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!

Sky Blue

In Scotland, they call these bluebells.  My mom's family is Scots-Irish, so I like to think that I grew up calling these flowers bluebells because of the oral tradition.  That's actually kind of likely.

Campanula rotundifolia is a circumboreal species.  In the US, they are more commonly called Harebells.  I grew up seeing them scattered through the Eastern Washington landscape in open woodlands.  As an adult, I encountered them in cultivation in a botanical garden where I used to work.  In cultivation, they can grow into floriforous beauties that you'd never see in the wild.

The color of typical plants is a darker blue than this plant.  I found and collected this pale blue specimen from my dad's property, from the side of a hill where lightning repeatedly destroyed trees when I was growing up.

I'm not sure what to call this clone.  Should I go with "Sky Diamonds" or "Blue Lightning"?

At any rate, I'm quite captivated by its unusual hue.  It took me a few times to get it started in cultivation (I took small starts each time), but this year I have a trough full of it.  The season is early, but it looks like it is preparing for a spectacular show.

Impending Divorce

I've been interested in finding the highest places in the mountains of Eastern Washington.  None of them quite rise above treeline, but a few come close.  One summer, maybe five years ago, a friend and I decided to try hiking in to one.  It is 7300 feet tall, which is the highest place in Washington outside of the Cascades.

His wife wanted to come.  She hates hiking.  I think that it was because she didn't want her husband to be alone with me.  Whatever.

After a two hour drive up to the woods, our way was blocked by a logging operation.  Contractors had set up a high-line operation.  In fact, you can still see the skid trails from that on Google Earth.  We had to park a couple of miles downhill from the trailhead.  (In reality, no trail goes up to that peak- we would have had to cut across the wilds and bushwack our way up there.)

My friend and his wife bickered the entire way up that road.  It was uncomfortable.  It was actually kind of miserable- and I was left wishing that I'd gone up there alone.  It is grizzly country, though.  At least their constant fighting probably scared off the bears.

We didn't make it far that day.  They were not prepared for the kind of hike that I was planning- and I was not prepared for the loud arguments that they were willing to have in front of me.  Just before we turned around to go home, I found a Lonicera utahensis- the Utah Honeysuckle- in fruit.  The fruits look like red Gummy Bears- kind of translucent and bright red.  They bring back memories of my early childhood.  One grew near my house, and I always wondered at those bright, double berries.

I collected the fruits for the seed.

Out of three seedlings, one was variegated.  I decided to name it Lonicera utahensis 'Impending Divorce'

Here's a picture of what it looked like after 4 years.

Some variegated plants will continually revert to green foliage, and you just have to keep pruning out the normal growth in order to maintain the unusual foliage.  While it was still too young to know for sure, I was beginning to suspect that 'Impending Divorce' was a plant like this.  Not long after this picture was taken, I pruned off some green twigs.

A week later, the plant began to die.  Within two weeks, it was gone.  I think that it was killed by a pathogen such as a Phytophthora sp.- which probably gained a foothold in a new pruning wound.

I was heartbroken.

That plant had such potential.  I killed it- or, rather, another organism did.  It makes me wonder what kind of botanical marvels have never lived long enough to be propagated.

Oh yeah...  my friend and his wife divorced not long after.

Most Often, No Quarry is Found

If I keep posting about my discoveries, you will all think that I just go out and find a new plant the moment I get out of the car.

This is not the case.  I typically find a couple of things per year.  Some years, of course, are better than others.  It mostly depends on how much time I am able to spend out in the woods.  

Oddly enough, last year was pretty productive, despite me not having a functional car.  I estimate that I only spent a total of 4 days out searching- yet I found a handful of conifers worth propagating.  Of those...  it remains to be seen how many will be worth growing.  Only time will tell.

None of this is to say that a fruitless plant foray is devoid of rewards.  Being out in the forests in the Northwest is reward enough in itself.  Even in their most boring and non-mutated forms, our native plants are worth appreciating.  I have a fondness for unusual habitats such as wetlands and subalpine forests and meadows.  The plants that inhabit these places can be significantly more exotic-seeming than the typical, lowland forests of Douglas fir and swordferns.  

Several years ago in North Idaho, I bushwacked a couple of miles into older secondary growth forest to find a tiny lake.  I knew that it was a peat bog, so carnivorous plants would be likely denizens.

I have one picture that I know came from that trip.  This tiny plant is Moneses uniflora.  It used to be included in the family Ericaceae (blueberries, heathers, Rhododendrons, etc) but has since been moved to Pyrolaceae, along with other diminutive wintergreens.

This is a plant that I'd read about before encountering it.  On this trip, my nephew and I set out in search of the tiny lake.  We traversed a forest filled with rotting logs, downed trees, and general decay.  Clearly, the area had not been logged or burned in decades.  Moss grew thick on the forest floor and in the trees.  As we approached the lake from downstream, we first encountered the beaver dam.  Beyond that, mats of grass on floating peat islands were split by dark, menacing openings into the lake below.  There was remarkably little open water.  Most of the surface was covered in vegetation.  On the far end of the lake, I stumbled upon these two Moneses flowers.

According to "Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia and the Inland Northwest" by Robert Parish, these plants are considered powerful medicine by the Haida.  Even from my perspective as an atheist Westerner...  these plants are something special.  Though they are not that rare, I feel as though I've been blessed when I see them.

Anyhow...  my point is that being out in the woods is magical enough without finding the rare mutation.  My strange little hobby carries me into magical (if a bit muddy and sloppy) places that many people will never see.

Not all plant finds turn out to be wonderful additions to the horticultural pallet.

This Douglas fir, for example...  

I was a special ed teacher for several years.  I had a class full of kids with high functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome.  As part of our weekly routine, we would go to the local coffee shop on Friday mornings.  I always swore to coworkers that if the district ever took away those coffee trips, I would quit.  One year, they closed my classroom and moved me to a school where I couldn't do those coffee trips.

When I swear, I fucking mean it, bitches.

I quit that motherfucking job.  (It is, of course, much more complicated than those little coffee trips- but the loss of that time to enjoy the company of those kids factored in heavily.  They were some of the coolest people I've had the pleasure of knowing.)

I digress.  Every Friday, about half-way to the coffee shop, I would check out this sickly little Doug fir seedling in the landscaping of an apartment complex.  Finally one spring, one of my assistants finally said "Oh, just dig it up already.  It is going to get pulled out by the landscape maintenance people."

Yeah...  like I need encouragement to do that.

We had the kids walk ahead so they wouldn't know what I was doing- I didn't want to set a bad example, after all.  Of course... we are talking about pretty sharp kids here- I think they all knew exactly what I did.  I can't remember what I used to get it out of the soil- it wasn't that big, so I didn't need to dig that deeply.  I guzzled the rest of my mocha and stashed it in the paper cup.

This pic was taken about a year after I had collected it.  I babied it and kept it in the shade, which prevented the white/yellow coloring from being expressed.  it looked like a normal green doug fir.  The year of this picture, I moved it out into the sun, where the light bleached out the chlorophyll and produced what you see here.  I was convinced that I had discovered the plant of the century.  Imagine an 80-foot-tall specimen of this thing in your yard...

Alas, as the sun heated up that summer, I found out that the plant couldn't actually tolerate the sun- even for the cool morning hours.  This is why it had looked so sickly and white in the landscaping of the apartment complex.

Since then... the little tree has continued to be a sickly little mutant.  I still like it, and I'll keep it around because I know what it is like to be a freak that no one likes.  <whimper>

Some of us freaks don't grow up to be trophy wives or husbands...  and some of us don't grow up to be resplendent chartreuse trees that light up suburban apartment complexes.  

We still deserve to live, though.  Just like I deserve to have a job where I get paid to take smart, quirky kids to coffee every Friday.