing heavy work." It seems that the trick is using it just until it flowers, but never afterwards.

I forgot to check, while I had the clover in hand, whether its nectar is sweet at this stage. Our ordinary pink clover is sweet; the small white flowers aren't.

We'll watch for it next April and May again.