Plant Orgy Love Child

I've written in the past about Camas flowers- Camassia sp.  I have a breeding project underway to develop new color patterns in the flowers.  So far, I'm at the F1 hybrid stage, where all the plants are homogeneous and boring.  

Out in my garden is a growing hybrid swarm.  I grow the three main species of Camas- C. leichtlinii, C. quamash, and C. cusickii.  They bloom at roughly the same time, so they have all sorts of slutty inter-species sex, resulting in hordes of hybrid offspring.

One such plant bloomed for the first time this year, revealing its crazy flowers.

I'm not sure if I need to improve on that at all at this point.  I will propagate the shit out of this one, while mixing its genetics into my breeding project.  

Fun times!

Trillium

I inherited a large piece of wooded land from my dad.  Every year when we were kids, we would pick morels -Morchella sp, a delicious and easy-to-identify group of mushroom species that grow wild on the place.

In years past, I haven't been up there at the right time to pick them, so I scheduled a weekend camp-out this year.  I also wanted to check out the local wildflowers.  My friend Melissa went with me to see the property and check out the countryside.

We had a moderate harvest of black morels- Morchella elata.  We cooked them in a cast-iron skillet over charcoal- sauteed in butter.  So delicious :)

We also spent some time bushwhacking through the property to check on the health of the trees.  I think I'm going to have to get some logging done, since the fire danger is higher every year.  Some of the more moisture-sensitive speces like Abies grandis are starting to spontaneously die from the hotter and drier climate.  I need to start changing the mix of species to favor fire-resistant species such as Pinus ponderosa, Larix occidentalis, and Pseudotsuga menziesii.  

We chanced upon this Trillium ovatum plant.  

I'm not sure what to make of the variegation.  It may be viral, though I don't see other plants un the area with the same symptoms.  I will just watch it for a few years to see if it is stable.  If so, I will transplant it to my garden for further evaluation.  I may also go back for seed this summer and see what results from that.  

Grass Widows

I recently went on a hike in Washington State, in an area well-known for its wildflowers.  One of the earliest species is Olsynium douglasii, or the grass widow.

While I was there, I viewed thousands upon thousands of individual plants.  Nearly all of the plants had flowers that were pinkish-purple.  

Whenever you are able to look at that many plants at once, you are bound to find some mutations and variations.  Several years ago, I saw a white-flowered form.  This time, I was not able to find it, which made me sad.  Luckily, I found another one in a different location.  

\

My favorites, of course, are the pale forms.  this one was just barely pink.  

The best one of the day was this one.  It had a lovely pink star in the center of the flower.  

I would be tempted to collect seed of these forms, and do some breeding.  The trouble is that this plant is a bitch to grow in wetter climates like mine.  I've bought plants from native plant nurseries in the past.  If I'm lucky, they last a couple of years and then die.  As wonderful as it would be to breed new forms of this plant, It doesn't seem worth it to me.  But I will continue to enjoy them on spring hikes!

A Nameless Dwarf

I suppose I should have taken a more flattering picture of this.

Here:

A few years ago, I found an interesting broom in a Pinus ponderosa.  The resulting seedlings (those which were not eaten by the slugs) were not visibly dwarfed, except for this individual.  Its needles are less than 1/4 the length of a normal individual.  It is only three years old, but the internodes (the amount of growth each year) are quite small.  I think that this plant will end up being a true dwarf.

Its siblings are all much larger.  Only one is visibly typical.  Here it is, compared to the dwarf:

The others are still kind of ambiguous, though I think their true nature will become apparent during this growing season.  Some of them have more lateral buds than normal- another sign of dwarfing.

I think I may actually prefer to grow out seeds from brooms as a way to produce new plants.  The results are sometimes surprising.  I will have to get out in the woods and hunt down some more brooms with cones this year!

Evelyn's Find

Several years ago, Dad did some logging on his property.  He cut down a lodgepole pine that was crowding a western larch.  When the pine fell away, he noticed that the larch had an unusual, weeping form.  He told me that he wanted me to name it Evelyn's Find, after his friend Evelyn, who found the tree to be particularly delightful.

I was skeptical, as I mentioned in a previous post.  I couldn't tell if the weeping habit was just due to having been shaded out by a larger tree.  For the past several years, I've been on the fence about this one.

The other day, I happened to notice it.  The light was fading, so a good picture wasn't really possible with my phone.  I took the picture anyway. (I'll try getting a better one later.)

The branches gracefully weep, and have a spidery outline.  This tree has some potential, and needs to be grafted and observed further.

I think it is time to propagate 'Evelyn's Find'

A Good Sign

Last year, I noticed a variegated leaf on my witch hazel.

This spring, the first two leaves from that shoot were plain green.  Then, the following leaf developed.

The question now is whether all the leaves will be like that, or just one leaf every third time :)

Either way, I think it will be a good plant.

As I've said before, only time will tell!

Cherry Broom

I've been at my new job a couple of years now.  One of the best parts about it is that I get to drive to work on country roads every day.  When you drive along the same stretch of road, you get plenty of opportunities to spot unusual plants.

In the middle of last year, I discovered a broom in a hardwood tree on the road to work.  I would see it every day for a few months before I stopped to see what species it was.  It is on a treacherous stretch of road with very little room to pull over.

It turns out that it is a cherry tree- Prunus avium.  This species is from Europe, but it has naturalized in the US in places with suitable climates.  The wild ones grow into large forest trees with smaller fruit than cultivated varieties.

Here it is from a different angle.  

Last winter, I collected scions to store in the refrigerator until spring.  When I brought them out to graft, however, I saw that they had already come out of dormancy.  I grafted them anyway, just in case.  They failed.  I've found that plants will sometimes come out of dormancy at the right time, even when they are being held in a constant cold temperature in the refrigerator.  It makes me wonder what other cues in the environment trigger the internal clock of plants.  Had it already begun the process in late winter, so it just followed through?  Or does it just somehow count the days?

Luckily, fruit trees are much easier to graft than conifers.  I will have a second chance to graft this plant again in late summer.  At that time of year, I can do bud grafting, which is actually easier.  I have a much better success rate with Prunus while using this kind of grafting. 

I have to ask myself if brooms like this one, or the plum I found a couple of years ago, will yield anything useful at all.  There are many ornamental cultivars of cherries and plums.  These, if they even bloom- will have simple, single flowers.  As I'm writing this, I wonder if these brooms could be useful for dwarfing rootstocks.  Or perhaps I could use them as breeding stock to cross with the more ornamental varieties that already exist.  When you combine plant hunting with breeding projects, it seems that there are so many possibilities- far more than one can explore in a lifetime.