Frozen Wonder

 Determined to start more Larix lyallii trees for experimentation, I headed back up to North Idaho in the fall of 2007.  I had already found a tree that was covered in cones, so I tried to time my trip to catch the seeds before they fell out of the cones.

That fall, I called the ranger station in Bonner's Ferry to obtain a permit to collect the seeds.  The ranger actually laughed when I told him that I wanted to collect a few hundred seeds.  "Just take them," he said.

I took a Friday off work and spent a long weekend traveling to North Idaho and back.  I'd never been up there that late in the year, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Here's what greeted me on the trail on the way in:

The track is from black bear and the leaf had fallen from the huckleberry bushes that cover the landscape.  There was only a half-inch of snow, so driving up there wasn't really a problem.   Though the bears were obviously not hibernating yet, I didn't see any large game animals on my hike.

The tree that I'd previously located was a couple of miles in- perched on the edge of a 1000 foot cliff.  I collected dozens of cones that were at the perfect stage.  They were ripe, but had not yet released their seeds.

Once I was back home, I tried germinating some of them, but I was met with failure.  Larix lyallii isn't an easy species to propagate from seed.  I must have just been lucky that first time.  I donated seed to the seed exchange of a local botanical garden, in the hopes of giving growers in other countries access to this uncommon species.  I have to wonder if they had any better luck than I did.

Larch trees tend to have only a couple of decent cone crops per decade- if that.  I am not sure when I'll next be up there at the right time on a good year.  I kick myself for killing that tiny seedling that I had so painstakingly raised for four years.

This blog seems to be turning into an obituary for plants that I've killed.  Depressing.

Hemispheral Displacement

In the Pacific Northwest, most people (at least those of us who have spent time on the east side of the mountains) are familiar with the western Larch- Larix occidentalis.  In the fall, its deciduous needles turn bright yellow and put on a pretty good show, particularly when they are peppered out through their evergreen neighbors.

We actually have another species of larch as well, though most people don't venture into its remote habitat.  It is the subalpine larch- Larix lyallii.  You are not likely to see this plant grown in gardens, since it seems to detest our warm summers.  Mind you, our summers are very cool compared to those in most other parts of North America.  I have never seen this plant in cultivation.

 The picture to the right is of a very large specimen in North Idaho.  It isn't that big when compared to western larches, but for a Larix lyallii, this one is pretty big.

About ten years ago, my dad and I visited a small population of them in the northern part of the Idaho Panhandle.  In the picture below, the larches are on the far wall of the cirque basin (you can't see any of them clearly- I just wanted to give you a picture of how rugged and cold their habitat tends to be.)

In the little copse of larches you see on the far shore of the lake, I was able to collect a few cones that had fallen to the ground.  They still had a few seeds in them, which I took home and treated with hydrogen peroxide for 24 hours.  I got one to sprout.

My idea was to try growing this tree as a bonsai indoors under lights.  Its growing season would be during the winter months, when keeping it cool would be easy.  During the summer months, it would spend its dormancy in the refrigerator.

The tiny seedling was very spindly for its first year.  at one point, I dropped the pot and the gravelly potting medium spilled out across the floor.  I was sure that I'd killed it- but it didn't seem to be too disturbed.

When spring rolled around, I began to reduce the day-length from the lights.  After a couple of weeks of 10 hour photo-periods, I put it in the refrigerator along with a compact fluorescent bulb on a table lamp.  I gave it 8 hours of light per day for a few weeks and then took the light out.

The next October, it started to come out of dormancy on its own.  I was always amazed by this, since it had no access to light, and the temperature was presumably held very constant by the fridge.  In my reading, I had learned that dormancy is induced in larches by shortened days in the fall.  It is broken by rising temperatures in spring.  (Alas...  I have absolutely no idea where I read that, so I'm just going to be a guilty, plagiarizing fucker here)  Is there another process involved?  Is there some tiny metabolic timer that just counts out the hours, regardless of temperature?  External cues from the environment wouldn't likely have penetrated the fridge...  plus the season was off by 6 months, so it wouldn't have been getting correct signals to break dormancy in October.

Anyhow, here is what the plant looked like after 4 years or so:

That year, I was really busy, and wasn't able to go through the full routine of inducing dormancy.  I just stuffed it in the refrigerator.

That doesn't work.  It just killed it.  God damn it.  I think that this would be a viable- if high maintenance- method for growing this plant.  It would have made a very nice bonsai, and I may well have had the only one in the world growing on Southern Hemisphere schedule!

That same year, I had actually gone back to North Idaho to collect more seed.  I will show some pictures and tell the tale next week.

A Mutant May Not Be Weird Enough...

During the summers, I am sometimes able to talk my dad into driving around on forest service roads while I sit in the back of his truck, looking for brooms and other mutants.  This has proved to be productive sometimes.  On other days, I get a sore butt from the bumps for no good reason.

A few years ago, on such a trip, I happened to see this little scene.

The trouble with some of these trees is that there is no way to get a good picture of them- there are just too many trees around them and there is no good angle.  

The tree in the center is a weeping Douglas fir.  It is actually a fairly graceful form that would be worth propagating.  Maybe someday I will make it back there during the right time of year.  However, there are already a number of weeping Douglas firs out on the market.  Getting to some of these trees in the winter (the best time to take scions) can be tough.  This one is remote enough that I may not ever get around to it.

In future posts, you'll see the trouble that I will go to when a mutant is both remote and unique.  You'll probably think I'm a nutcase afterwards.

Asking Permission

Grand fir- Abies grandis.  I grew up in woods that were filled with this species.  Commonly used as a Christmas tree, this species has a handsome form and aromatic foliage.  While it does grow in coastal climates, west of the Cascade Mountains, it is most at home in the mountains of Eastern Washington and Idaho.  I believe that the Interior form is bigger and more handsome.  The ones we see on the West Side aren't very impressive by comparison.

For information on this spectactular species, check out the Forest Service's Sylvics Manual:

http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/silvics_manual/table_of_contents.htm

I haven't seen many witch's brooms in Abies grandis.  I know only of two.

I noticed this broom last winter,  My dad and I were in a field, checking out a spectacularly weeping Engelmann spruce (there will be a post about that one in the future).  As we headed back to the highway, I caught site of a large, dark blob in the top of a tree about a half mile off.

When you get closer to the tree, it isn't visible from the highway.  We had to carefully look through the dense foliage of lodgepole pines.  When I originally found it, I was exhausted from the arduous journey to yet another broom in the mountains.  (again, a subject for another post)  I was too tired to deal with this one.

Last week, I was up at my dad's for a week to help plant trees and clear brush.  We drove up to the location of this broom to try to get permission to shoot pieces out of it.

In that part of Washington, brooms tend to be either on private land near the roads that you can traverse in the winter- or else up in the mountains where you need a snow mobile.  When they are private land, I always ask permission.  Typically, the owners live on the plot of land, and all it takes is stopping in to ask.  Most people are friendly and curious about what I'm doing.  (A few haven't been- that might be a subject for a post sometime.)

Dad and I drove around the perimeter of the property, looking for the owner's dwelling.  The boundaries were not very clear.  We stopped in a neighboring property, where a woman was out walking her dogs.  She asked me to wait a moment while she put the dogs inside.  They were friendly, but were making a lot of noise.

I introduced myself, mentioned the broom, and described what it was.  She said that it was not, in fact, their property, and that she thought that the place belonged to someone who lived out of town.  I gave her my name and phone number, in case she was able to find out who it was.

A few days later, Dad and I stopped by the county tax assessor's office to find the contact info for the owner.  It turns out that it was indeed owned by a person from out of town- in a different corner of Washington.  No email addresses or phone numbers were available- just a snail mail address.

Today, I mailed out a request for permission to the owner.  I have to wonder what it would be like to receive a letter like that.  Very few people in the world know what a witch's broom is, let alone that some can be propagated.  Most people in Eastern Washington will readily tell you that "that's mistletoe- you have to cut it out."  While the majority of brooms are, in fact, produced by such parasites, this one is almost assuredly not. Any time a broom looks like a neat and tidy tree that you'd want in your yard, it is pretty likely a genetic mutation.

Regardless, I think it would be weird to get random letter from someone who wanted to go onto your property and shoot your tree with a shotgun.  I hope that the guy responds.  I included a self-addressed, stamped envelope.  If it were me, I think I'd probably intend to respond, but never get around to it.  I just hope that this guy is more with-it than I am :)

Of course, there was the option of just doing it ninja-style.  I'd be willing to bet that there is no ninja-style way of shooting a tree with a shotgun, however.  The broom is high enough that it would probably take multiple shots.  If I attract attention, I would like to have written permission in hand to show the neighbors or cops.  Plus, if someone wanted to come onto my land and take cuttings from a tree- shotgun or not- I would appreciate the honesty and respect of someone asking permission beforehand.

Wish me luck!