How to Get Yourself Killed in the Woods

This is going to be an embarrassing post to write.  Normally, I go out into the woods reasonably prepared.  I have an excellent sense of direction, I pay attention to the weather, and I keep my cool in stressful situations.

I didn't do any of those this past weekend.  

I was up at Dad's, visiting for Thanksgiving.  On Friday, I talked Dad into driving up into North Idaho to see if we could get to the Pinus monticola sapling that I'd found back in September with my brother.  I had no idea if the snow would be too deep or not.  

When we left Dad's house, my intention had been to drive until there was enough snow to make me nervous, and then turn around.  I failed to take into account the lull of plant lust.  It can cloud my judgement, and get me into situations that aren't good.  There have been a number of times that I've run head-long into stupid situations without thinking...  one time I clambered up a really steep rock face in the Wallowa Mountains in eastern Oregon in pursuit of some carnivorous plants- only to discover that I wasn't able to get back down so easily.  

Anyhow, there was no snow on the ground when we left Dad's house.  We drove into the mountains for an hour before we encountered the beginnings of snow.  Once we got there, it got steadily deeper by the mile.  I started to think we wouldn't make it to the tree, which was a mild bummer.  There was a single pair of tire tracks that went through the snow.  The trouble with tracks like this (I've been in this situation a few times) is that the snow gets packed under the tires, forming a reasonably firm surface to drive on- provided that the temperature stays below freezing.  If you wander off those tracks, you immediately sink into the softer snow- and it can be a challenge to get back onto the firmly-packed tracks.  

Dad started saying that he didn't think we were going to make it.  Mind you- Dad worries a lot more than I do, and I'm used to hearing him worry aloud about situations that don't bother me.  I wanted to go a bit further, since we were only about five miles from the tree.  About that time, another pickup came down the road toward us.  Since both trucks were pretty much stuck on the same wheel tracks, I had to back up about a quarter of a mile to a place where we could pass each other.  A young man was in the other truck with a couple of young kids.  I asked him how far in he was able to go.  He told us that he had come around the road from the other end.  He said that the road was good the whole way- and that it was actually bare gravel after a few miles.  

We thanked him and continued driving in.  We got stuck once, and we had to shovel a path to get the pickup back up onto the wheel tracks.  "I really don't think it is wise to continue," Dad said.   I told him that we should keep going for just a bit to see.  Later, I regretted the hell out of not listening to him.

After a few miles, the snow did, in fact lessen.  By the time we reached the tree, there was barely an inch on the ground, and driving was quite easy.  I collected scions, and we went on our way.  Of course, I didn't have a map, and I'd never been up that way before.  We should have just turned around then.  But the guy said that the road was clear from there on out.  Of course...  "the road is fine" is a bit of a subjective statement.  I won't take anyone's word on such a thing again.

We drove for a few miles, and came to an intersection.  There were signs that pointed to various trailheads and mountaintops- but not to towns.  We took off down a wrong turn.  A few miles later, we ran into some trappers on snow mobiles.  They told us which road we should have taken, and we turned around.  In retrospect, I think that they were staring at us like we were insane for being in there in a truck.  

We drove back to the intersection, and took the correct road.  Since we were now on the right road- which was bare gravel the whole way to town- I started watching for brooms.  There were pretty large larch, Douglas fir, grand fir, and Western Hemlock trees lining the road.  I really hoped to find a broom.  This time of year, I could shoot pieces out of it and graft it when I got home- instead of having to wait until winter like I did during summer expeditions.

We climbed in elevation until we started to see snow again.  Dad began to worry aloud again about the condition of the road.  We switched drivers, since I seemed to be a bit better about keeping the truck in the wheel tracks. 

The snow got deeper.  I began to get nervous as well, since the conditions were rapidly getting worse.  We got to the top of the mountain and headed down a very gradual slope on the other side.  I moved slowly, so that if I got off the wheel tracks I wouldn't go very far.  We got stuck and dug ourselves out again.

We went about a hundred yards and got stuck again.  I realized that we were pretty much fucked.  The road ahead didn't go down in elevation quickly, so there would be plenty more bad conditions ahead.  My back, which had been bothering me for the last few weeks, began to hurt enough that I couldn't do much in the way of shoveling.

Aside from mentioning his concern, Dad didn't show any sign of being as scared as I felt.  He just kept working on getting the truck unstuck.

We got out, and then got stuck again.  At this point, I was starting to get pretty freaked out.  I don't exactly panic when I get scared- I just kind of shut down.  I had to fight the urge to get back in the truck and just hide from the situation.  I got out our empty coffee cups and filled them with snow.  It was warm in the cab of the truck, so it would melt.  We weren't carrying any water, which was kind of bad.  I've read that eating snow when you are lost in the woods is a great way to bring on hypothermia. 

My clothes were warm enough, as were my boots.  The trouble was that my boots only came up a bit past my ankles.  Every time I had to get off the wheel tracks to get around the side of the truck or gather sticks, rocks and dirt to put under the tires, snow got into my boots.  My socks were starting to get wet.

I wondered how many toes I would lose to frostbite if we had to walk out.  It was at least 20 miles.

I felt ashamed and stupid at having insisted on continuing into the snow.  I apologized to Dad, and told him how upset I was getting. 

"Well, as your brother says, 'shit happens,'" he said.  Again, I was struck by how calm he was.  I asked him how he was able to keep so level-headed in such a bad situation.   His answer was a combination of just keeping focused on the task at hand, as well as having less life to lose than I did.  He's 78 and I'm 43, so I guess he had a point there.

I thought about the possibility of dying up in the woods.  Death seems much more real to me now than it did when I was a younger man.  I've always wondered how I would react when I had to look it in the face.  Even if we'd died on that mountain, death would have been many hours away, so I don't think I was actually looking it in the face.  I was just starting to realize that I might be looking it in the face that day.

I was scared.  I've watched a couple of older friends die over the last decade or so.  One was very scared, and one didn't seem to be. I've always wondered how I'd handle that situations.  At this point, I think I might be one of the people who is scared to die.  Then again, this was a situation that was brought on by my own bad decisions.  Guilt is an emotion that has always been close to the surface in  my mind (a trait that is easy to attribute to a conservative religious upbringing), and I think that much of my state of mind was mixed with it.  Perhaps someday, when it is time to die for real, I'll have an easier time of it- particularly if I manage to keep from making too many stupid choices.

I realize that it might sound as though I'm making a big deal of this.  Situations like this really do kill people, however- like the drug runners in a previous post on this blog.  In order to keep from losing my cool, I tried to think about the experience, and how it might provide some useful perspective to me in the future.

At any rate, after the third or fourth time we dug the truck out (over the course of a couple of hours), we managed to get moving again.  There were a number of very scary corners, but I managed to keep the truck on the tracks.  We descended into snow-free elevations again, and the road was once again bare gravel.

I hadn't thought to take any pictures before that point.  This interesting granite cliff made me remember to get out my camera.  The road that I've described was up on the top of the mountain behind the cliff.

That evening, when we finally got home, I was so thankful to be safe in the warm house.  Needless to say, I will not be going out unprepared like that again.  And when Dad says that he thinks it is unwise to continue into the snow, I will turn right around.

As for that pine... I sure hope that the grafts take.  Maybe I should consider 'Death on the Mountain' as a name for it.

Clear Lake

Well, I missed a post last week.  It was the first one I've missed since I started this back in February.

To be honest, I'm not sure I can continue with the pace that I had set.  I had several years of hunting experience to draw from, and it is hard for me to get out in the woods often enough to keep coming up with a story a week- let alone a new discovery a week!

So here is what I think I will do- at least for a while.  I am going to cut back to once a month, probably just for the winter months.  Next spring, when I start looking again, I'll try to go back to once a week.

Consider this my post for November (even though it is a few days early).  My next one will be the first Wednesday in December.


Several years ago, my friends Janet and Diana and I went on a plant hunting trip east of Mt Hood.  On the way up to the place where we were to hike, Diana had me stop the car.  "That hemlock back there looked kind of yellow."  It should be noted that Diana is owner of Collector's Nursery, so she knows her plants.  Be sure to check out her new blog.

We were on a busy stretch of Highway 26.  I backed up until we saw it.

 It was indeed golden.  the following two winters, I tried to propagate it from cuttings and grafting.  I've had a hard time with this species-  Tsuga heterophylla-  even though it isn't supposed to be that difficult.


Each time I went up there, I had to wade through the snow in snowshoes.  Luckily, it is very close to the highway, so I didn't have to go far in.  Here is an actual picture of ME.

The third time (the time in the picture here), I was able to get one graft to take.  I've been growing it out for a couple of years now, and it is shaping up to be a very lovely plant.  I'm going to call it 'Clear Lake' because it is right next to the road to Clear Lake.  If anyone wants to see it, it is pretty obvious if you go up there.  Just be nice to it.  It is a beautiful tree, and I hope it lives a long life.

In the Garden

God damnn it.

I didn't get a post done before today.  I have started a new job, so I've been pretty busy and stressed out.

I don't have the energy to post something excellent, so I'll just share a picture or two.

Here is what Campanula rotundifolia 'Sky Diamonds' looks like after one year in my garden:

Remember Pinus contorta var latifolia 'No Trespassing'?  I got a number of seeds off the original broom.  I was able to get two to germinate, and one of them is dwarfed.  I think it has some serious potential.  Everyone who sees it thinks it is cute.  I think I'll try grafting it this winter.

Anyhow, I will do my best to have a post ready on time next week :)

I don't say it often, but I appreciate my readers.  Thanks for sharing in my wacky plant adventures!

Penstemons

Penstemons are a large genus of wildflowers that are native to most of North America.  Here in the Northwest, we have a number of shrubby species that grow on cliffs and gravelly areas.  One of these species is P. cardwellii.  My friend Janet and I spent some time poking around in the Cascade Mountains in Washington a couple of years ago.  In one area, there was quite a bit of variation in flower color.  The one above is a particularly purple form (most are pinkish purple.)  This is the plant that I grew from cuttings two years ago, happily blooming in my rock garden.  

The cool thing about most Penstemons is that they are incredibly easy to propagate.  Ones with woody stems like this one have adventitious roots at the base of every stem.  All you have to do is take some cuttings with those roots on them and you are up and running.  The main drawback of the wild species is that they have a pretty short window of blooming.  Some of the hybrids that you can find in garden centers now last a bit longer, however.

If you haven't grown penstemons- or seen them in the wild- you should definitely go out and look for some next spring.

Crazy Road Trip II

I must apologize for the last couple of posts- and this one as well.  I've been super busy, and my brain feels tired.  The school year has started again, and I've been oddly busy as a substitute.  This is good for the checking account, but somewhat bad for my spare time to write blog posts :)

Last weekend, I was able to talk my poor, unsuspecting friend David into a road trip to the Clearwater River in Idaho.  There, we shot pieces out of the broom in the picture below:

I had found the broom in the trip over there last summer, but I was unable to take pictures because my camera was busy being ruined in the rain at the time.  This time, David had a camera.

We had to wade across the south fork of the Clearwater, which wasn't really that large.  The trick was to get across with a shotgun in hand without falling in.  The bottom of the river was covered in rocks about as big as my head, so it was a little tricky.  We got several pieces fairly quickly, and made our way back across the river.  

At that point, I was seized by anxious thoughts, and was convinced that the pieces we had didn't actually come from the broom.  This is of particular concern when the broom isn't markedly different from the rest of the tree.  I shot some pieces out from the road, and then waded back across to retrieve them.  I got thoroughly soaked in the process.  I was sick with a cold that I'd already had for a week.  I still have it, and it is significantly worse.  Perhaps that will teach me to go wading in cold Idaho rivers with a cold.  

Anyhow, we got pieces that definitely came from the broom, and got back into the car to go to our campsite.  Unfortunately, I spotted another broom not far away that looked very similar.  Despite the fact that the branches did not look diseased, I am wondering if the broom we collected was caused by a pathogen or parasite.  It seems somewhat dubious, given the fact that a similar one was nearby.  I guess the truth will come out next year when the grafts take or fail.  

That evening, we enjoyed wine and hot dogs by the campfire.  (Quite a gourmet combination, I know.)  That was followed by an evening of slumber in the tent.  I awoke in the morning to find that I had farted and snored all night, keeping poor David awake.  I blame the cold.  

Anyhow,  I have a dozen or so grafts from this broom.  Hopefully something good will come out of it.  If nothing else, I had a good weekend with my friend- despite him having to listen to my snoring and smelling my farts.

A Verdant Pyramid

It seems like I find the best stuff in the most remote locations.  On that trip up to visit Sasquatch Love a couple of weeks ago, my brother and I drove to a location a few miles south of the Canadian border in Idaho.  The Idaho Panhandle is the stronghold of Pinus monticola- the Western White Pine.

It is a strikingly handsome species.  I remember discovering it on my own as a kid- I was maybe 6 or 7 years old.  There was one growing in the woods behind our house.  As a kid, I spent a lot of time alone out there, talking to myself, singing, and generally daydreaming.  In retrospect, I suppose that is how I survived growing up in that culture as a gay, intellectual kid.  I was bullied a lot in school, and I had a definite sense of how much the local population would hate my guts if they knew who I actually was.  These days, I have a lot of contempt for that community, its religious and cultural sensibilities.

I digress.  As I said, I coped with this situation by being a dreamy kid who spent a lot of time out in the woods- in all times of the year.  As I was becoming aware of individual trees and their species, I noticed this one lone pine with soft, bluish needles.  It had one limb that was low enough for me to climb into the canopy.  The sap had a delightful aroma- more pleasant than the Pinus contorta and Pinus ponderosa trees to which I was accustomed.  I had a secret relationship with that tree.  It was a special friend.  In its branches I felt magically connected to the woods, and safe from the hate the coursed through the community around me.

One day, I told my dad about my favorite tree.  He instantly knew which one I was talking about, and was excited that I had discovered the tree on my own.  He told me about the imported fungus that had nearly destroyed the species when he was a kid.  As I grew up, I noticed that my dad had a reverence for white pines.  He may not have needed to hide out the same way I did- but he also had a sense that there was something magical about these trees.

As an adult with a hard core mechanistic world-view, I don't have much room in my head for magical thinking anymore.  My sense of spirituality and sacredness in general is still there- though it doesn't lend itself to religious make-believe.  White pines are sacred to me because they survived a devastating plague.  They are very appealing to the aesthetic sense of humans (pretty much anyone who sees one is bound to comment on how pretty they are.)  Even though I know that the trees have no souls or thought, part of me still feels a sense of gratitude for the shelter and childhood fantasy that they offered me.  To me they represent a transcendence of bullshit and violent ignorance.

Anyhow, my brother and I found the tree in the picture.  White pines don't really come into their own until they are decades old.  They tend to be spindly until their branches really develop.  This little sapling- shorter than I am- was already forming a handsome little tree.  Several of its neighbors are in the picture- so you can compare.  I am not quite sure of the color, however.  The tree is in shadow, whereas its neighbors are in the sun.  Even so, the tree looks like it might be a little darker green.

My dad actually had some Pinus seedlings in pots.  If I had known that while I was up there, I could have tried grafting it up that weekend.  Alas, I will have to do it next year.  Or perhaps I could borrow a snow mobile again this winter- though the tree will most likely be buried in snow.

I suppose that one of these years I will just have to buy a snow mobile, though.

Weekend Road Trip from Hell!

I realize this may not be an exciting picture.  For context, have a look at Sasquatch Love.

Last Saturday, my brother and I took a road trip to visit Sasquatch Love. We had to hike in from the locked gate- maybe a mile or so.  There were bow hunters on mountain bikes, as well as a couple of horseback riders.  I'd never been there on a weekend before, so I was surprised that there were actually people up that far.  It only took three shots to get the piece that you see in the pic above.  I grafted up a dozen or so, and then saved the cones, which were full of seeds.  We'll see what the progeny look like.

We also headed to another weeping spruce and collected scions from it.  I got what I needed on the first shot on that one.

On the trip, we found a grove of old growth Thuja plicata, Tsuga heterophylla, and Pinus monticola.  You don't see a lot of large Pinus monticola trees, since most of them were killed by White Pine Blister Rust in the 40s.  This tree was four feet in diameter at breast height.

The entire grove was truly an awe-inspiring place.  I had discovered it last summer when I got lost, looking for a bog.I always tell myself that no time in the woods is wasted.  You never know what you are going to find out there...  and just being out among the trees is calming.. Walking into a grove of ancient trees after a frustrating, bumbling search in the woods was truly a treat :)

How I Ruined My Camera

I spent a month logging with my dad this summer.  Working as a substitute teacher didn't really leave me with enough extra cash to make it through the summer without working, and I knew that my dad could have used the help.  So I spent a few weeks cutting bear-damaged cedar and various odds and ends.

He's been logging that same piece of property since before I was born.  Since he does selective cutting, there is more timber on his property now than when he started.

At any rate, it was kind of cool to be able to hunt for plants while I was working.  While I didn't find anything spectacular, I found this interesting weeping cedar- Thuja plicata.  This is a really big, long-lived forest tree that lives in the western United States.  The fragrant wood resists rot, so it is the material of choice for fences.

The form is upright (this is a tall, nearly full-grown tree), but the upper branches are a bit pendulous.  Below is a more typical crown of another tree for comparison:

As always...  this is something that I'll have to evaluate in cultivation to see if it is worth growing.

On the last day of logging, I took the 12 gauge and the camera up on the skidder (the machine that you use to drag the logs out of the woods).  That gun kicks like you wouldn't believe.  I shot out a couple of pieces, and then figured it wasn't worth getting bruises by trying to get more.  I stuck the cuttings when I got home, so we'll see how they do.

Thuja plicata is in the Cypress family.  The great thing about this family is that most of the species in it are really easy to propagate.  You can take cuttings in the late summer or fall- instead of doing grafting in the middle of the winter.  It is so much nicer when you don't have to worry about a long trek in the middle of January :)

The bad part of this story is that I left my camera on the skidder.  It would have been fine during a normal August (we don't get rain in late summer very often), but this year we had some thunder showers.  My poor camera got wet and hasn't been the same since.  I've put it in front of a fan for several days- and it will take pictures now.  But the zoom button and the menu controls don't work.  I might have to try putting it in a bag of rice- I hear that sometimes work.

Since I'm on a limited budget these days, I can't just run out and buy a new one.  At least it still works a bit.  I can still take pictures- but they may not be zoomed in as much as I'd like.

That isn't really going to stop me from going out and finding new plants, though :)

Lovely- but dramatic enough?

Here's a larch that is growing by my dad's house.  When he logged the place, he felled a larger doug fir away from this tree.  When it stood alone, its graceful form was much more apparent.  It is a very lovely tree- the branches have a very graceful sweep.  As I look through the woods at wild stands of these trees, I'm struck by how variable they are.  Few are as graceful as this one is, but there is quite a bit of variation in terms of branch shape and general habit.  The question that needs to be answered in this case is whether the tree is worth propagating or not.  Is it strikingly unusual enough for people to notice?  

I've been watching this tree for about five years.  It seems to be pretty stable in terms of this branching pattern.  Perhaps the next step is to graft a few up and try them in different environments.  Even if it doesn't end up being worthy of propagation, it is a tree that I wouldn't mind having in my yard.  Not every person needs to be a supermodel to be beautiful, either.   In my quest for ever more unusual plants, I need to remind myself to take time to appreciate slightly more ordinary plants as well. 

Sasquatch Love

"I wonder if I'll get raped by a Sasquatch?" I mused aloud as my nephew and I walked into the subalpine forest.

"They are supposed to smell horrible," he said.

I suspect he believes in such creatures.  I do not, but I enjoy the goofy drama of it all.

Our goal was to reach that same high point in Washington that I was trying to get to in Impending Divorce.  In mid-august, they lock the gate, so we had to walk in.  There is yet another gate that they lock in December, so any conifers that I could find up that far would be really tough to get to.  It would take five or six miles on snowshoes to get to the upper gate.  Just getting to these trees in the winter is the hardest thing.

My nephew is a smoker, so our progress toward the remote peak was significantly hampered by his hiking ability.  (Just so you know...  if you have trouble keeping up with your fat-ass uncle who is twice your age...  you might want lay off the cigarettes.)  We made it a little farther up the mountain that I did on my last try, but we didn't make it to the peak- not even close :(

No brooms or other mutants were found that day- until we came back out.

I had sort of noticed this tree on the way in, but we were in the middle of joking around about Bigfoot.  On the way out, I got a clear view of it.

It is an Engelmann spruce with a very unusual branching pattern.  It looks like an arboreal octopus, with branches coming out at odd angles.

I'm going to try hiking to it in the next few weeks, to see if I can successfully graft it in the fall.  I've heard that this works, but the percentage of successful grafts is lower.

Wish me luck!

Twayblades

There are lots of orchids that are native to temperate forests.  Some are showy, like Cypripedium and Calypso orchids.  Others are much more subtle.  In order to really appreciate them, you have to get down on your hands and knees.  It wasn't until I became a hard-core plant geek that I began to really appreciate (relish) the value of undomesticated plants without the gawdy flowers that fill commercial nurseries.  After a while, the large-flowered, mass-produced shit that you see at garden centers starts to look cheap and trashy.  But when you take the time to look around you, you can sometimes find botanical gems that other people walk right past.

The twayblades- in genus Listera- are such plants.  Most of the species are very similar to each other- tiny plants only a few inches tall.  Leaves and flowers alike are an almost translucent lime green.  I took a picture of these on our family property.  I've tried growing them in my garden before, but the slugs think they are delicious.  Perhaps I should try growing them in a pot.  That way I could protect them from slugs.  I could also put them on a table while they bloom and enjoy their understated beauty close up.

I believe that the plants in this picture are Listera convallarioides.  I don't see this plant often, but when I do it is in shady, moist woods.  They seem to spread and form colonies- though I suppose that could be from seed as well.

So on your next hike or walk in the woods, pay close attention to the small green plants on the forest floor.  Delicate and beautiful treasures could well be at your feet.

A rare seedling

Dad and I plant trees every year on our property.  He does more of it than I do, since I am only up there visiting him for a week during the tree planting season.  We buy our seedlings from a nursery called Plants of the Wild.  Every year, we plant a couple of thousand seedlings of various native conifers.  Whenever we make the drive to Plants of the Wild to pick up the trees, I find myself wishing that I could spend a few hours looking through their seedlings.

In my own experience with growing native plants from seed, I've found a few cool things like that variegated Lonicera.  My thought is that mutations that might not survive in the wild are much more likely to make it in cultivation.  If you could look through thousands of seed-grown plants, you'd be more likely to find interesting mutants than if you spent the same amount of time looking out in the woods.

This year, I asked Dad to carefully watch the seedlings that he plants, just in case an interesting one was in there.


He called me a couple of weeks later to tell me about a spruce with yellow branches.  I asked him to pot it up and save it for me.

The pale branches have burned a little in the sun, but the ones with both green and yellow/white needles seem to be ok.  I will need to watch this plant for a while and see what develops.  It might just revert to green, or I might be able to select some variegated branches out of it for a new cultivar.  As always, only time will tell.

The moral of the story, of course, is that one must always keep an eye out for mutants- they are everywhere! 

Another weeper

I found yet another weeping form of Picea engelmannii.  It is pretty remote, so I will have to try propagating it in the fall.  I'm going to try doing that instead of the insane snow mobile trips that I've done in the past.

The structure of the trunk of this tree is kind of interesting.  It is forked, and the right fork has quite a curve where it branches away from the left one.  I wonder if this is related to the pendulous habit...  or if it is just from snow damage years ago.

Is it a good sign that my response to this is, "Oh.  Another weeping spruce."?  I don't feel like I should be taking interesting trees like this for granted- but there seems to be an overabundance of weeping forms.  I think that the best course of action is to propagate them all and observe them in cultivation.  It is amazing how much a plant can change when you get it in the garden.

Now I just have to find one that is variegated and weeping...

Why I Hate This

At least I got to see this moose.  She looks like she got into it with some kind of predator in the past- she's got some pretty serious scars.

I spent the day driving around the woods looking for brooms and whatever other mutants I might find.  I was still getting over a pretty bad cold, so I wasn't able to walk very far.  I'd borrowed my dad's truck, which was not working well.  The muffler had come parially loose, and change in pressure in the exhaust system was making the computer wig out.  It died every time I let up on the accelerator.  Annoying.

I think I got spoiled last year.  I found a number of things without really spending much time at it.  This year, I I think I'm making up for it in the luck department.  I didn't see so much as a broom caused by disease.

Days like this make me wonder why I keep doing this.  It is frustrating and I really start to hate it sometimes.  Of course, I know why I do it- and why people do things like gambling.  Back in grad school, I had some coursework on behavior managment.  And as an undergrad, I had certainly learned plenty about Behaviorism.  There is something especially compelling about an intermittent reward schedule.  If you can't predict when you are going to get a hit, you just keep mashing that button in the box.  I feel very much like one of Skinner's rats.  When you win, it sure feels good.  You are filled with the sense that you are doing something truly fulfilling and good.

When no reward comes from pushing the button, however, it is maddening.  Who knows.  Maybe it really isn't worth it.  When I feel like this, I remind myself that any time spent out in the forest is not wasted.  I try to relax and enjoy my time out there.  Even if I don't find any botanical treasure, I often get to see wildlife like the moose.

Besides knowing that I'm being hooked by an intermittent reward schedule, I'm also aware of how my human brain tries to form patterns and predict events that are truly random.  Our brains just do this.  Over the eons, most people have unaware that our brains do this, and we get a plethora of irrational beliefs and superstitions as a result.

Some examples in this case are the superstitions about witch's brooms themselves.  In the old days in Europe, people believed that brooms were caused by witches landing in the trees.  More recently, among broom hunters, you can sometimes encounter similarly irrational beliefs.  Some people think that brooms are more common in cemeteries.  In my own anecdotal experience, this just hasn't been true.  It also just reeks of quaint superstition.

We have pretty cool brains that struggle to make sense of an unpredictable world.  As I'm driving or hiking around looking for plants, I can feel my brain generating irrational ideas about how to predict the next cool find.  There is an urge to believe that I can magically manifest something by wishing it to be so.  Sometimes I find myself imagining that my chances of finding a mutation increase with every trip to the woods.  (The latter is such a common fallacy that it has a name- the Gambler's Fallacy.)

Ultimately, I know these thoughts are pretty much bullshit.  They give my brain something to do while I'm staring at an ocean of green foliage, though.  And it gives me a chance to observe my own primate brain doing what it does.  By spending time in the woods letting my irrational thoughts just run, I feel like I get to know myself better.  I like to think that I can carry this insight into other parts of my life.  By knowing how my mind tries to form irrational beliefs, I might be able to avoid making mistakes in my thinking in other areas.

Regret

I caught sight of this spectacularly weeping Engelmann spruce from the highway in northern Washington.  It was standing alone in a field, so it really stood out.  I am guessing that whomever cleared the trees in that field noticed this unusual tree and spared it.

The following winter, I stopped by a house across the road to try to find out who the owner was.  A woman answered the door.  I was nervous- you never know how people are going to react to you when you want to shoot a tree on their property.  The lady knew exactly which tree I was talking about, and she seemed curious about what I wanted to do.  She yelled to her husband inside the house to see if he had any objection to me shooting twigs out of their spruce.  He did not, so I went across the road to the tree.

There was snow on the ground- maybe a couple of feet.  It was a little bit difficult to get over the barbed wire fence- though not as hard as it was wading in the chest-deep powder that you'd find at higher elevations.  I shot several twigs out of the tree and collected about 20 cones that had fallen onto the snow.

Only one seed from the cones germinated, but it died a few days later.  Two of the grafts took, however.  Now I must observe the grafted trees for a decade or two to see if this form can be duplicated by grafting.

I have decided to name this tree 'Regret', since it seems sad- albeit in a dramatic and spectacular way.

Fine Gold

As we left the meadow containing the Phlox, I caught site of the Abies grandis above. The bright yellow new growth really stood out.  I had Dad stop the truck and I waded out through the tansy to have a closer look.  My feet got wet as I crossed the creek in the middle of the meadow.  I was wearing shorts, and my legs got very itchy from contact with the tansy and other herbs.

Up close, I noticed that only the top half of the tree had the gold foliage.  The very top had some dead twigs in it, which could have either indicated sun burn from gold foliage or else death from disease.  At this point, I am not leaning in either direction.  Maybe someone with more experience would have a better idea- but from my perspective, I'm guessing that there is a 50% chance that it is in the process of dying (its close neighbor is already dead) and a 50% chance that it is a cool mutation.

I think I'll go back next year at about the same time to see what the tree looks like.  I don't want to try propagating it unless I have a better idea of whether it is worthwhile.  The bonus is that I'll get to visit the rare Phlox in bloom again :)

If it does turn out to be a good one, could you imagine this contrast of color in your yard?   

Extinction

This post is about an endangered species.  Since much of my blog is about collecting mutants, let me make something very clear at the beginning here.  As I've stated before, I do not collect rare plants.  When I visited this plant last weekend, I took nothing but photographs.  (I think that most of you would already know that- I just want to avoid having anyone get weird and accuse me of something.)

The Clearwater River in Idaho is home to forests of Taxus brevifolia, the Pacific Yew.  In that area, the yews comprise the dominant forest species.  Everywhere else in its range, the Pacific Yew is a minor component of forests.  Ever since I read about that, I've been wanting to go visit.  I suspect that there are wonderful brooms to be found...  perhaps ones even cooler than the golden one I found last year.  

In my readings, and through conversations with people familiar with the area, I learned that there are a handful of endemic species in there.  Apparently, the deep canyons in that watershed served as refugia during the last ice age.  While species froze out elsewhere, some were able to hang on in there until the ice sheet and glaciers retreated.  One such species is Phlox idahonis.  Since I love exploring wetlands, I was highly interested in seeing this plant in the wild.  It is very, very rare, living in three or four wet meadows in a very tiny area.

I did a number of Google image searches to see what it looked like.  Not many images are available.  One person had a fairly nice shot of the flowers- claiming that he could tell you where the plant was, but then he'd have to kill you.  

Such melodramatics might have had more weight if I hadn't been able to find directions to exactly where the plant grew in about 10 minutes.  There are published papers, describing the process of monitoring the populations.  Happily, this plant is a fairly plain cousin to our gawdy garden hybrids, so I imagine that there is basically zero collection pressure.

For comparison, try doing a search of the following three plants- all three are roughly the same in terms of rarity:

Phlox idahonis

Sarracenia oreophila

Nepenthes clipeata

You'll notice that not only is there are whole lot more material on the latter two, but there are significant conservation efforts underway.  Those plants are under significant collection pressure.  In the case of the Sarracenia, which grows in Tennessee, you will most assuredly not find directions to its wetland abodes.  I'll have more to say on that in a bit.  (Oh, and Nepenthes clipeata grows in a remote area of Borneo.  You could find out exactly where it is pretty easily- but good luck driving to it!)

Dad told me that he had always been curious about that area.  A family friend had worked in the logging operations that cleared the land for the Dworshak reservoir, and he had often spoken of how beautiful it was down there.  Last Sunday, we decided to take the drive.  

It took forever.

The most striking feature of the land there is how deep the river canyons are.  We are talking a couple of thousand feet deep.   At the lower elevations, dryland vegatation is dominant- with forests of Pinus ponderosa.  As we drove along the river, I tried to imagine the landscape 12 thousand years ago.  The plateau above was probably tundra and snowfields, while the bottoms of the canyons were green- filled with fir and the kind of vegetation that we see at higher elevations today.  

We climbed out of the canyon again and headed up into farm country, then montane forest.  The road was paved nearly the entire way.  Finally, we turned off the paved road and went a few miles down a gravel road.  It gradually petered out into a small dirt road with a dead end.  When I got out of the truck, I spotted the Phlox in about 10 seconds.  Our trip was well-timed, as the plants were in full bloom.  The foliage looks similar enough to other upright Phlox species that I could have recognized it out of bloom, but it would have taken some careful searching.

I looked around the meadow a bit.  Eurasian exotics such as Centauria maculosa and Tanacetum vulgare were colonizing the area.  These are the botanical equivalents of the Borg from Star Trek, or maybe the aliens from the Ridley Scott films.  In other words, they are bad-ass mother-fucking invasives from hell.  The Centauria didn't seem to tolerate the wet conditions that the Phlox prefered, but the Tanacetum was right in there, choking the life out of it.    

This disturbed me greatly.  While people are out there carefully cutting brush away from carnivorous plant habitats and jealously guarding the über-secret locations of their populations...  this plain-looking little Phlox is languishing in a meadow with redneck pickup tracks and invasive weeds.  

So much of our attention as humans is directed to the pretty, the exotic, and the cosmetically pleasing.  Hobbyists righteously crusade to save plants that are far less imperiled than this one, but that have more aesthetic appeal.  In short, nobody gives a shit about a spindly little Phlox that lives in Idaho.  It doesn't eat bugs, or have ridiculously large, beautiful flowers or leaves.  And it certainly doesn't have the stately, otherworldly presence that certain species of owl have.

I've been thinking a lot about this plant- and my relationship to it as a human.  I have plenty to say about that, actually, though I'm not sure today is the day to say it.  

What I will offer- as a question/ food for thought...  This species, and others like it, were likely in severe decline before humans arrived in North America- let alone by the time European settlers showed up.  Extinctions happen.  The vast majority of species that have lived on earth are now extinct.  Only a tiny, tiny minority survive- or rather, their descendants survive- the slow, grinding algorithm that is natural selection.  

I doubt that we are going to be the ultimate cause of this plant's extinction, though it seems pretty clear that Eurasian exotics (our fault) are going to finish kicking its poor butt out the door.  This makes me sad.  But to expand that sadness into some grand statement about the natural order of things is, at best, deluded.  The Phlox itself is incapable of suffering, or of any thought at all.  There is no larger order to be offended or violated.  Likewise, there is no god-given right to kill and exploit.

The real issue here isn't so much one of right and wrong- of following some imaginary moral code-  as much as deciding what kind of world we want to live in.  Do we want to eat and displace most other species, and let our grandchildren inherit a world of rats, cockroaches, algae, spotted knapweed and tansy?  Do we want to preserve some of the molecular kaleidoscope that we were born into so that future generations can see it?  Should we try to approximate what the world would look like before we evil primates showed up and spoiled the magical and fictional Eden?   (My vote is for the kaleidoscope option, btw.)

Ultimately, I think that as our species continues to grow into the role of caretaker of this planet, we will need to grapple with these ideas.  Anyone who claims to have the corner on truth and moral certainty with these issues is full of shit.  

I hope that made sense.  It has been a long week and I'm very tired- but I wanted to get a post ready on time, especially since I saw some cool stuff to share.

Oh, and by the way- I still haven't made it to the fork of the river where the yew trees are.  I wish that I could spend my days wandering the woods.

Golden Boughs

Sorry for the shitty picture.  One of these days I should take a photography class or something.  That takes money, however...  and since I no longer have a predictable income, I can't splurge on such things.  It is hard to get rich as a substitute teacher.

The boughs I'm talking about are on the grand fir (the tree on the right in the picture.)  There were several bright yellow branches on this tree- bright enough that I was able to see them while going by at 45 miles per hour.

My dad was driving, as usual.  I had him pull over and back up.  The tree was right next to some power lines, and the gold branches were about 60 feet up.  I had no idea how I would get to them.

Dad had a neighbor who worked as an arborist.  The next January, we stopped in to see if we could talk him into climbing the tree.  It soon became apparent that the man was a blow-hard.  He talked non-stop for a good hour, espousing the full compliment of anti-government conspiracy theories that seem to be prevalent up there in the woods.  I wanted to get to the door and escape, but my dad was sitting there politely listening.  I was just waiting for him to start into some kind of creepy anti-gay rhetoric (I'm a gay guy, so I was starting to get a little nervous) but he never got around to that.

We eventually got around to planning a time to go get pieces from the tree.  The guy was going to have his son meet us and climb the tree.

On the way out the door, he shook my hand and said, "You know, you're a good-sized man.  I like you.  I like a good-sized man."

What in the fuck did that mean?  Was it some kind of weird redneck come-on?  Did it mean that he wanted to take me out back, tie me to the tractor and cut me into pieces?  Have a romantic encounter in the hay barn?  Both options seemed equally ghastly, so I was glad to get in the truck and head back down the driveway.

Of course, no one was home a few days later when we were supposed to meet the son and get the scions from the tree.  It was at that point that I decided that I needed to learn to climb trees myself.

The following winter, Dad and I happened to stop by when the owner of the property was home.  It actually turned out to be someone that Dad knew, so he gave me permission to shoot some twigs out.

It took about four shots, but I got a few pieces.  In this picture, you can see one of the variegated twigs, complete with damage from the shot from the gun.  Most of the buds were fine, so a little needle damage didn't matter that much.  At least one of them took- the buds are breaking as I write this.

I've been told that irregular variegations like this are unpredictable.  The only way to find out if it is stable is to grow it out for several years.  It might continue to throw out yellow branches here and there throughout the tree, or it may simply revert to green.

The waiting will probably drive me nuts.  I suppose that the only thing to be done about that is to go out and find more plants to obsess about this summer.

No- That's Mistletoe!

Virtually anyone who works in the timber industry has been trained to see any abnormality in trees as pathology.

I've talked to foresters and loggers about brooms (could you imagine a better profession to be in, as a plant hunter?  You'd probably see more mutated branches and whole trees than anyone else.)  Their universal response is to tell me that brooms are caused by dwarf mistletoe- a smaller relative of the familiar yuletide ornament.

There are a handful of species of dwarf mistletoe Arceuthobium sp- native to the Northwest- each specific to a host species.  True firs and spruce are not affected by them, but they have their own sets of diseases...

Dwarf mistletoe does, in fact, cause brooms- millions of them.  When I first began hunting for brooms, I wondered how you could ever tell the difference.  After a while, however, it became abundantly obvious.  Brooms caused by dwarf mistletoe are sloppy, disorganized, and rarely isolated.  The seeds of the mistletoe spread all over the neighboring trees (as well as around the original host tree), so you don't usually see a mistletoe broom in isolation.  Their general form doesn't look like something you'd want growing in your garden, either.

One time, at a local nursery, I noticed some  Arceuthobium growing in a wild-collected Pinus contorta var murrayana.  It had caused a bit of a broom- which is how I noticed it.  I could actually see twigs of the Arceuthobium sticking out of the trunk.  I told the cranky person at the information desk and he shrugged it off.  It apparently doesn't bother them to sell diseased plants.

Anyhow, I occasionally run across brooms that are clearly pathological in nature, but are in trees that are not susceptible to Arceuthobium infections. I'm guessing that they are caused by fungi like rusts, or perhaps by viruses.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter- I'm not going to waste my time with propagating them.  If you try grafting a broom caused by a disease, the scion will not survive very long.

Below are examples of such brooms in a spruce, a subalpine fir, and a grand fir.

Sometimes, though, you can't quite tell if the broom is healthy or not.  It may not be big enough yet for you to see its habit clearly- or part of it may have died from being shaded out.  I do propagate these brooms.  Below is a picture of such a broom in a Pinus contorta var latifolia tree.  One of these winters I need to climb it to get scions.

So, the next time you are out in the woods, be sure to look up.  If you find a broom that looks like a neat and tidy little dwarf tree, chances are you have a keeper.  If it looks like an ugly mess, you probably don't.

I think of these brooms as fool's gold on my treasure hunts.  I get excited when I see them- but only until I get a closer look.  Although it can be frustrating, I think that it makes the whole process that much more interesting and exciting.



For information on the Arceuthobium species, I referred to the US Forest Service's Silvics Manual

Take Three

Last summer, I went back over the pass to have a look at the broom again.  The damage from the 16 gauge from two years prior was apparent.  I was a amazed that it took that much damage and didn't drop many twigs.  I was once again struck by the unique form of this broom- I had to propagate it!

This past winter, I had planned to go up with Galen in late December.  Much to my frustration, those plans fell through.  The snow mobile had been sitting in the shop since March, but the mechanic still hadn't done the work on it.  We rescheduled for January 19th- during the long weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Since my job had been destroyed this year, I had a much more flexible schedule.  I was working as a substitute and a tutor, so I was much more able to take off an extra day.  Of course, I had a much more restricted budget because of this...

My uncle, figuring that the mechanic might not get the sled finished in time, asked a friend of a friend to go up in there with me.  It turns out that the friend of a friend was a photographer who is always looking for new winter scenery to shoot.  His name is Don Sewell- you should totally check out his web page.

Don took the picture above- it helps to have a photographer along who knows what he's doing :)

The weekend finally arrived.  Galen had to cancel, but he let me use his snow mobile.  We met the Don and his brother in law out on the highway, and headed up to the pass.  I was a bit nervous about heading into the frozen, drug-trafficker-killing wilderness with two people that I didn't know.  It turned out that they were friendly and easy to talk to, so I needn't have worried.

At several points along the road up, Don stopped to take shots of the creek, snow-covered fir saplings, and odd snow formations.  Eventually, we rounded the mountain and came out on the south-facing slope.  The sun was shining, sparkling through the millions of ice crystals that had grown on the top of the snow.  The whole scene was both blinding and breath-taking.

On the way up, I missed the broom- it is easier to see when you are coming down.  We reached the top of the little pass, which was covered by a small avalanche.  The snowmobile track went right across it, so we kept going to get to a better place to turn around.  As I rode over the avalanche chute, I thought about the dead drug runner again.  It gave me the creeps.

We turned around, and I was able to find the broom easily.  I pulled my sled over to the side of the road, and began to psych myself up for the ugly climb ahead of me.  It took me perhaps a half hour to climb the bank.  I had to use a fallen tree as a handrail of sorts.  When I finally got up to the top of the bank, Don threw me the gun.  He and his brother-in-law left to explore for a bit as I made my way up to the tree.

The snow was very dry and powdery.  In most places, I sank right through it- up to my chest.  Progress was agonizingly slow.  I had to fight the urge to give up, oddly enough.  I had traveled several hundred miles, coordinated elaborate plans with several people to get access to the machine and some people to go up there with me...  but I had forgotten how utterly impossible it was to just get to the bottom of the tree.  It was beyond my abilities.  Too many years working at a desk, and too many evenings of eating pizza instead of going to the gym had taken their toll.  That, and the fact that I wasn't 25 anymore...

I remember thinking at that point that my own sense of defeat was my own worst enemy.  I stopped, rested for a bit, and then pushed onward.  It might take me all day, but I could get to the tree.

Eventually I did.  I shot the broom with a slug from the 12 gauge.  One of the little tops of the broom fell out.  I heard Don shout from below- he said that he should have taken an action shot of it.  The sizable piece of the broom had hung up in the branches of a neighboring white pine- the dead tree that you see to the left of the broom in the picture.  Only the top is dead- the bottom of the tree is very much alive with dense foliage.

I slowly worked my way around the base of the tree, trying to find a way to either shoot out another piece or free up the one I'd already blasted off.  I shot into the broom with buck shot, but it refused to let go of any twigs.  A fine spray of ice crystals erupted out of it with every shot.  I tried my remaining few slugs, but was unsuccessful.

I had Don throw me some more shot gun shells.  I had to work my way back down to the top of the bank, which was not so fun.

I had started to accept defeat when I reached the tree again.  It was just too impossible to get scions from this son of a bitch.  I positioned myself  where I could clearly see the piece that I had shot out earlier.  I proceeded to unload a couple of boxes of shells in a circular pattern around the branch, blasting away all of the branches the held it.  Finally, it came free.

When I got back to the sled, I was utterly spent.  We made our way back to the trucks below.  I was completely soaked with sweat and melting snow.  It was a good thing I was wearing wool.

We reached the trucks and parted ways.

When I got home, I grafted up pieces of the broom. I had planned in advance for this, and I had 30 rootstocks ready to go.  10 were grand fir and 20 of them were subalpine fir.

Now, six months later, only two of them have survived.  Both are on subalpine fir rootstocks.  Neither has started to grow yet- but I think that I can see the buds changing in color.  I hope that means that they are going to break soon.


As I was standing chest-deep in snow on that mountain, it became very clear to me that our limits may not be what we think they are.  Given sufficient motivation- be it plant lust or simple survival in a financial or physical sense- I think that we can go much further than we think we can.  In the snow up there, my greatest obstacle was my own sense of defeat.  Once I overcame the urge to give up (or, more accurately, just decided to tolerate the urge and push forward), I was able to complete a  physical task that seemed impossible.

The last year has been difficult for me in terms of my career.  I was forced out of a job that gave me a sense of purpose and meaning.  The resulting fallout was demoralizing, to put it mildly.  Saddled with a mortgage, I had to struggle to keep myself afloat with my income drastically reduced.

It sounds cheesy, but since that day in January, I've been able to think back on my experience with that tree in the mountains.  Propagating it has proved a formidable task.  Even now, my limited success isn't guaranteed.  Both of those grafts could still die, and I'd be back to square one.

I think that difficult times in life are very much like this quest.  Ridiculous obstacles can stand in your way, and you can feel like calling it quits.  I feel like my job situation has felt much like standing chest-deep in snow.  It isn't fair, it is hard, and I've had repeated setbacks.  But with determination and help from friends and Dad, I have been pushing forward.

My persistence will pay off.  My limits are not what they appear to be.

Freezing to Death

The following winter- actually, it was during spring break- a neighbor named Galen offered to help me get to the broom.  It was late march, but the snow was still deep in northern Washington.  Early on a Saturday morning, we headed up to the pass.  After unloading two snow mobiles, the neighbor and I started off on the road.

About a mile in, we found a car that had been abandoned in the middle of the road, buried in a couple of feet of snow.  It was a bit of a mystery.  We surmised that it had been there since the fall, since there was no way that you could get a car in there when there was snow on the ground.

At two miles in, Galen's machine broke down.  We fiddled with it for a few minutes, and then determined that it wouldn't be starting again.  Perhaps unwisely, I went on alone.

I don't have a lot of snow mobile experience.  The snow was melting and very soft (I later learned that no one goes up there that late in the year).  Things went well for the first several miles, though I had a growing sense of unease.  I was miles away from any other humans, and I would have trouble getting back out if there was trouble.  I did have snow shoes, but with every mile, I knew that getting out would be a marathon effort.

I have found that a trek like that is more emotionally taxing than it is physically.  We have fear of these situations for good reason.  A lone human in the wilderness is so vulnerable- to the elements, predators, and perhaps his own fears themselves.  

As I climbed onto the south-facing mountain slopes, the quality of the snow began to change significantly.  In the open spaces, the sun had melted much of the snow from the road- particularly next to the bank on the uphill side.  The snow was mounded in the center and sloped off to each side, creating a precarious and narrow level space for me to ride on.  If I'd been a more experienced and confident rider, I would have been able to power through the soft spots and keep going.  As it was, I slowed down and stayed on the inside edge of the crown of the road.  This caused me to slide down into the ditch on the inside edge of the road, burying the sled and getting it stuck.  

When you are alone, getting a sled unstuck is not an easy task.  I managed to get the sled unstuck and moving again three or four times.  Finally, I put on the snow shoes, determined to walk the last mile to the tree. 

After a few yards, my growing unease at the situation rose to an uncomfortable level.  If I manged to get to the tree, I'd still have to climb that brutal bank and wade through the snow to the tree.  It seemed unlikely to me that I'd be able to do the climb after I'd been yanking the snow mobile around by myself- not to mention a mile trek on snow shoes.  

Reluctantly, I turned back.  I hurt my back while turning the sled around.  I was disappointed, but I knew that I'd made the right choice.  If I got fatigued enough out there, I might not have the strength to get back to the sled quickly.  Despite my warm clothes, I was worried about hypothermia.  It would be too easy to die out there.

I rode back down to Galen, and we  towed his machine back to the trucks with a piece of rope.  

The border patrol was there in the parking lot.  Dad, who had been waiting there, said that the border patrol guy asked him who we all were and where we lived.  Apparently, there is an overland drug-smuggling route up there- and there are cameras and sensors up the road to monitor activity.  When they noticed us going up there at a weird time of year, they came out to check it out.  I learned that the car that we saw was from a drug-run gone bad.  Two men had gone in on a drug run and got stuck.  One walked out, while the other attempted to walk across the border.  The one who tried to make it across froze to death.

Knowing that someone had frozen to death in that area made me even more glad that I had the sense to come down when I did.

Oh, it isn't over yet... tune in next week to hear about yet another attempted to reach this god damned broom!

My Holy Grail

Of course, I might find a holier grail in the future...  but so far, this has been the best broom that I've found.  It is found a few miles south of Canada, in Northern Washington in a Subalpine Fir- Abies lasciocarpa.

A few years ago, my dad graciously agreed to drive while I sat in the back of the pickup, watching for brooms.  It was a narrow dirt road that wound through a mountain pass.  We had passed through forests of Douglas fir, Western White Pine, and Western Larch.  We started to get high enough that a few Subalpine Fir  were mixed in with the other species.    As we turned a corner, I just barely caught sight of a green mass off to my right.  We had passed it before I could really get a look at it.  I thumped on the rear window- the signal for Dad to stop.  As we backed up, the scene in the picture above came into view.

The broom looked like a cluster of miniature trees- a diminutive forest.  I scrambled up the bank to get a look at what I'd be facing when I came back to collect scions.  The bank was brutally steep- I could barely make it up.  Of course, it would be covered in several feet of snow when I returned.  Would that make it easier or more difficult to get up to the base of the tree?

I marked the location on my GPS, and we continued the drive over the pass.  One the way home, Dad and I discussed possibilities for retrieving scions.  At 5300 feet in elevation, the road would be snowed-in fairly early in the year.  It might be possible to drive up there at Thanksgiving in an unusually warm year- but most likely I'd be looking at renting a snowmobile.

When December rolled around, I called a company in Spokane that rented snow machines by the day.  I rented an ATV with tracks- a monster of a machine.  We picked it up in Spokane before hauling it up to the north country.

My nephew and I set out at about 10 in the morning.  It was an overcast day, and there were a few inches of fresh snow on the trees.  The tree was about 10 miles in from the plowed road, so it took us an hour or so to get in there.  That's when the real fun began.

I had thought that the bank was too steep when there was no snow.  That was nothing, compared to what it was like with several feet of snow on the ground.  At first, I tried to use snowshoes to climb, but it was far to steep for them to be useful.  I then resorted to wading in the snow- sinking in to my waist.

I wasn't really sure I could do it.  It was brutally difficult to get up to the top of the bank.  Then I had to make my way up the hill above that, which was almost as steep.  I had my nephew throw me the gun when I reached a stable spot.

After another half-hour of struggling, I was finally under the tree.  I lifted the 16 gauge to my shoulder and proceeded to empty a box of 20 shells into the broom.  Despite the fact that they were magnum loads, there was just not enough power to break off more than a couple of tiny twigs.  I was out of ammo and only had three or four pieces that I didn't think were useable.

Disappointed, we headed back down the pass.

When I got home, I grafted the tiny twigs onto some grand fir rootstocks.  They all died a few months later.

I was frustrated, but I became even more determined to propagate this tree.  It was just too cool-looking, and I had already put in too much effort to give up.  Next year, I'd take a bigger gun.

Intoxication

"We found one of those weird trees you were talking about!" my nephew exclaimed over the phone.  

I asked him what species of tree it was.  He wasn't sure.

"I think it is a fir," he said.  He wasn't able to elaborate, so I didn't know if it was a Douglas fir or a true fir. Doug fir brooms are far more common, of course.  I've often wondered why- what is it about the genetics of Douglas fir that makes it so prone to dwarfing mutations?  Is this true of the other Doug fir species?  (one is native to Southern California, and a few others are native to Japan and China.   One of these years, I plan to head down to So Cal and have a look.)

It was a few days before New Years when I went out on his friend's property to find the tree.  He had been intoxicated when he found it, so he wasn't exactly sure where it was.  I had my doubts.

It was cold- there was about a foot of snow on the ground.  Dozens of junk cars, campers, pickups, and construction equipment were scattered out through the woods.  In fact, a couple of years later, when my nephew found a grand fir broom on the same property, I was inspired to name it 'Deliverance' because of this setting.

We decided to give up and go back to the house.  He was not wearing a warm coat, and was starting to get chilled.  We cut across a clearing to an old logging road.  Out in the clearing, standing alone on the slope, was the tree he had found.

It was about six feet high, and about as big in diameter.  The folliage was fine and feathery, with a moderate blue cast to the needles.

From what I could tell by looking at the tree, it had begun its life as a typical Douglas Fir.  At some point in its first decade or so, the terminal bud mutated and produced the broom that made up the bulk of the tree.  There were a couple of branches with typical foliage sticking out near the bottom of the plant.

Like many brooms, this one appeared to be sterile- there were no cones.  From the look at the fine branching and the extensive development of the broom, I am sure that the broom is at least 40 or 50 years old.  A Douglas fir should be reproducing by that age.

I grafted it up and got a handful to start.  I decided to name it 'Intoxication', to commemorate my nephew's difficulty in relocating the broom.  Now, three years later, the graft has produced a broom that is under 6 inches in diameter.  It is proving to be slow-growing, which is desirable for gardeners with small spaces.  Of course, I'll need to grow and observe it for several more years before I can reliably tell anyone what to expect from it.  The process of introducing a new conifer cultivar takes years.

The Banfield Broom

I have been a plant geek for as long as I can remember.  When I was very young, I remember being very interested in wilflowers.  At the age of 10, I began gardening.  Of course, I did not then have access to the kind of horticulture that I do now.  My gardening experience consisted largely of mail-order catalogs like Gurneys.  There is certainly nothing wrong with that kind of gardening, but the plants that really crank my turkeys these days can't be found in catalogs like that.

In 2002, I began working as a caretaker in a botanical garden.  That changed everything.  I had ready access to plantspeople of every variety.  It was then that I learned about broom hunting and dwarf conifers.  

A local conifer nurseryman has since become a friend and mentor.  He told me of a broom on Interstate 84 in Gresham, OR.  It is very easy to find- just look to the south side of the freeway, just West of 181st avenue.  The broom is a very compact one, forming a doughnut-like growth at the top of a Douglas fir beside the freeway.  

Of course, the problem with this broom is that it is in the middle of a city.  Using a shotgun to retrieve scions is out of the question- especially since the tree is in a school zone.

I tried a number of things to get scions.  First, I tried an arrow with a hook-like head.  Since the broom was so high, I was not able to get the arrow up to the broom with enough force to enter it.  I actually tried a couple of versions of that idea, to no avail.  The whole time, I was pretty worried about the cops.  A bow and arrow is a weapon- and you aren't really allowed to discharge weapons in town.  I thought about using a shotgun on New Years Eve, which proabably would have worked.  It would have blended in with the illegal fireworks that people set off.  I was too worried about getting caught, however.

Last summer, I came up with another idea.  I purchased six helium balloons, two spools of dental floss, a spool of strong nylon string, and a guitar string.  A friend and I tied the balloons on to the wire loop, which was in turn tied to the nylong string.  Each of us held a line of dental floss in order to steer the apparatus toward the broom above.

The idea was to steer the wire loop to the broom, where we could cinch it down with the nylon string and rip twigs out of the broom.  (This was a test run, since it is better to take the scions in the winter.)

It failed.  Miserably.

The balloons got stuck in the tree about 20 feet above the sidewalk.  I couldn't get them down.  I was responsible for unsightly littering.

Finally, last summer, I ran into the climbing instructor for the local IBEW.  I hired him to teach me to climb trees, which has turned out to be pretty useful.  Have a closer look at the pic above- I'm in the tree.

I climbed the tree to a point about 12 feet below the broom.  I then had a friend tie a pole pruner onto my climbing rope.  I hauled it up and cut two small branches out of the broom.  I was struck by how much larger the broom seemed, once I was up in the tree.  It was at least eight feet in diameter.  The pieces kept getting stuck in lower branches on the tree- a common problem that I've encountered in scion retrieval.

I eventually got the two branches to fall to the ground and rappelled out of the tree.

The whole climb took three hours.  I was utterly exhausted by the end.  Mostly, it was difficult to get my lanyard around the trunk.  Particularly on the lower third of the tree, it was very difficult to get the lanyard all the way around the truck and through the branches.  By the end of the climb, my arms felt like rubber.

This was on a Saturday morning.  The broom happens to be across the street from the IBEW union hall.  I didn't know it at the time, but there were guys over there watching me climb.  I'm glad I didn't know.  It would have been embarrassing...

Just as I touched the ground, and Portland Police officer drove up and asked what was going on.  I told him that I was propagating the growth in the top of the tree.  He said something that I couldn't really hear (the freeway was nearby and the noise was deafening)  I just nodded and he drove off.  I am not sure if it was legal for me to climb that tree or not.  I know one thing, though.  I'm not doing it again.  It was brutal.


Here's a closeup of the folliage:

In order to propagate a broom, you need to use a rootstock that is compatible with it.  For Douglas fir, I use seedlings of the interior form that I dig up on my dad's property, since they are hardier than the coastal variety.    

I use what is known as a side veneer graft, where you slice off a flap of bark on the side of your rootstock.  You cut the scion into a wedge that will then fit inside the flap.  I use a budding strip- a special piece of latex rubber meant for grafting- to hold the scion on to the stock and create a moisture-proof seal.

After grafting, I put the tree into a plastic bag for six weeks to prevent drying.  After that point, I have to wait until the trees push new growth in the spring.

I sure hope that this graft takes, because I won't be making that insane climb again :)