Slatsz Wildflower Walks 2012: May 4, 2012 - 8 new bloom

If you walk Drumheller Springs Park and see flowers in bloom that I do not have listed please let me know when and where you saw them.

If you see misidentifications or have comments on this blog please write me at:

Spokanewildflowers.slatsz@yahoo.com

I use the UW Burke museum herbarium as a guide to technical names:

I use many websites when I attempt plant identification. I go to these three first.

Burke has a huge collection and is best for convenient use. Perhaps I consider it best because I’m used to it.

http://biology.burke.washington.edu/herbarium/imagecollection.php

The Carr brothers have great flower photographs.

http://web.ewu.edu/ewflora/

Turner’s plant collection is large and its plant descriptions are often but not always more literate than most.

http://www.pnwflowers.com/browse

Wikipedia is a great resource. It is uneven but much of the time its articles are well written.

Google search results discover interesting miscellaneous information on a plant.

I walked 2 hours 48 minutes but I survived. The small amount of work I do on the rowing machine at the YMCA seems to be helping my legs.

295 photos,110 keepers. 8 new blossoms. 9 in currently bud.

There have been 251 ‘pageviews’ to May 6^th.

I am embarrassed by the size of this day’s collection. It feels like an imposition on my viewers.

So why don’t I reduce it?

These pages are notes toward future work. You are invited to look in on a work in progress.

I am gathering, here, photos that I hope to have need for later. When, for instance, I am trying to put together ‘life histories’ of the plants I can look in these pages and find the best efforts from this year’s observations. Yeah, I know. Some of my efforts are not very good. But they are still my best efforts from this year.

There are too many escapees from flower gardens in this set, but how can I not put time and effort into Narcissus Poeticus?

My search program for this walk was only the two buds from previous outings and a short list of plants from April and May of previous years that I have not observed this year. Oh, yes, and the maple, Acer sp.

I parked at the north entrance of the park to check on Erodium cicutarium, Stork’s bill, at The North Side Trail trail-head and the Eriogonum heracleoides, Parsnip flowered buckwheat I thought might be early in that area. I found buds of the buckwheat but it was more advanced far down the park on the west side of Long Rock Ridge.

I improved my photos of the pillow lava boulders blocking the north entrance.

I photographed seed pods that I thought at the time were Olsynium douglasii, grass widows, but I’m not sure. Maybe there are Fritillaria pudica, yellow bell.

Just west of the boulders at the trail-head of the North-side Trail there is a strange cluster of Lomatium triternatum, 9 leaf biscuitroot. It was in the same location last year. I never see it elsewhere except as single plants.

While I was making the images of the 9 leaf biscuitroot a geology fieldtrip from EWU arrived. The leaders are in one of the photos. I had a delightful chat with one of the leaders of the fieldtrip. Perhaps I have found the resource I need for rock-walks.

The stork’s bill is just getting started. The blossoms are ahead of the foliage.

Just beyond the stork’s bill there was an herb I recognize but cannot identify with buds in its crown.

I doubled back to The North Access Trail where I had seen what I suppose to be an Agoseris sp.

I just checked Burke and Widipedia for a common name. There doesn’t seem, really, to be one.

I had settled for Agoseris sp. because I wasn’t able to find internet photos with the right leaf structure but this from Burke on Agoseris glauca: “Leaves: Leaves all basal, linear to broadly oblanceolate, 5-35 cm. long and 1-30 mm. wide, entire or toothed to laciniate-pinnatifid.”

I saw what I believe to be an Agoseris in bud later, west of Long Rock Ridge and its leaves seem to be ‘laciniate-pennatified’.

They must both be Agoseris glauca.

The Viburnum sp., snowball shrub, along side The North Side Trail is in bud as is the Syringa vulgaris, lilac, beside it.

The next photos are of a plant that looks like a cross between Arabis holboellii, Holboell’s rockcress and Epilobium brachicarpum, Autumn willow herb. It has flowers like the rockcress and leaves like the willow herb.

I photographed the buds on the first tall shrub west of North Pond and got a couple of bugs. That’s always fun.

I found another Besseya rubra near North Pond and got a little better image of its flowering apparatus.

There were lots of fading Dodecatheon pulchellum, shooting stars. One small group had a nice assortment of developing seed pods.

Neither of the budding plants from last time had bloomed, neither the Allium geyeri, Geyer’s onion, nor the Lewisia rediviva, bitterroot.

When I was getting images of the bitterroot buds I noticed the tiny red plants and beside them another unidentifiable tiny.

I attempted a series of low angle landscapes getting the yellow of the Balsamorhiza sagittata, balsamroot and the 9 leaf biscuit root. Lots of trouble with the color. I wonder of hot yellows are hard for cameras. I seem to remember having this problem in the past. I desaturated the photo. Damn, I didn’t think to limit desaturation to the yellows. I need to rework it … but not today.

I tried, once again, to get a satisfactory front view of Collinsia parviflora, blue eyed Mary and failed.

One of my objectives was to check on the maple that might be a vine maple, in The Hole In The Ground on the south side of the park. When I crossed over the main path I saw a couple of clusters of Antennaria. Again, I settle for sp. but I think they are Antennaria luzuloides. Burke has two nice common names for A. luzuloides, woodrush pussytoes and silvery-brown everlasting.

Just before getting to the maple I noticed Prunus mahaleb in bloom. Ken Swedberg told me that this is root stock for domestic cherries and that it is very invasive. They are wide spread in the park.

[Edit May 17, 2012. I thought the cherry species in bloom by South Pond was Prunus mahaleb. I didn't notice that the leaves were different. It must be the domestic cherry.]

The Acer sp., maple photos were difficult.

The Hole In The Ground was used for garden refuse so there are flower garden rejects there.

But the Tulipa sp. was up by the main trail.

Narccissus poeticus is near the fireplug, not far from The South Pond.

I walked around the east end of The South Pond just to see what I could see.

I was surprised to find a Crateagus douglasii, black hawthorn, in bud. This plant in deep shade is far ahead of those in full sun by The North Pond.

There were Lithophragma Parviflora, small flowered prairie star, all over the park.

I am surprised that I have seen only one Lithophragma glabrum this year … the pink prairie star.