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| Shooting Stars |
Spring is still almost three weeks away, and I guess we're going to get some heavy winter snows in the Sierra this weekend, but a few of my favorite early-season Mt. Tam wildflowers make it seem like spring is already here. I felt a little guilty to actually drive all the way up there just to snap a few photos with the DSLR, but it won't happen again (at least, not until next time).
I also swapped out the two trail camera memory cards and gathered a few more male hazel flowers in the hope of dusting some of their pollen on the female flowers of our backyard hazel. After I clipped a few of the open catkins I shook the branches and sent a beautiful golden cloud of pollen drifting on a very light breeze. If only I could get a cloud like that to drift past my homegrown plant.
When I hiked the short distance out to one of my favorite spots for finding calypso orchids, shooting stars, and Indian warrior (or warrior's plume, Pedicularis densiflora), I found a very changed landscape. There's been so much forest thinning going on (as a precaution against fire) that I found mostly fallen trees and slash piles along the forest edges where I'd expected to find wildflowers. Thankfully I still managed to find the few special species I was looking for.
I'm curious to see what's going to happen with all the girdled trees. Will they die and become the well-used pantries of acorn woodpeckers? Homes to beetle larvae for pileated woodpeckers to dig out? A source of nesting holes for red-breasted nuthatches? I hope so.
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| Petals, Wavy & Flat |
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| Like Indian paintbrush, Indian warrior is a hemiparasite, meaning it likes to parasitize the roots of other plants, but can live without doing so. |
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| Calscape says it likes to parasitize members of the heath family, such as madrone. |
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| Like a jubilant opera star, the fairy slipper (Calypso bulbosa) appears to sing its heart out. |
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| Tiny sprouts of turkey pea (Sanicula tuberosa) were coming up among serpentine gravels. |
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| Small Falls |
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| The water flows have gone down quite a bit, and the forest floor has been drying out and getting crunchy again. Just in time for another deluge of rain. Bring it! |
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| Pacific Trillium |
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| Bobcat Composite |
The bobcat must have been brushing up against the trail camera when it first set it off. A fox and a coyote also made an appearance this week, in addition to numerous turkeys and deer.
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