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...