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 :)

Bladderworts

We have a number of carnivorous plants that are native to the Northwest, but most people don't ever see them in the wild.  To do so, you have to locate specific types of wetlands and then go get your feet dirty.  Many of these wetlands were drained for farmland in years past, so we are left with a few bogs and fens that are either too remote or persistently soggy for farmers to have destroyed them.

A number of years ago, I read an article in the International Carnivorous Plant Society's newsletter by Hawkeye Rondeau.  In the article, he described his searches for a rare species of bladderwort called Utricularia ochraleuca.  I was intrigued by the idea of undocumented populations of native plants, and I determined to begin my own searches.

Through my contacts at the botanical garden where I worked, I learned the locations of a number of bogs in the Cascade mountains of Oregon and Washington.  When I first began to explore the bogs and fens, I remember being a plant frenzy that would leave me utterly exhausted by the end of the day.  I soon expanded my search to North Idaho and adjacent counties in Washington, where yet more botanical discoveries were to be found. 

In case you aren't familiar with wetland terminology, a fen is a wetland that has water seeping through it from underground.  They typically have a creek that emerges somewhere in the bog and flows out the lowest point.

A bog, on the other hand, only gets its water that falls into as rain and snow.  

Nearly all the peat wetlands that I've visited in the Northwest are fens.  No two bogs or fens are alike.  Most of this depends on the nutrient content of the soils and water.  In higher nutrient bogs, grasses and shrubs dominate.  Carnivorous plants are less common or absent.  

In the  most nutrient-poor sites, like the one in this picture, plants that are well-adapted to low-nutrient environments abound.  This is where you find the most carnivorous plants, such as the sundews, Drosera anglica.  The taller white flowers in this picture are false asphodels, Tofieldia glutinosa (not carnivorous.).

When I first went to this bog, I was blown away by the sheer size of the sundew population.  I once estimated that there were upwards of 44 million individual sundews.  Somewhere out there, there must be a variegated one, but I've never seen it.

The ground is red with them, and, on sunny days, there is an insect holocaust underway.  Damselfies, craneflies, and butterflies are struggling against their inevitable deaths in all directions.  If the wind is quiet, you can hear the desperate sounds of their efforts.  It is kind of disgusting, actually.

Each rivulet that drains the fen is filled with the foliage of bladderworts.  Utricularia minor- the lesser bladderwort- is found in many of the deeper creeks.  (By deep I mean several inches)  The shallower streams are filled with Utricularia intermedia, a more robust species.  In late June, their yellow flowers can be seen across the soggy landscape.  

One afternoon, while my friend Janet and I were exploring a stand of lodgepole pine trees in the middle of the fen, we found a plant that looked very similar to Utricularia intermedia- but that had red foliage.  This photo is not the best (I am not a photographer), but you can see the red foliage in the water.  The upturned yellow flowers that are standing on stems several inches above the water belong to the bladderwort as well.  

Here is a closeup of one of the flowers.  Though the plant looks almost exactly like Utricularia intermedia, the short spur (on the lower side of the flower) indicates that it is actually U. ochraleuca.  

This species had not yet been documented from this location, so I'm pretty sure that we were its discoverers.  Fun stuff :)


And now for a gratuitous picture of one of the orchids that grows in the bog, Plantanthera dilatata.   This species is powerfully fragrant.  On a warm day, you can smell the flowers from several feet away.  It grows in slightly elevated parts of the bogs among grasses.

If you aren't afraid of getting your feet wet or muddy, I highly recommend checking out any bogs you might have in your area.  The plant species can be really fascinating.  I love returning to this bog every year- both in the spring to enjoy the flowers and foliage of the carnivorous plants, and in the fall to pick the cranberries.

There's a noble fir growing out of my lodgepole pine!

"Mike says that there is a noble fir branch growing out of his lodgepole pine," my dad said.

That was obviously impossible.  It did sound like some kind of mutation that I should check out, however.  I told Dad that I'd be very interested in checking it out.

The following day, he told me that Mike would be leaving his place at 8, so we needed to be there at 7:30 in the morning to meet him.  My dad is a morning person extraordinaire, so he got me up at some ungodly hour- I don't remember exactly when.  We ended up leaving very early and showing up at Mike's place at about 7:00.  It wasn't even light out.  

We walked out into the lodgepole woods away from Mike's place a hundred yards or so, accompanied by the sound of the barking huskies back at the house.  There was maybe a foot of snow on the ground, and it was in the mid-20s.  Such temperatures are typical in northeastern Washington in December.  

Mike found the tree and showed us his "noble fir" branch.  It was a flat broom, dangling from a spindly and weighted-down branch near the bottom of the tree.  Such a broom is a welcome change from the usual fall-to-your-death locations of most brooms.  I wouldn't need climbing equipment or a shotgun to get pieces of this one.

The needles of the broom were less than half the length of normal lodgepole needles.  Most of the foliage in the center of the broom was dead- presumably from being shaded out.  Most branches this low in the canopy die, so the tree can put more energy into branches above that have access to more light.  In a few more years, this broom may die completely.

I did not have many rootstocks left of this species this year.  The ones I had were slightly too small (the diameter of the scion should never be larger than the diameter of the stem of your rootstock.)  I took a few scions anyway, just to give it a try.  I could always go back next year and get more if it didn't work.

As I write this, most of the grafts don't look so good.  I am holding out hope for two of them.  I am getting some new stocks ready for next year.

I have to appreciate people like Mike.  He may not have experience with grafting, dwarf conifers, or broom hunting, but he is observant of the world around him and noticed something  unusual in one of the trees near his house.

If you continue to read this blog, you will come to see that these mutations are all around us.  All it takes is the willingness to look for them.

Come Away, Oh Human Child

William Butler Yeats wrote a poem called "The Stolen Child" in which fairies are running around kidnapping children, pestering trout, and stealing cherries.  Loreena McKennit set it to music, and it is quite nice.

The bit about the trout is especially compelling in my book.  The fairies lean out over streams and whisper in their ears to give them "unquiet dreams."  I love that.  Unquiet dreams.

In the Northwest, we call our Erythronium species Trout Lilies, due to the brown markings on their leaves.  They are all quite enchanting- tiny and delicate... fading with the first warm days of summer.  I've been collecting seed and starting them in my garden for a few years.  In time, I hope to have drifts of them to light up my garden in the earliest days of spring.

My friend Janet and I were exploring a couple of populations of one of the Oregon species- Erythronium revolutum.  It is one of the few species that has pink flowers (most of the rest have yellow or white petals), and it has particularly nice brown stripes on the leaves.  During the course of this particular early April day, we looked at thousands upon thousands of them.  There were larger plants with two blossoms per stem- all the way down to first year seedlings that look like baby onions.  They grew by the bazillion in both locations.  Absolutely betwitching.

Oh god.  I'm starting to use garden writer terms- bewitching- enchanting.  The next thing you know, I'll be using alliterative strings of adjectives that make cheese-sensitive readers want to puke.

But it is true...  they are magical little things.  We made plans to head back in the summer to see if we could collect seed.  Tragically, the second population was in a grassy area by a highway, where a lawnmower would destroy the flower stalks before the seed would mature.  There were a few areas among the shrubs that would still be ok, however.

"You know, Janet, I bet somewhere in the middle of these thousands of Erythroniums, there has to be one that is variegated.  Could you imagine the variegation running underneath the brown marks?"

She agreed that this would be spectactular- if a bit far-fetched.

I shit you not.  About five minutes later, as she was taking pictures of some of the largest specimens a few yards away, I looked down.  This was right in front of my feet.  Seriously.

A young plant- maybe only 3 years old or so- was there, showing off its bright yellow variegation.

"Janet.  Come here and look at this."

She kept taking photos.

"Seriously, you need to come look at this."

We both stared at it for moment.

Janet handed me the trowel.  I pushed it into the ground, slicing out a cylinder of soil about three inches in diameter and six inches in height.

I found a nearby discarded softdrink cup and put the precious cylinder of soil in it.

About half-way home, we stopped for snacks at a convenience store.  I looked in the back seat at my treasure.  It was wilting.  I carefully watered it and worried.

I got it home and plunged the cylinder of soil into one of the best beds in my garden.  I placed a clear glass bowl over the plant to limit moisture loss- and shaded it with a piece of corrugated plastic to keep off the sunlight.  (That would have cooked it.)  Even with that treatment, the single leaf of the Erythronium wilted and died a couple of weeks later.

I spent the next year wringing my hands and hovering over that cylinder of soil.  When spring came, the other, typical Erythronium next to it in the cylinder of soil came up and produced a nice, healthy leaf.  I was heartbroken and wracked with guilt for killing this special specimen.  (Yep.  There's that alliteration- grab your barf bags!)

Two weeks later, I was overjoyed to see a lemon-yellow spike of foliage poke through the soil.  The variegated Trout Lily had survived the collection process.

It will be years before you see it on the market- and indeed, you can't really tell how cool it is going to be from that picture.  I have a good feeling about that plant, though.  Great things are in its future.  I decided that I will eventually name it Erythronium revolutum 'Unquiet Dreams', aftter the Yeats poem.  Worrying about whether it had survived gave me plenty of unquiet dreams...  plus, it is a Trout Lily of an otherworldy quality. If there were fairies, I am sure that they would be whispering to this delicate little ephemeral flower.