Yellow lights

The top of the hill over Elk Falls is shaded by tall evergreens, mostly Douglas-firs. Where the land has been cleared to make trails and the old wood pipe channel (gone and buried now) coming down from the dam, slanted sunlight reaches in and turns on little yellow lights.

Either Witches' Butter or Orange Jelly.

Witches' Butter, Tremella mesenterica, grows on deciduous wood, Orange Jelly, Dacrymyces chrysospermus, on coniferous wood. Apart from this, you usually need a microscope to distinguish them. Oh, and Orange Jelly has a white base, usually hidden.

More of the same.

A large fruiting body.

In deeper shade, tiny yellow clubs sprout in the duff.

A yellow coral fungus,Clavulinopsis cf. laeticolor, one of the Clavariaceae family.

Cell phone photo.

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Bajo los árboles coníferos que cubren las laderas del cañon donde corre, allá abajo en el fondo, el rio y las cataratas Elk y Deer, el suelo duerme en penumbra. Donde se ha abierto espacio para hacer senderos y el valle donde antes tubos de madera llevaban el agua que bajaba desde la presa, el sol llega a penetrar mañana y tarde y allí en los bordes del bosque, enciende pequeñas luces amarillas.

1. Estos hongos pueden ser o "Mantequilla de Brujas", Tremella mesenterica, o "Jalea Anaranjada", Dacrymyces chrysospermus. El primero crece en madera de árboles de hoja caduca; el segundo en coníferos. Aparte de esto, casi siempre se necesita un microscopio para distinguirlos. La "Jalea Anaranjada" además tiene un fondo blanco, pero esto casi nunca es visible.
2. Otro de los mismos.
3. Y otro, algo grande.
4. En la sombra, donde no llega la luz directa del sol, pequeños hongos cilíndricos brotan entre la bosta (la materia orgánica que se encuentran en el suelo del bosque). Estos serán una especie de la familia de los Clavariaceae.
   
5. Foto por celular.

So yellow!

 It's skunk cabbage season again!

Lysichiton americanum. Swamp lantern.

They're everywhere this week; glowing in every muddy ditch, in shady pools in the forest, in swamps and at the base of cliffs. Anywhere there's stagnant water.

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Es la temporada de las linternas de pantano. Alzan sus largas espádices envueltas en una bráctea, todo de un color amarillo brillante, alumbrando cada zanja lodosa, en charcos en el bosque, en pantanos y a la base de precipicios. En cualquier lugar donde haya agua estancada.

Yellow

There are so many flowers blooming around my house, (and I've not even walked down the block; there's a whole new batch out there for when it quits raining again) that I've broken the list down, like one of my guidebooks does, by colour.

These are yellow.

Volunteers:

Buttercups. They're in the lawn, they're in my flower beds, they're in the disturbed mud on the hillside. They don't need any encouragement. With a tiny, tiny fly.

Parsley, flowering.

I had this growing in a flower pot in Delta, 8 years ago. It kept coming back every spring, so when I moved to Campbell River, I brought the pot with me. And it liked the corner where I dropped the pot so much that it has escaped, and now fills the whole area around it, even beating out the buttercups.

And not a volunteer: 

Tuberous Begonia, growing in semi-shade.

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Hay tantas plantas en flor ahora alrededor de mi casa, que tuve que separarlas, como lo hace uno de mis libros guía, por los colores. Y eso que no he salido a la calle en frente de la casa: ahí hay otros tantos, y todos diferentes. Si deja de llover, ese es el próximo proyecto.

Estas son las amarillas.

Dos voluntarias: ranúnculos (creo que estos son Ranúnculus repens, que crece pegadito al suelo.) También se conocen como botón de oro. Pueden ser una plaga; invaden todo.

Y perejil; lo sembré en una maceta hace 8 o 9 años, y volvía a crecer cada primavera. Cuando me mudé a Campbell River, me traje la maceta y a la plantita le gustó tanto el lugar que se escapó de la maceta y ahora llena toda la esquina, aún logrando excluir los ranúnculos.

Y una que no es voluntaria; una begonia tuberosa, creciendo en media sombra.

Mostly yellow

We'd had a few days of good, steady rain, and then the sun came out, warm and inviting; it was time to go mushroom hunting. I was on my way down to Salmon Point, where there is always a good crop, when I turned to look at the trees over Oyster Bay as I passed. And the light shone on them, and they were yellow.

I got no further. I spent the rest of the afternoon at Oyster Bay.

I always park facing this tree. It's glorious at all seasons.

The internet is wonderful, and the photos it carries can transport you anywhere, but it can't do this: the first thing I noticed, passing the gate to the wild field, was the scents. Imagine a perfume made up of golden leaves, dying brown leaves, grass, the aroma of wet earth, the spicy tang of evergreens, the sweetness of crabapples half eaten by the birds and hornets, a bit more dry grass, almost hay. Add in a whiff of salt water, and the sombre note of black eelgrass out in the lagoon. Got it?

As close as a photo can get to a scent. Random shot, beside my path.

The old apple tree. The apples are gone now. The birds have had their fill.

Down in the grass and weeds, two toasted-bun mushrooms.

Aphid on a fallen maple leaf.

Zooming in on that aphid, running from the camera now.

Even the rocks are decorated for fall. Yellow and white crust lichens, bird guano lovers. These rocks are sometimes covered at high tide.

Yellow "sunny face" lichen on another rock.

So I still have to hurry down to Salmon Point to find those mushrooms before the rain sets in again.

Yellow, yellow

The forsythia is an uninspiring shrub most of the year; an unruly sprawl of small-leafed, rough stems, a shapeless tangle in the hedge, usually untrimmed, sheltering weeds out of the reach of all but the most obsessive gardeners.

But in the early spring, while the alders and cottonwoods are still wearing winter drab, the forsythia bursts into glorious, riotous, brilliant yellow blooms from the base of the branches to the new green shoots at their tips.

Each spring, I look for a bush that has overstepped its boundaries, obstructing a sidewalk or moving into a neighbouring property. There, I gather an armload to bring home and brighten my kitchen table.

Bursting out all over

Zooming in. Tidy round anthers in a circular cup. 

The flowers don't last long. The ones I picked two days ago are already folding their petals; new leaves will soon replace them.

Yellow

Boundary Bay, end of January:

With tiny eagle, heron, gulls and ducks.

Yellow on yellow

At Beach Grove, Tsawwassen:

Daffodil

... on a beautiful, sunny day. With flowers, fish, and fowl. Photos to follow.

Primary colours

At Boundary Bay:

Blue

Blue

And red

More red

Yellow (Cedar waxwing)

Yellow. And pink, on the way back to the car.

Beautiful mob scene

For the first day of spring, our most widespread spring flower:

And arguably, one of the prettiest.

Or many, if you're a literalist. Each one (of many millions) is a stem bearing thousands of flowers. Ray flowers are the "petals" on the outside; the tubular stems in the centre are disk flowers. (Which seems a misnomer; since when are tubes disks?)

Just dandy; how many million dandelion flowers are there in your lawn today?

Local colour

Marigold yellow, winter sunset yellow, raingear yellow. And BC skies grey.

Xanthoria polycarpa, the Pincushion Sunburst. And a grey-blue leaf lichen. On driftwood, Boundary Bay.

Yellow

Hints of spring along our street:

First crocuses

Alder catkins

Forsythia

Primulas in an abandoned garden

Checkerboard. Blooms year-round.

And we found an alley-long collection of lichens; tomorrow's post.