Wild planter

Wherever there is a smidgen of soil for a root to hide in, there's a garden. It doesn't matter if the soil is damp or dry, on the flat, or halfway up a vertical cliff.

Woolly sunflower, self-heal, and grass. And tiny pale blue flowers, too small to identify. Cliff face, Buttle Lake.

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Dondequiera que haya una pizca de tierra donde pueda esconderse una raiz, habrá un jardín. No importa si la tierra sea seca o húmeda, en el llano, o a medias de un precipicio vertical.

Las plantas aquí, en un acantilado al lado de Buttle Lake, son el mirasol lanudo (Eriophyllum lanatum), consuelda menor (Prunella vulgaris ssp. lanceolata), pasto, y unas florecitas azules tan chiquititos que no se pueden identificar.

Over in the meadow in the sand in the sun

A sign at Oyster Bay Shoreline Park tells walkers to respect the sensitive plants' meadow. "Keep Off!" in polite Canadian terms. So I hunker down in the sand at the edge of the path, with my camera on the ground and my chin barely above it, while other walkers pass by, looking at me oddly. Because the spring flowers are down there at shoe height and they're worth the effort.

Small-flowered blue-eyed Mary, aka maiden blue-eyed Mary, Collinsia parviflora. The big leaves are wild strawberry; the feathery ones are yarrow.

With an ant. Smaller than the redheads, but just as busy.

They turn entire patches of the ground blue.

These are a little taller. Not much, though. From standing height, they look like white dust spots.

Shepherd's cress, Teesdalia nudicaulis

Inflorescence of slender, divergent, 4-8 mm long stalks; petals about 1 mm long; sepals often purplish-tinged, about 0.5 mm long. (From E-Flora)

The whole flower head is less than 1 cm across. (I have very small fingernails: this one is 1.1 cm across the widest point.)

The basal leaves. I needed these to identify the plant. The white fuzz is haircap moss.

A bit bigger, but still down to earth. A wild strawberry. They bloom plentifully here, but I've never seen a ripe strawberry. Probably the slugs beat me to them.

Woolly sunflower and yarrow leaves, with blue-eyed Mary. The woolly sunflower may or may not produce yellow flowers in mid-summer, possibly depending on the weather. The threads around the top leaves are not spider webs: they're the reason for the name. The "wool" may help protect the plant from overheating.

Mystery solved!

Last year, in July and later in mid-August, I examined a woolly plant growing down near the moss level in the Oyster Bay meadow. I couldn't identify it.

Pale bluish-green plants, up to about 5 inches tall, covered with white hair. Today's photo.

I wrote about it twice last year, hoping for help with id. I looked for flowers, and found, on the third search, a couple of dead flower lumps, standing tall above the leaves. Still no help with id, although there were several interesting suggestions.

This morning, I joined a group from the Comox Valley Naturalists Society for a walk through the meadow. The group included a botanist, and she recognized the plant at once. It's a woolly sunflower, and has large, bright, yellow flowers, standing up to two feet tall. But not this year, either, although Wikipedia says it blooms from May to August. Maybe it has been too hot and dry the last couple of summers.

Woolly sunflower, Eriophyllum lanatum.

The page at E-Flora BC has 21 photos, mostly of the showy yellow flowers. In the several leaf photos, the plants are barely hairy.

Both stems and leaves may be covered with a woolly gray hair, but some plants lack this hair. The hairs conserve water by reflecting heat and reducing air movement across the leaf's surface. (Wikipedia)

Could the extreme hairiness be a response to the hot weather?

Woolly leaves, with insect.

More on this walk, later. I haven't even looked at my photos, yet.