Consumption plant, gone to seed, with spider web

Every time I look at these at Oyster Bay Shoreline Park, they've already gone to seed.

Lomatium nudicale, Indian consumption plant, aka Bare-stem desert parseley.

The flowers are yellow, and there's a patch right beside the trail, where I pass every time I visit. By early June, though, they've all gone to seed.

Flowers in bloom, May 2018

"The seeds were used for flavouring stews, soups, teas and tobacco. ... The plant was widely used during the last century for the treatment of 'consumption' (tuberculosis)." (Plants of Coastal British Columbia)

Hence the name.

Hairy cat's ear

A plague in my lawn, a pest on the dunes. But still beautiful.

Hypochaeris radicata

Common cat’s-ear can produce over 2000 seeds per plant ...(Whatcom county)

Lacy nests

As summer ends, the flowers that brighten our waste spaces droop, wither, and fall into a soggy brown mass, rotting in the rain. One, Queen Anne's lace, perseveres, as beautiful in her winter outfit as she was in her summer whites.

Tall grasses and Queen Anne's lace, Tyee Spit. There are still a few white flowers left on these stalks.

As the seeds develop, the flower closes down into a cup or birds' nest shape.

Each large umbel is composed of many small umbellets. Each umbellet contains many flowers, each on their own stalk. Each flower produces two seeds, encased in a spiky pod.

The outer seed pods will split open and scatter their seeds. A few will remain all winter in the protected centre, like eggs in a bird's nest.

Queen Anne's lace is the ancestor of our common carrot, and all parts of the plant are edible.

Using first year Queen Anne’s lace plants are recommended. Roots are long, pale, woody, and are finger-thin and are used in soups, stews and in making tea. First year leaves can be chopped and tossed into a salad. Flower clusters can be ‘french-fried’ or fresh flowers can be tossed into a salad. The aromatic seed is used as a flavoring in stews and soups. (ediblewildfood . com)

There is one caveat: Queen Anne's lace looks very much like the poison hemlock, so it is essential to be able to identify each one. The simplest clue is in the flower head; Queen Anne's lace usually has one tiny purple flower in the centre of the white umbel. But since this is a biennial plant, and no flowers are produced the first year, I think I'll pass on the salad and root stews. The seeds will be safe enough, if I've seen the flower heads already.

I found a blog, Raven's Roots, with a post showing very clearly (with photos and text), how to identify poison hemlock vs. QAL. Worth bookmarking.

Also worth seeing is a photo exploration of QAL, from its earliest flowers to microscopic photos of seeds. Here.

All three photos taken on the western bank of Tyee Spit.

Tied in knots

As the year winds down, the roadsides and bushes are bristling with seeds of all sorts. Rose hips and burrs, berries and nuts, ballooning hairy cat's ear and hawkweeds, pods and fluff and coins and teasels, spiny balls and powdery dusts.

I noticed a tiny plant in a muddy bank on Tyee Spit; a clump flat against the soil, barely two hand's width across. Among the feathery leaves were a few specks of pink, miniature flowers, too small to notice, except that I was watching my footsteps carefully, trying not to slip on the unstable bank.

Common stork's bill, or red-stem stork's bill, Erodium cicutarium.

I found a match in my guide, but wasn't sure of the flowers; five petals, or four? So I went back a few days later. Too late; the flowering season is almost over.

The last buds, in my hand. I have them in water now, but they haven't opened.

Three seed capsules

The guide book says, about the seeds,

"Capsules, 33-5 cm long, splitting open into 5 segments, each with 1 or 2 smooth seeds, and tipped with a spirally twisting, persistent style."

I had brought home the bit of stem with seed capsules and buds, and tonight, when I checked, the capsules had split open, and there were the twisty styles.

They've tangled themselves up.

I teased out a couple. They're thread-thin.

The furry tips will contain one or two seeds each.

More seeds tomorrow.

Gone to seed

It's mid-August, and in our short northern summer, the nights are cool again. Leaves are turning yellow and red; below big maples, brown leaves crackle under my feet. In the sunny meadows and along the shoreline, the rush is on to get next year's seeds into the ground.

Some seeds are welcome:

Wild cherries. The birds will love them, and spread the seeds all around the meadow.

That tiny rabbits-foot clover, still good to look at, with tiny orange seeds on each bit of fluff.

Field pennycress, Thlapsi arvense. The flowers are white, but on some of the plants, the seed pods have turned pink.

Two different plants, both unidentified.

Sea rocket, Cakile edentula. Look good enough to eat.

According to Wikipedia, the leaves of sea rocket are edible. Another one to try.

And some seeds are not so pleasant.

Large-headed sedge, Carex macrocephala. Those spines are hard and sharp, enough to scratch an ankle as I walk past.

And this is the worst I've found this year:

Silver burweed, Ambrosia chamissonis, looking innocent.

These are the male flowers. They line up in clusters on the tall stalks. A bit hairy, always speckled with sand because they're slightly sticky and catch anything blowing in the wind, but otherwise attractive enough.

The female flowers are towards the bottom of the spikes, crowded into leaf bracts, and soon crowned with the growing burrs.

Developing seed packets.

The burrs dry, turn brown and hard, and fall to the ground, where they become invisible and where they soon find a passing sandal and dig in. Those spines are sharp! Several times, I jumped and yelped, feeling as if I'd been bitten by something dire, then hopped to a support, took off my sandal, and had to pull the spines out of my skin. They don't just shake off.

Rabbits frequent this area. I've found their droppings everywhere. I wonder how those spines feel on their tender feet.

Still here.

Messy!

Life is messy. Sometimes, in some places, the mess is hidden. It's underwater, or too small to see, or too big, too far away. And sometimes, it's everywhere you look.

Reifel Island is a good place to find it.

Tree, without the leaves to disguise the disorderly branches.

Unidentified plant, gone to seed, half fallen over the bank. The purple flowers are purple nightshade.

Mallard, daisies, and pond scum.

Bee on thistle, with pollen dust, and a tangle of assorted plants as background.

Windborne seed, on goldenrod. With assorted flies and ants, all tied together with spider webs.

Ripening crabapples, with spotty, dying leaves. And spider web, of course.

Blackberries, green, red, spotty, black, and purple. With dead flowers. And spider webs.

More pond scum, rotting weeds, and a neat little brown sparrow.

Busy bee on thistle, skipper waiting his turn, and more spider webs.

Black-crowned night heron, in his favourite spot. 

I'm sure there were spider webs around the heron, too.

A bit past their prime

The lupins in Elgin Heritage Park last week were "a bit past their prime," I said. That wasn't quite fair to them; it all depends what we consider their purpose to be. Sure, some of the flowers were dead, others were losing their shape and colour, but the plants were still hard at work towards their goal, producing seed.

Hairy, immature seed pods and the remains of flowers.

The pods will be dry, brown, and rattly before they're done. They'll split open then, scattering dried "peas" to start the next generation.

And there's more going on:

There's still pollen for the bees . . .

and sap for fat, grey aphids.

There are still oodles of new stalks, with hundreds of flowers each, dying at the bottom, still budding at the tip.

Second-growth tip, just getting started.

Past its prime? Not even there yet!

Care and treatment of spring fever

Another day, another nursery. It's barely spring, but gardening fever has set in. We dropped in this afternoon at Potters. They'd just opened last Friday, and weren't near finished stocking; most of the area under cover was still empty, the tree and shrub section just bare mud, with a couple of cats. Workers dashed around, hauling carts of plants, tools, scraps of planking. A table held a box of small paint cans, and on a piece of cardboard, a paintbrush thick with drying blue paint.

There were three or four other customers; an old lady buying a hellebore, a man in to pick up a large order, another man who got into his van, empty handed, as we parked.

Most of the plants already laid out, perennials, are still tiny. There are few flowers, not even buds. The hostas in their pots were still under the mud. (Just like my hostas here at home.) But there were blooming primulas, tables of them. I found a couple more white ones; they show up so well in my deep shade at this time of year. And Laurie found the pansies he was after. And bought more soil. He always buys soil; you'd think he was trying to build a hill.

Half a table's worth of primulas. Not too many whites available this year.

Purple primulas

Pink and yellow

I loved these pale pink hellebores.

Most of our little load of plants. Laurie bought four more pansies and a fern.

It rained the rest of the afternoon. It's raining now. It will probably rain tomorrow. I don't mind; there will be plenty of time to start getting muddy.

The stuff of dreams

We didn't buy any of these, but I was tempted. Laurie didn't notice them; the ferns were just beyond, and drew his attention.

He cultivates one sunny patch suitable for veggies. He's talking about Swiss chard, which did well last year. I might put in a few lettuce again, to feed the slugs. I wonder if they like sweet peas?