April/May 2020

I did not realize how long it has been since I posted wildflower photos on this blog. The Chocolate Lily, Fritillaria lanceolata, has bloomed and faded. First time it has ever bloomed, thanks to dog hair.

Western Trillium            Trillium ovatum

 I should have dog-haired the Sessile Trillium as they almost all were eaten by something before blooming.

Sessile Trillium... Trillium chloropetalum

Wild Ginger    Asarum caudatum

Wild Ginger flower

Pacific Bleeding Heart   Dicentra formosa

Red Columbine   Aquilegia formosa

Fringecup   Tellima Grandiflora

Broad-leaved Bluebells   Mertensia platyphylla

Pacific Waterleaf   Hydrophyllum tenuipes

Piggy-back Plant  (Youth-on-Age)     Tolmiea menziesii

Mountain Sweet-cicely   Osmorhiza berteroi

March 2020 woodland lilies and more

On Sunday, March 8, friend Paul Sullivan hiked through our woods with us and kindly took photos of  the Columbia (tiger) lilies that had sprung up since my last trip down there on March 5. My camera was not cooperating... turned out that I had not replaced the card after uploading the last batch of photos to the computer!

Here it is on March 25, after I put the card back in my camera...

Paul also took pics on March 8 of the possible-lily that I've had caged to protect it from deer because it gets devoured by something every year and never blooms.

To my great surprise, on March 10, just two days after Paul's photos, that plant had a bud!! This is the first time ever it has managed to get that far. With camera card in, I took photos. I also put dog hair around it, and also around the Columbia (tiger) lilies along the path, to deter deer. They don't like that predator smell and that has helped save my Alaska Yellow Cedar from bucks rubbing their antlers on them in the fall.

The single leafed plant near this mystery flower still has a single leaf. Another wee single leaf has popped up in the ground behind it. You can just barely see behind and left of the big leaf in the photo below. (Still looked like this on March 25.)

On March 25, the Fritillaria lanceolata (for that's what Howard Bruner says it is) had added stripes to its bud. And outgrown the cage. I will take more dog hair down...

I saw the very first wood violet in bloom on March 10.

A few Western Trillium are blooming.

But the Sessile Trillium are still just in bud...

On March 25, I also walked through the Ash swamp and saw apparent iris. I don't remember seeing iris there before. I'll watch for them to bloom later in the spring.

In our little creek, the skunk cabbage is blooming... a sure sign it's spring.

February 2020 Wildflower Beginnings

On February 12, I hiked through the woods looking for wildflowers beginning to bloom since we have had such a warm, wet winter so far. Very few flowers were open. I did find this native thistle I have not noticed before.

Clustered thistle/Indian thistle/Short-styled thistle (Cirsium Brevistylum)

Lots of these (below) but I do not yet know what it is. Looking in past blog posts, I'm guessing Montia sibirica, Candy Flower. We'll see if it gets 5 petalled, pink striped white flowers. (It did!)

Can't say that I know what this one is, either, although my guess is it's one of those confusing Cardamines, maybe C. integrifolia? I'll go back in a week or so and try to get a photo when it's open.

On Feb. 24, a few what I call Spring Queens were open.They are one of the Cardamines, I think. I'm giving up sorting them out. But I think Howard Bruner, who has helped me id these before, would say they are C. angulata.

 
On February 17, I found one mystery lily coming up in the area I've found them before. They never get far before being either eaten by deer or smothered by the huge cow parsnip near them. I went back the next day and a second one was up. I put a wire cage over them in hopes of protecting them.

As of Feb. 24, they were still alive. And so were two more I found nearby on Feb. 18. Except by March 1st, it was obvious those two were actually trilliums just coming up.

Feb. 18

March 1st, trillium unfurling

March 1st, trillium

Feb. 24

On March 1st, this one still had just one leaf, while the other one was much taller with many leaves.

March 1st

March 1st

On March 5, the one had grown taller and the other was just the same.

Looking back through past posts on this blog, I found where these lilies had been eaten off below ground in March of 2015, so I'm wondering if it's slugs. Perhaps I should try putting Sluggo around the lilies. These may be Columbia Lilies like come up along a path every year... and seldom bloom. But those are not appearing above ground yet, so maybe these are a different lily? Or two different lilies since they are looking different from each other? It's all such a mystery.

Many more Spring Queens were  blooming on March 1st, some a deep purple. I call them Purple Spring Queens. Original, huh?

And there were more trilliums arising...

Spring is coming!