Variations on cold, tracks in the snow, a hawk’s return and owl pellets

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Keith Possee

It seemed like a winter that just wasn’t going to get cold, with nights barely dropping to freezing. And then it got cold for a few weeks. On the surface, it looked like the worst kind of cold, with clear days and nights. That’s when it can get down to the teens around here, when cold air drifts over the Cascades from the northeast. But this was different. I didn’t pay close attention to what the weather reports were saying but I heard a couple of times that the cold was coming from air that was in a holding pattern to our west, over the ocean. Something like that…I’m sure I’ve got the details wrong but the long and short of it is that even with clear skies, our nights only got down to the upper twenties and very briefly, low to mid twenties with daytime temperatures in the mid to upper thirties. And that made all the difference. The Chilean guavas (Ugni molinae) look great, with no apparent damage. And the final test for killing cold, the canaries in the coal mine are the Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia) which are looking fine. In my experience at the Medicinal Herb Garden, the gap between 18℉ and 23℉ at night, only 5 degrees, is a very big and important gap for zone 9 plants in the garden. That’s where the real damage starts to occur and below that is heartbreak territory. The plants lucked out this winter. Hopefully those few nights in the low twenties were enough to kill off some of the greenhouse thrips (Heliothrips haemorrhoidalis) in the garden and around campus. Unfortunately, they are here to stay. Some years the damage is minimal but other years the leaves of salal (Gaultheria shalon), laurustinus (Viburnum tinus), evergreen huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum), rhododendrons (Rhododendron spp.) and other broadleaf evergreen shrubs turn silver and die, the life sucked out of them by the rascally thrips. It’s always something. That’s the word on the street in gardening.

For a few weeks it was cold but not cold enough to damage the Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia). They deserved a reprieve, finally, after several years of killer freezes. Hopefully they can build up some reserve energy for the next killer freeze; may it hold off for many years.

It stayed clear and cold for weeks and then it warmed slightly and we got a little snow in Seattle style, melting by the end of the day or the next day.

Typical Seattle snow event…not much and it didn’t last long.

 

Cascara Circle with snow. Those two benches have added so much value to Cascara Circle. You just can’t have too many benches on campus or in the city in general. Benches pull their weight. They get used and they lure people outside. That’s a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After our first light snow we got a second and slightly heavier snow the next day. It was a wetter snow with more weight accumulating on the branches. That’s a problem for some plants more than others, like these English yews (Taxus baccata) for instance.

The English yews (Taxus baccata) between sections A and B, not looking like their ideal columnar selves on this wet snow day.

Horned toad or toad gnome?

There wasn’t much snow but there was enough to topple this mountain whitethorn (Ceanothus cordulatus) north of section A.

The only tracks in the garden on our first snowy morning of February 5 were in Cascara Circle. Coyote on top and cottontail rabbit below going in opposite directions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t talk food with foodies these days without someone uttering the phrase “nose to tail”. If you’re an omnivore and you’re not eating nose to tail you are out. Begone, infidel.    Well, our feathered, flying friends and our furry, four-footed friends were doing nose to tail before it was cool.

Nose…

 

meet tail.

The rabbit skull was across the street from the garden, next to a large deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara) and about fifty yards from the tail that was by the garden shed. And twenty yards from that was:

I found this near the tea hedge one morning. It wasn’t there the day before. I worried about the coyotes that were visiting campus in daylight a few years ago. For their own sake it’s good they are now active at night. Lots of fur in that scat.

A lot of herbivory, foraging and hunting goes on at night in the herb garden. It’s not always clear who is doing what. I wonder about the skull. Did an owl eat the eyes and meaty, brainy parts and discard the rest? That skull would be mighty big in an owl pellet. Seems like a coyote would have eaten everything. Maybe a Cooper’s hawk or red tail? Were the skull and tail from the same rabbit? Probably not. It looked like the skull had been there for a while. In and around the garden I often find fur and bits of hide, probably coyote kill sites but who knows, as well as feathers strewn about where a raptor plucked its way to a meal.  So many garden mysteries and it’s sometimes hard to decipher all the clues.

Speaking of owls, though I have yet to find a perfect specimen of a fresh owl pellet, I have found some that have started to break down. In the owl’s digestive system, fur turns to something like a cross between clothes dryer lint and felted wool.

Barred owl pellet slightly broken down. A fresh one is more of an oval to oblong shape. Some day maybe I will be right there as a pellet is regurgitated. One can only hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one has really broken down but you can see some of the bones that were encased in it.

The bone at 12:00 in this circle of bones looks like the jaw of a rat. I’m guessing the rest of the bones are also from a rat. These were all in and around the owl pellets but they are posed for the picture.

Cherry laurels (Prunus laurocerasus) are usually the alternate broadleaf evergreen roosting spots for barred owls (Strix varia) when a conifer just won’t do.

At least one barred owl is almost always around the garden borders but Cooper’s hawks come and go and they don’t sit for hours in the same place attracting the attention of the crows and songbirds which draws the attention of curious gardeners. So imagine my surprise while standing in the middle of Cascara Circle, when I heard what sounded at first like roughhousing squirrels crashing through the underbrush but turned out to be a Cooper’s hawk subduing a rat in its talons. The rat was  squealing but its protests were in vain. Cooper’s hawks know their business.

This Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) on a rat on the edge of Cascara Circle in front of my very eyes. Sometimes you’re in the right place at the right time. It’s trying its best to hide its prize from rivals but at one point it turned and I could see the action. Sorry for the fuzzy zoom shots. It was only 10 feet away but tucked into a hole in the foliage and I wanted to isolate it in the frame. Digital phone cameras are so convenient and some are much better than others (mine is low-end).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rat is firmly held in the hawk’s talons where it can be safely squeezed to death. Other than a few tentative pecks with its beak it just stood there waiting for the rat to give up the ghost. I left it in peace to eat its meal.

Tracks of eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) in the Cascara Circle bog/mudflat. Some day maybe we will have Douglas squirrels (Tamiasciurus douglasii) on campus. I see them in the Arboretum and Seward Park. I think our lack of big stands of conifers and the difficulty of getting from larger city parks with adequate habitat to the UW is our problem. It’s not far from the Arboretum to campus but the roads connecting them are not ideal travel corridors. And the Montlake Bridge…yikes.

 

To anyone reading this blog for the first time and wondering where all of the information on medicinal herbs is located, there are posts with some such content, but this is a blog about a place, really an ecosystem, called the UW Medicinal Herb Garden. It exists within the larger greenspace of campus which is tenuously connected to many other greenspaces in the north end of Seattle. There aren’t (at the moment) adequate wildlife corridors connecting these greenspaces. But, if we collectively come to our senses, there will be some day, the sooner the better. Making the garden as attractive and welcoming as possible for the largest variety of fauna is my inspiration.  It’s where my interests lie. That said, there are many hundreds of species of medicinal plants from a wide variety of healing traditions around the world here…and I keep scouring the world’s botanic gardens for new seeds. So if you are an aspiring herbalist, maybe for your purposes you could think of the garden as an open-air medicinal plant museum. An analogy might be an aspiring painter visiting an art museum. You go to an art museum for pleasure and inspiration, not to learn to paint. To do that you start painting and maybe you study with a painter or go to art school. Just so with herbs. Find an herbalist mentor or a school and books that can help you along and start messing around with herbs…and keep experimenting. Visit the garden for pleasure and inspiration. Learn to recognize the plants in all of the seasons. That is important. As an herbalist or forager you might be collecting plant material before or after flowering so it’s good to recognize plants in all stages of their life cycles. Where they are likely to grow and their surrounding plant communities will open to your awareness as you spend more time in the field, learn to pay close attention to subtle differences and tap into your deep pattern-recognition skills bequeathed to you by your Pleistocene ancestors.

Sword ferns (Polystichum munitum) get browsed by rabbits in winter. They leave a lot behind on the ground. Why? The ways of rabbits…I’m learning more each year but they are still a bit of a mystery.

The two quaking aspens (Populus tremuloides) in Cascara Circle have attained enough girth and height that they have a real presence now, especially when their autumn leaves are trembling in the breeze. In the dim light of winter, the glow of their creamy whitish bark adds warmth and stability to the sheltered nook around the south bench, framing it on either side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But as great as quaking aspens are, they cannot compare to pine trees, even the humble jack pine that gets lumped into the scrub pine category. Scrub pines are great.

Jack pine (Pinus banksiana) with snow, west of Cascara Circle. Bask in its scrubby glory if you pass by. Started as a seed (a gift from our friendly colleagues in Niagara Falls, Canada) over twenty years ago, it’s now over twenty feet tall. Pines are my favorite trees. It is a joy to gaze out upon a healthy pine forest, or better yet, to wander through a healthy pine forest, or best of all, to climb a large, old pine tree.

 

It’s been a couple of weeks since the full moon but it was beautiful while it lasted.

Last year’s snow moon was on February 24, this year’s snow moon was on February 12. Here it is again at around 6:40 AM over the east end of the Biology Greenhouse. Two years in a row with clear sky moon views in the usually rainy month of February. No complaints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

near the jack pine tree

rabbit and coyote tracks

under falling snow

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

 

 

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Owls, geese, sassafras leaves and more

Posted on November 24, 2024 by Keith Possee

Other than a ‘bomb cyclone’ that hit the area last week, the weather this fall has been typical, more or less, with above average fall colors. But it’s late and most of the deciduous leaves have fallen to the ground now. Two of the great things about deciduous trees and shrubs is the shade they provide in summer and the light they let through in winter, while still breaking the wind a little and providing some protection from predators (that means you Cooper’s hawks and domestic cats) for the birds. It’s also a lot easier for humans to see perching birds without leaves getting in the way. That said, some birds tend to spend their time in evergreen conifers or broadleaved evergreens. I’ve photographed barred owls dozens of times on campus and they are almost always in conifers which are better for staying hidden from crows and jays.

Can you spot the barred owl (Strix varia) hiding out in this picture in the woods north of section D? They are adaptable owls, thriving in cities, suburbs, rural areas, deep wilderness and everywhere in between with a bit of tree cover. Unfortunately their success is putting pressure on the shrinking populations of their close relatives, the spotted owls (Strix occidentalis). Pressure from barred owls is real but so are the many decades of our clearcutting their old-growth forest homes. Unfortunately that is water over the dam. Shrunken, fragmented habitat is what spotted owls are stuck with. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has a plan to kill around 450,000 barred owls over the next 30 years (for perspective, there are roughly 3.5 million barred owls in North America so an annual cull of 15,000, grim as that may be, is not a threat to the species…just the owls that wind up on the wrong end of the guns).  The USFWS is hoping that fewer barred owls will give the spotted owls some breathing room in the space where there is still suitable habitat. Whether it will work to save them from extinction is anybody’s guess. Maybe they will only remain as a ripple in the barred owl gene pool as Neanderthals are for modern humans. Where ranges overlap, spotted owls and barred owls do sometimes mate and produce fertile hybrid offspring. Let’s face it, we have passed the point of easy options. The easy options are off the table now for spotted owls and a lot of other living things and ecosystems. We have to make some difficult decisions in the 21st century. Our reckless and wasteful ways have turned the planet into an international triage ward. As the apex agents of destruction, we will collectively decide how diminished a natural world we can accept and endure. Woe to the species and lands and waters that don’t make the cut. Fingers crossed the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Agency survive the next four years.

 

 

On a happier note, a visitation from three greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons). Canada geese (Branta canadensis) can be seen on grassy areas on campus and around Seattle all year. Very rarely I’ve seen a few snow geese (Anser caerulescens) mixed in during the fall and winter months. This is the first time I’ve noticed greater white-fronted geese. Handsome yet inconspicuous birds.

To complete the faunal trifecta, another first for me. It’s always exciting to see something for the first time and I try to prepare myself each day in the garden to be ready. It’s easy to miss insects.

I think this is a fork-tailed bush katydid (Scudderia furcata), near but not in the garden. Look at its size compared to the credit card. It’s the biggest katydid I’ve seen around here. Katydids in the garden are a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plants usually get top billing in these posts so today, it being autumn, the fungal world goes next. I didn’t find any porcini on campus but another bolete appeared again.

I’m pretty sure this is the rare Boletus orovillus again. I covered it in pine needles and left it in peace.

Shaggy mane mushroom (Coprinus comatus) viewed from above and well past its prime edible stage but what a striking pattern on top. Around this time of year they grow through the lawn north of section C.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so do these beauties that are native to temperate and boreal regions worldwide. They are toxic but they are also psychoactive. Their use in Eurasian shamanic rituals began in the distant Pleistocene past. It’s right here on the USDA Forest Service website. 
https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/ethnobotany/Mind_and_Spirit/flyagaric.shtml

Orange jelly fungus (Dacrymyces chrysospermus). Those boxes of assorted chocolates, one or two of which have the orange jelly in the middle, well this is where the jelly comes from. Oh that it were so but alas, that’s fake news. Orange jelly fungus is technically edible but supposedly on the tasteless side. It’s growing on pressure-treated wood or I would have tried some.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It didn’t quite ripen before the growing season ended but can there be any doubt that this is a pomegranate fruit growing in Seattle? We need more of these lining our streets. Their native range is about fifteen degrees further south latitude, roughly Afghanistan to northern India. It’s a wonder they do so well here but the moderating influence of the Pacific Ocean surely helps.

What does a pomegranate shrub look like in late October in Seattle? Like the two yellow shrubs in the foreground. Such a great drought-tolerant plant with beautiful red flowers and fruit whose identity will stump a surprising number of your neighbors even if they would know it if they saw it in a store.

And what about this exotic spice growing on a large shrub right in the garden.

Fruit of the Sichuan pepper shrub/hua jiao (Zanthoxylum simulans) near Okanogan Lane. When they fall off the branches and begin to decompose in the autumn rain, their earthy, citrus/eucalyptus scent permeates the air near the bus stop. The pericarps of the ripe fruit are used as a spice but also as a traditional medicine for a range of ailments.

The little sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum) in the woods north of Cascara Circle is growing more slowly than the one I long ago planted across the street in section G (now a parking lot) which had richer, moister soil and less competition from nearby trees. I’m hoping that if I cut it back it will stimulate some root suckering to form a little stand of sassafras trees. That will mean a larger rabbit fence. Rabbits and deer both browse sassafras if given the chance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sassafras leaves grow in different shapes: three-lobed, mitten-shaped and ovate. There you have them.

Plains prickly pear (Opuntia polyacantha) in the xeriscape bed. Notice the bite marks on the one at upper left. If that was one of the foolish rabbit kits, I think it probably learned its lesson. Even so…

…I protected it with a ring of hardware cloth, like ninety percent of what is growing in the garden.

Rabbits might ignore a plant for years and then, surprise, the spirit moves one of them to try something new.

Button eryngo (Eryngium yuccifolium) in section C was heavily browsed by rabbits this fall so I had to protect it. It’s hard to know for sure what rabbits will eat. The more plants that get fenced in, the more adventurous and desperate the rabbits become.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember from summer the beautiful, long-lasting orange flowers of the flannel bush (Fremontodendron californicum)? Well, those flowers turned to seed capsules that look like fuzzy, golden lanterns.

The Peruvian groundcherries (Physalis peruviana) also produce a fruit that looks like a lantern but in this case it is just a thin membrane around a sweet yellow/orange berry that looks a bit like a small tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica). Peruvian groundcherries take a long time to ripen around here. If you want to grow them, find the spot in your yard that gets the most sun and plant them early.

Miquel’s wintergreen (Gaultheria miqueliana) in section C is slowing changing colors as it gets colder and darker. Its native range is from Japan and northeastern Asia to Alaska. Eventually it will produce white berries that taste similar to the red berries on our eastern North American wintergreen or teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens).

Once again, the Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia) came back from their stumps though a little less vigorously than last year. Maybe this winter will be mild and they can recover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over many years, I’ve grown in the medicinal herb garden three species (that I can remember…) of “down under” plants in the myrtle family, the Myrtaceae: manuka (Leptospermum scoparium), Australian tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) and more recently kanuka (Kunzea ericoides). Of the three, kanuka is definitely the hardiest. It seems to suffer no damage from the coldest temperatures we get here. It is an evergreen shrub and I don’t know how big it will get in Seattle but it should be sold in nurseries here if it’s not already. I haven’t been to a nursery in years.

Sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia)
leaves losing their chlorophyll. Notice the process starting toward the bottom and working its way up. They’re in section E.

It reached the top of the bamboo tripod trellis and had nowhere to go but up. This is chuan guo teng (Sinofranchetia chinensis). Like its cousin mube (Stauntonia hexaphylla) it is constantly producing tendrils that grow out into pathways in all directions. Both species have edible fruit, are in the Lardizabalaceae and both are dioecious so you need a male plant to pollinate a female plant if you want fruit. Photographing a plant against a dark wintery sky with my phone resulted in this moody black and white image. But winter mornings really look like this in Seattle.

Fading leaves of chuan guo teng on a sunny morning. Can’t get enough of sunny mornings in November.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wild yam (Dioscorea villosa) vines changing color in section F. Look at how they reach the top of the tripod and then double back, having nothing more to climb. Given a chance to run free in a border, wild yam will delicately twine its way through nearby shrubs without overdoing it. It looks good…

…like so, as it makes its way through the Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) and over the tall Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium). This plant started as a volunteer seedling from the nearby trellised garden bed. It escaped. This feels so much better to see a vine in its natural state, climbing toward the light. The strictly bordered spaces of gardens, like zoos though much less depressing, are not my cup of tea. But I get paid to garden and it beats staring at a screen all day.

Flowering in late November, it seems like it must miss most of the pollinators. It’s too cold. But there is less competition from other flowering plants. And who knows what great variety of pollinators were once flying and crawling around in its natural home, the prairie ecosystems of old. In any case this is the Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani).

Sand dropseed (Sporobolus cryptandrus) is a widespread native North American grass whose seeds have been used by Native Americans to make porridge and flour. The seeds are small like teff (Eragrostis tef) seeds. Teff flour is used in the traditional Ethiopian/Eritrean bread known as injera which is like a cross between a giant, spongy sourdough pancake and a fresh crumpet. It is a similarly wispy grass, though it has an annual life cycle and sand dropseed is perennial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spent seed head of angelica (Angelica archangelica) in section F.

The sugar maple (Acer saccharum) on the edge of section B produces a lot of leaves. When they fall, I rake them up and mulch the garden beds with them. Unlike chestnut leaves and oak leaves in sections D and E, they break down fairly quickly.

 

Bletilla (Bletilla striata) leaves getting ready to drop off and protect the soil from heavy rains.

Giant leaves of pipevine (Aristolochia macrophylla) changing color. You are missing some beautiful sights if you don’t get outside regularly to see the ever-changing fall foliage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is it about the colors in the autumn leaves of common greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia)? They are thick, leathery leaves and maybe that helps diffuse the light but it is a richer, creamier color than thinner leaves produce. Young shoots and leaves, starchy roots and well-ripened berries are edible.

The canyon grape (Vitis arizonica) is growing slowly in an unirrigated border but there are more leaves and the vine grows thicker each year as it snakes its way up into the nearby chaste tree (Vitex agnus castus). One of these years it might actually produce fruit. You need to be patient in this gardening game.

Yunnan ginger lily/dian jiang hua (Hedychium yunnanense) in section F, fading away for winter. It is in the Zingiberaceae, the same family as the ginger (Zingiber officinale) you buy in the store. It grows well around here and even though it does spread a little it’s a slow clumper and easy to divide.

Opuntia pads on a sunny autumn morning in the xeriscape bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cascara Circle north woods on a day in late October. Still hoping to get a bench into this peaceful opening in the woods. What a great spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

stumbling upon them

three greater white-fronted geese

such a nice surprise

 

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

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Rain in August is a good thing

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Keith Possee

By August the ground gets pretty dry around here. The grass has turned brown, many unirrigated landscape plants are in a holding pattern, maybe even wilting or dropping some leaves.  Our location near the coast and west of the Cascades allows for more precipitation but our rain generally falls in autumn and winter when gardens need it least. That said, the second half of August has been much rainier than usual. It only got up to the low 60s yesterday. Rain tapered off by early afternoon but the ground is positively soaked after many days and nights of cool rain. My Italian prune plums at home have started to split and I’m sure the same is happening to tomatoes, maybe yours. Small price to pay to see the whole flora of the city brighten up. In the forests the mushrooms are arising and the wildfires are damping down. August rain followed by a warm and sunny September and early October; is that asking for too much? Probably. But if I had my way, that’s what we would get. And maybe we will.

August raindrops on the Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) in section C.

The irrigation in section C is so degraded that it is nearly impossible to keep the ground moist in summer. The grannyvine (Ipomoea tricolor) has produced more flowers with the prolonged rain and all of section C looks great.

 

Well, the time came for a big change. It wasn’t easy. Change never is. But I finally had to bid farewell to my trusty straw hat.

Doesn’t look too bad from the top but…

 

 

 

 

 

 

…it was held together by tape and it had to go. It lasted about ten years and did double duty as a rain hat at times. Perhaps that was its undoing. The brim would droop, the crown would stretch and entropy won the day. I brought a slightly less used hat from home as its replacement.

 

Speaking of change, look at the garden shed. It looks even better up close. To the painters who did this meticulous work, thank you.

The garden shed looks much, much better. It’s almost enough to inspire me to clean and organize the inside. But that is a winter job and it’s still summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two plants in the same bed flowered for the first time. It’s often surprising how long it can take for certain plants to start flowering.

It’s unfortunately not the beach but behold the first flowers of beach morning glory (Calystegia soldanella) and it is surrounded by beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus) and another coastal plant, rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum).

Beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus) has finally flowered. Slowly but surely I’m turning this bed into a maritime garden.

They don’t call it magnificent elecampane (Inula magnifica) for nothing. The flowers are larger and showier than common elecampane (Inula helenium) in section B. I don’t know if it is as effective as a lung plant. Pretty much all of the medical literature refers to Inula helenium. But it sure is a looker.

It’s called lemon beebalm (Monarda citriodora) yet nothing about it smells lemony to me. But they are attractive plants and a favorite of many pollinators. Not a day should go by when we fail to consider the pollinators. Our fates are intertwined.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sign said wild mignonette (Reseda lutea) but I think this is actually dyer’s mignonette or weld (Reseda luteola). So I made a new sign. It makes a yellow dye and also makes a lot of seedlings. But they’re easy to remove and here in the herb garden they are rarely found far from the parent plant.

There’s a lot going on in this bed. The blue is grannyvine or heavenly blue morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor), the orange is lion’s ear (Leonotis nepetifolia), the yellow is kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus) and hidden in the middle is a row of nalta jute (Corchorus olitorius) all in section C.

Mube flowers (Stauntonia hexaphylla) growing up a trellis in section C. The fragrant flowers did not result in fruit.

Fire on the prairie! No, it’s just prairie smoke (Geum triflorum). Have I made that joke before on this blog? Probably. It’s hard to come up with new material. Behind is prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) and Canada wild rye (Elymus canadensis).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The night shift and the day shift in one place. The white flowers of the datura (Datura inoxia) are fragrant at night and the chocolate flowers (Berlandiera lyrata) during the day. They smell like white chocolate to me.

I received this plant as a gift a couple of years ago. I think it was supposed to be cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus) but it looks like it is actually arctic bramble (Rubus arcticus).

You’ve seen this in spring on other plants; the new growth starts out reddish. This is the camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora).

Look at that springtime, pristine western dogwood (Cornus nuttallii) branch…before the dogwood anthracnose (Discula destructiva) hits as it does every summer. This tree is on the eastern edge of the garden and there is another in Cascara Circle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It briefly stood upright. By now, this compass plant flower stalk (Silphium laciniatum), all 8 feet of it, is leaning over, parallel to the ground. Tall grass prairie plants do best in tall grass prairies where their neighbor plants help to support them.

Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa) produced a lot of fruit this year. They’re good but not great. When the western sand cherries (Prunus pumila var. besseyi) start producing fruit, try those. They are darker, have much more robust flavor and more flesh.

Finally started some Chinese licorice/ gan cao (Glycyrrhiza uralensis) plants from seed in section A. There was some growing in section B for many years but it died out a few years ago in the heavy clay soil. Hopefully in this lighter soil they will thrive.  It shouldn’t take them long to run underground to the pathways and wherever else fate leads them.

It’s a bit out of focus but that 5 foot tall plant (which can get even taller) is tree spinach or magenta spreen lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium giganteum). There was extra space in the grain bed so that’s where it is, a few beds over from the quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), its close relative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven’t seen a barred owl (Strix varia) or Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) in a while but garden visitors are treated to weekly overflights by ospreys (Pandion haliaetus). Sometimes we just hear but can’t see them circling and chirping above like ghosts. The large birds we can count on daily are sometimes in the garden but more often within sight at a nearby dumpster, either by the greenhouse or the Chemistry loading dock.

Think you can sneak past this crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) on your way to the greenhouse? Unlikely. And if you have ever offered it food, it saw you coming before you even took a notion to make a motion.

Gulls are a conundrum. There are so many that look similar, at least to my untrained eyes. I haven’t made much effort at gull identification. Gulls and ferns to be honest. And grasses. But I think this is a western gull (Larus occidentalis) staring majestically southward toward what, a distant dumpster? Hark, was that the sound of a crispy taco hitting the deck at Agua Verde Cafe? Worth a look, bird. The gulls and the crows are the totem birds of the LSB/greenhouse dumpsters and decks. Hold tight to your morning muffin lest you share it with Larus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

junk food suits them fine

with a side dish of roadkill

western gull and crow

 

 

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Zone 9a, eh?

Posted on March 13, 2024 by Keith Possee

It’s true. Seattle is now zone 9a. That’s the word from the USDA. Even so, we’ve had two winters in a row with temperatures in the middle-low teens for extended periods. The special challenge we face here has to do with cold air that funnels down the Fraser  Valley in Canada and occasionally creeps over into Whatcom County and south to nudge our temperate marine air out of the way and park its arctic self right here on the general area and the Medicinal Herb Garden in particular for days or even weeks. Feels like 8b to me.

A frozen cascade from the cistern is a rare winter curiosity in a garden with a mild maritime climate. That’s the Cascara Circle cistern drain pipe during our January freeze.

That ice is four inches thick. I could stand on it solidly. The small inlet of Lake Washington near the Washington Park Arboretum’s Graham Visitors Center was the scene of ice hockey games for a few days. That’s a rarity but an appropriate gift considering the cold air is from the land of hockey.

Again? Yes the Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia) got knocked back to the ground yet again by our prolonged temperatures in the teens. I had them covered with tarps and leaves and bubble wrap for the duration of the cold snap but prolonged cold is prolonged cold. Hopefully they will grow back from the stump one more time…in our zone 9a paradise.

 

 

Remember the boxing scene in Cool Hand Luke, when Dragline keeps knocking Luke down, punch after punch. Somehow Luke manages to get up each time, looking increasingly worse for wear. Let’s say Dragline is our regular arctic blast of air and Luke is our Australian tea trees.

 

 

Sometimes on winter mornings, from the eastern edge of the garden at the appropriately named Rainier Vista, this is the view at sunrise…

the same scene from nearby just a few minutes earlier. That would be Mount Rainier. Lenticular clouds like these are a common sight over the mountain.

A bumper crop of olives (Olea europaea) in 2022 led to a bummer crop in 2023. This is one of the few, left to ripen on the tree. I wonder if any of our local fauna would eat an olive off the tree. Awfully bitter but so are some acorns and squirrels eat them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Partially obscured by foliage and away from footpaths, this old bench abides just outside the northeast corner of the garden. It is nearly a century old and was placed there a few years after her death in 1921. Born in 1856, her name was Susan Johnson before she took Henry as her last name (and Mrs. Horace as her first. What a strange practice that seems, looking back from the third decade of the 21st century. But remember that women were not even allowed to vote in the US until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920). Anyway, they sure knew how to build benches back then. It’s made of concrete and it has a lot of life left in it.

In the woods north of Cascara Circle, it looks like another rabbit met a quick end. One shake from a coyote usually does the job and they don’t leave much behind. We are so lucky to have a healthy population of coyotes (Canis latrans) in Seattle and especially on campus, though they mostly pass through at night or twilight. Speaking of twilight, I have no photo of a varied thrush (Ixoreus naevius) but they seem to be everywhere on campus this winter, their single-pitched whistle dominating the morning soundscape…in a good way, really a lovely, peaceful sound.

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) on a winter day. Most of the grains in the grain bed got eaten by birds. The seeds of sorghum are too big and hard for the little birds. Sometimes squirrels or rats eat them. By now they might have.

Bush anemone (Carpenteria californica) looking a bit ragged after our big freeze. Another one 20 feet away looks fresh as a daisy. Why? The other one gets a bit more sun later in the day and maybe a bit less wind. That’s a guess. Like most garden questions there are answers and other answers, mere letters to fill the space of unknowing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 8, cornelian cherry flowers (Cornus mas). You might wonder how these winter flowers are getting pollinated with so few insects moving about. Cornelian cherry flowers are hermaphroditic, meaning they have both male and female parts and can pollinate themselves in the absence of pollinators. I’ve seen hummingbirds feeding from their flowers. As Anna’s hummingbirds (Calypte anna) increase their year-round range northward along our Pacific coast, have any winter/early-spring-flowering plants increased their fruitfulness? Or has the simultaneous decline in pollinator insects acted as a counterbalance? No idea.

February 8, first osoberry/Indian plum flowers (Oemleria cerasiformis) have a tougher go of it as the plants are dioecious, meaning there are plants that have male flowers and other plants that have female flowers. Only the female flowers produce fruit and only after they have received pollen from male flowers. About 6% of flowering plant species (angiosperms) are dioecious.

Soaptree yucca (Yucca elata) and sotol (Dasylirion wheeleri) in section C. I limbed them up because it was impossible to get in there to weed them without risking an eye, a lot of blood or both. Desert plants are good self defenders. I wear leather gloves and safety glasses when I work around them.

In winter, the garden of plants becomes a garden of plant signs and hardware cloth fencing to keep the rabbits out. Such is a public garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is dead and the woodpeckers know it. This is the east side…

and this is the west. What’s their plan? If they keep chipping away the top will topple. I steer clear of that tree.

Speaking of woodpeckers, this is the work of acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus). Those are acorns stored in holes they’ve drilled into the bark of a large oak tree that serves as a pantry. Unfortunately this picture is not from campus but off a country road along the central coast of California. Acorn woodpeckers range from Oregon and a sliver of southern Washington to Colombia, with several subspecies in between. I might have spied one with the binoculars but could not get a good view. They are described as clown-faced, which they are, but not in a scary clown way. They now sparsely inhabit Klickitat County, along our border with Oregon, but let’s coax these excellent birds further north in Washington by planting more of our beautiful, long-lived, native Garry oaks (Quercus garryana).

A palisade of Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium purpureum) in section C. Not much protection from them; they snap off at the base like balsa wood but they’re good shelter for insects in winter. As go the insects so go we.

White sage (Salvia apiana) can survive many  winters in a sheltered, sunny, well-drained soil in Seattle. But the low teens can be a show stopper. We’ll see what comes back in the spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) in winter looks like it belongs on a coat of arms or atop an iron gate of an old haunted house. Its curled leaves are winter hideouts for insects. A messy, jumbled winter garden with lots of plant debris like stalks and leaves and seedheads is a healthy garden providing food and shelter for insects and birds. Let it be.

I think this is insect egg slime mold (Leocarpus fragilis). It’s growing on the English ivy (Hedera helix) and spreading onto the old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba).

In section B there is a short section of one graveled path that is bright green and mossy. Is there a broken pipe down there? A pot of gold? Who can say? These are winter questions. Soon it will be spring.

A couple of posts ago, in June of 2023, there was a picture of one late horse gentian seedling (Triosteum perfoliatum) that had come up in May, after two years experiencing seasonal changes of warm and cold. I suspected the balance of the seeds, or at least a lot more, would come up after another warm spell followed by a cold spell. They did just that in late November. This photo was taken on December 15. The Maryland sanicle (Sanicula marilandica) to the left received cold then warm then cold then warm and popped up during its third cold period, outside in the garden shed in November, around the same time as the Triosteum…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the hairy Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum pubescens). You can see from the label my latest shorthand for such seeds, wcwcw (warm,cold)…repeat until seedlings emerge or you breathe your last or the forest fires are burning overhead or the rising seas are lapping at your propagation bench…you get the picture.

Here, a month later, are Sanicula in front and Triosteum behind.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) seedpods drying in the greenhouse on January 4…

and on January 8…

 

 

 

 

 

 

and on January 16.

The day before my flight to sunny California, this was my parting view of the garden shed door. Someone smashed a window, trying to break in. Luckily, the locks require a key to lock or unlock so they couldn’t get in. I requested a repair before heading south and when I got back it was fixed. Thank you to the glass shop for the replacement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of these lights is not like the others. That is the Snow Moon over the Biology Greenhouse on February 23 at about 6:40 AM, waxing gibbous, one day short of full.

 

 

 

 

 

hydroelectric

 salmon rivers light the sky

under snow moon’s glow

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

 

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Year’s end approaches

Posted on November 16, 2023 by Keith Possee

In the many months since the last post, pretty much everything has changed in the garden.  Insects have been born, lived full lives and passed on, plants have grown inches, in some cases several feet. Buds have turned to flowers and flowers to seeds. New generations of birds and mammals are now at home in and around the garden. In short, it has been a fairly normal growing season.

A week or two ago a raccoon finally discovered that medlars (Mespilus germanica) are both edible and growing on the branches of the medlar tree. I briefly watched it working its way through the canopy, eating as it went. I didn’t take a photo because I was too busy throwing sticks at it (not too hard; we’re frenemies after all). I finally drove it out of the tree so I could pick a few medlars (for scientific purposes only). But of course it came back and ate the rest. I’ve been finding coyote scat here and there but have not set eyes on one since last winter. No unique bird observations to report, though ravens have been seen and heard on the fringes of campus, just passing through unfortunately. Rabbits are still around but are mostly fenced out. They will eat some bark off the woody plants this winter as always. They’re pretty good at changing their menu as the need arises, even eating strongly flavored plants in the mint family this year which is a bit of a surprise.

Ok, last post was in spring so I’ll start there and move on.

It’s spring! Or it was spring (May 11 to be exact) when I took this photo of the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) north of Cascara Circle. Redbuds flower early and not for long so they get missed. Keep your eyes out next May. A western redbud (Cercis occidentalis) with darker flowers, blooms at the same time a few yards away, next to Okanogan Lane.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More spring flowers every year on the arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) in the xeriscape bed. It really seems to be thriving in that spot. Still no flowers on the Texas prickly pear (Opuntia engelmannii) in the foreground…

but just around the corner and a few feet away, the tulip prickly pear (Opuntia phaeacantha) has produced its first fruit. It should be turning red soon. I can’t remember it flowering but it must have.

This year the abundance of flowers on the Siskiyou lewisia (Lewisia cotyledon) attracted the rabbits…briefly.  A couple of the flower stalks were gnawed off and that was it, no more. One species of Lewisia is called bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) but I suspect all or most species in the genus have bitter properties the rabbits don’t like. They also ignore an adjacent species in the xeriscape bed, Columbia lewisia (Lewisia columbiana).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Western wallflower (Erysimum capitatum) and nodding onion (Allium cernuum) are both rabbit
favorites so now they are fenced in like most beds in the garden at this point.

The French rose (Rosa gallica) is one of the bombproof, foundational plants in section B near the garden shed. The scent is what, in a perfect world, all roses would possess. I wonder how many of its flowers have been pollinated by the noses of humans. It starts flowering in May, along with the fragrant peonies in the next bed over.

I turned the corner just as this rabbit had toppled a stalk of false Solomon’s seal (Smilacina racemosa). Startled, it hopped off with the stalk dangling from its neck. Then it stopped to assess my threat level. Just the guy in the straw hat, an extremely ineffective, halfhearted predator, no worries. So it turned its head and started eating the dangling stalk off its back. And why not? There is a Buddhist parable about a man being chased by a tiger. At a cliff’s edge he has to jump to escape. Grabbing hold of a vine he hangs there, noticing with horror that there is another tiger pacing below. As it appears things can get no worse, a mouse saunters out and starts gnawing on the vine. At that moment the man sees some wild strawberries growing over the edge of the cliff. He reaches out and grabs one, popping a ripe, sweet, delicious fruit into his mouth. End of story. That’s a parable for you. So much to think about. The rabbit, the guy in the straw hat and the false Solomon’s seal stalk drama was not like that. Just another day in the herb garden.

Last two pollinators on campus. Just kidding. Grim as the insect news is all around the world, the garden is full of pollinators. The diversity of plant families and species represented in the garden attracts an endless stream of insect life. There is nowhere else like it on campus.

Northern bedstraw (Galium boreale) in section F. Roots are used for dyeing red, aerial parts are edible and medicinal. And the delicate beauty of the flowers and foliage make it a great ground cover in a place without foot traffic.

The two largest paw paw trees (Asimina triloba) finally put out a few flowers this year. Fingers crossed for more flowers and some fruit next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lemon bee balm (Monarda citriodora) with bumble bee. It was a cool, wet morning and our bee is barely hanging on. Hopefully that is not its final death grip, though there are worse ways to die than clinging to a flower.

Devil’s shoestring (Nolina lindheimeriana) flowering for the first time in section D. If you find this plant in the wild…you’re in Texas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Annual snake gourd (Trichosanthes cucumerina). They can grow up to 5 feet.

Luffa fruits/si gua luo (Luffa aegyptiaca) in section C did very well in the steady warmth this summer. So many fruit which are edible when they’re immature and valuable as a spongey skin brush for the shower kit when they mature and dry out. The seeds are also edible.

That Bulldog garden fork is about 42″ tall. The tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) next to it is a good foot taller. That is how much it grew in one season. Last winter it died down to a stump. I cut it off at ground level and it didn’t even sprout new growth until late spring. There is a lot of energy stored in roots.

California nutmeg tree (Torreya californica) in the garden border. I started this tree as a seed and it’s now about 8 feet tall. It’s a slow but steady grower in the Cephalotaxaceae. We currently have another tree in this family, the Japanese plum yew (Cephalotaxus harringtonia) and soon I will find a place to plant a Chinese plum yew (Cephalotaxus fortunei).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was no stiff wind blowing. That’s just the way rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) grows. See it in section C. This species of Ericameria is called rubber ribbitbrush because of a latex sap in its roots. Flowers and stems are used to make a beautiful yellow dye.

A few feet away, Colorado four o’clock (Mirabilis multiflora) flowering like there’s no tomorrow. Not all flowers get pollinated but a higher percentage of the flowers produce seeds each year. Maybe the greater number of flowers is attracting a critical mass of pollinators or maybe the roots have stored up enough energy to sustain more seed production, or both…or neither. Maybe is a word that gets used a lot in the garden…by me anyway.

Belladonna (Atropa belladonna) was languishing in section E, weakened by the deep shade and competing roots from a nearby pin oak tree (Quercus palustris). It seems to be doing much better in section F. When plants aren’t thriving I will often try moving them if it’s feasible. Sometimes that does the trick.

Umbrella plant (Darmera peltata) leaves turning color in the Cascara Circle bog. Its native range is from southwestern Oregon to northwestern California.

Quaking aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) as fall color in Cascara Circle. Some warned that they would sucker up from the roots and the garden would wind up with an aspen grove. I can live with that.

The fruit of the pomegranate (Punica granatum) mature around here when the foliage is turning from green to yellow. That would be autumn. As autumn progresses and rains return, fruit left on the branches will often split and look like Pac-Man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November color around section C looking south from the Chemistry lawn steps. The three red shrubs in the center are the unfortunately conceived snowball viburnum (Viburnum opulus var. freakshow). When it rains, their gigantic, sterile snowball flowers weigh the branches to the ground. What is wrong with Viburnum opulus in its wild state, with real flowers that produce actual fruit? That is why we call it the highbush cranberry. Ornamental plant breeding, like ornamental dog breeding is too often a solution in search of a problem. The yellow off to the left is one of several stately European beeches (Fagus sylvatica) to the west of Anderson hall. This is the time of year when they stand out.

That sculptural tangle is a meeting of California wild grape (Vitis californica) and highbush cranberry (Viburnum opulus…the real deal in its natural fruit-producing state).It didn’t take long for members of the local fauna to discover that grapes are edible, so the fruit disappear quickly. I hope the seeds are being deposited far and wide. Wild grapes are all good. A few feet away, a hedge of evergreen huckleberries (Vaccinium ovatum) has become the focus of the many resident songbirds. They’re hungry, it is cold and there is not as much to eat at this time of year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plants, plants, plants, is that all the land can bear, you ask? Why no, there’s fungus and owls and fearless blue creatures with long ears. Behold.

Campus porcini (Boletus edulis) near the garden. There were two in good shape. It looks like a squirrel sampled the goods. It’s common to find porcini with tooth marks, whether up in the mountains or down in the city, for they are toothsome. Back off, rodent.

Ready for the frying pan.

Old dependable keeping the grounds in order. Barred owls (Strix varia) are usually around the edges of the garden, often on the branches of conifers. Look up and you might see one. I take pictures of them because, unlike most birds around here, they sit there and pose. They’re easy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so was this guy. Near the garden, someone was walking him on a leash. The tortoise and the hare, we all know the Aesop fable. But domesticated rabbits are more like the tortoise than the hare. Unfortunately, they lack the protective carapace of the tortoise. Calm and imperturbable grazers, curious products of human selection, they seem to lack both the flight and the fight instinct. The woman walking him said he stared right at a coyote that had fixed him in its gaze one day on campus. And he didn’t blink. Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, she picked the brave little nibbler up and moved on. Wise move.

 

We’re past the autumn cross-quarter day and the winter solstice is closing in. The coming weeks make for a good time to hunker down in the shortening, darkening days, dig deep and break the spell of last year. All that energy and wisdom you have stored up, pour it into the cauldron and stir slowly over the fire. Slowly. This is a time to slow down and breathe deeply. Get lots of sleep like the bears in their dens. Our work days should be shortened at this time of year. Really. We need that and we (even the whip-cracking bosses) would all be much better for it. Alas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 songbirds gathering

evergreen huckleberries

 winter garden scene

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

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A monkey god, some slow seeds and zone 8b strikes again

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Keith Possee

It has been a while. The weather in May was about as good as it gets and June is starting out the same. No complaints. Once again, winter cold damaged the Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia) and Chilean guavas (Ugni molinae). The newly started banana plants (Musa spp.) and the orange wild rhea (Debregeasia longifolia) had the misfortune of their first winter being a harsh one.  Two of the three banana plants are barely putting out new growth but it’s too early to tell if the orange wild rheas will come back and the lemon verbenas (Aloysia triphylla) all died. Too many cold winters in a row.

During a cold snap a while back, an avian visitor returned.

Red-breasted sapsaucker (Sphyrapicus ruber) tapping into the Norway spruce (Picea abies) adjacent to the LSB parking lot driveway. That tree marks the southwest corner of the former Medicinal Herb Garden section G fruit forest, where sapsuckers were regular visitors to the many large trees that used to grow there. Welcome back.

The tapping zone up close.

After several reports of ravens on campus in late winter and early spring, it seems they have moved on. The crows harass them the way they would a hawk or an owl or a raccoon. I’ve found parts of rabbit and squirrel carcasses and some coyote scat recently. Those are good signs, though I haven’t seen a coyote yet this spring. Eagerly awaiting their return.

Late winter and early spring is a good time to harvest wild greens around here. This is hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), a garden weed that makes a fine addition to salads and stir-fried dishes. After flowering, the plants produce cylindrical seed pods called siliques. When they mature they eject their seeds. If you’ve ever weeded these in May or June, you’ve experienced the exploding siliques and probably caught a few seeds in the eyes. So weed them early…and eat hearty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public service reminder: this is Italian arum (Arum italicum). Maybe it seems benign in your shady yard. It hasn’t spread (yet) because you don’t disturb the nearby soil or maybe it hasn’t flowered and gone to seed. This picture was taken in early spring; large plants will have flowered and will be producing fruit soon. If you see them, at the very least, harvest the bright orange seedheads (which start out green so are hard to spot) and throw them in the garbage, then wash your hands.  Beware and do not get the sap (which contains calcium oxalate crystals) in your eyes or on any mucous membrane for that will be an experience you will not soon forget.

Last year’s bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) nest on a garden tripod in section F. As the deciduous vines leaf out, new nests will be built in the tripods which are ideal habitat. The thick foliage and crisscrossing vertical and horizontal support wires provide some protection from nest-raiding crows and jays.

Like a couple of whales breaking the surface of the sea, these yellow gentian plants come rearing out of the soil in spring. This picture was taken on March 27 and this…

was taken May 25. The flowers had not yet opened but will soon. Yellow gentian is a bitter tonic herb, good for your digestion, your liver, your gallbladder. If you eat an average American-style diet you are likely eating too many fried and fatty foods and not getting enough bitter foods and green, leafy vegetables. Change your ways and you will feel better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starting seeds from wild plants can be easy sometimes but it can be quite difficult at other times. Stubborn persistence sometimes pays off.

In February of 2020, I received fresh seeds of Indian cucumber (Medeola virginiana) from Montreal Botanic Garden and from Tom Clarke at Mount Holyoke College. Over the years I have been keeping seeds in flats longer than I used to. Well, it paid off this time. After three years the seeds in both flats started to come up at the same time…on their fourth winter. The seed flats spent cool and cold months either outside in the unheated garden shed or in a refrigerator, depending on the space I had available. So don’t give up on your seeds. If the seed catalog or your own research tells you it will take time, be patient. Maybe you will need repeat cycles of warm and cold periods, or to sand down or nick the seed coats, pour boiling water on them, ferment them in their fruit pulp or light a small tinder fire over the top of them. Think like a plant in its natural environment. Imagine what it’s like there each month of the year. What conditions, including going through the digestive system of an animal or a forest fire or a flood, do these seeds usually experience? We can never fully crack the code, but we can stumble onto the right combination sometimes. Good enough.

It took two years for the late horse gentian (Triosteum perfoliatum) to come up, and only one plant so far. Maybe next spring the majority of the seeds will come up, or just one more…or none. That’s the wild plant seed germination game for you.

On a cold day in March of 2022, I collected black sage seeds (Salvia mellifera) in California. It took a year for them to start germinating, and that after some cold stratification. Was the cold stratification helpful? No idea. Maybe they would have germinated sooner without it. Anyway, those seedlings and the chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) are large enough to go out to the garden now. Will they survive a bad zone 8b winter? Time will tell.

Chamise plants (Adenostoma fasciculatum), ready to go in the ground. I saw a lot of these growing in the sandy coastal soils. They are widespread in the chaparral landscapes.  The dense foliage looked like it would be excellent habitat for many of the little birds in the garden. It gets colder here than there on the central coast so we’ll see how chamise does here in a cold winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paw paw (Asimina triloba) seedlings in the greenhouse. I can’t stop growing them. They are our largest native tree fruit and they are delicious and the trees have a small footprint and fascinating natural history stories. We need paw paw groves on this campus. I used to grow them in the section G fruit forest and they produced many fruit. They would be a natural for the city’s parks because they take up so little space.

Suddenly, the energy that has been stored over winter is starting to find its way to the surface as flowers and foliage.

Flowers on the fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus) on the western edge of the garden. Fringe trees are more or less dioecious, so some plants have female flowers and some have male flowers. That said, some plants also have hermaphroditic flowers mixed in (So I’ve read; I’ve not yet taken the time to investigate). There is a Chinese fringe tree (Chionanthus retusus) about a hundred yards away on the Chemistry Department lawn. It is covered in fruit each summer. Unless there is another fringe tree nearby that has escaped my notice, I assume the herb garden tree is male and pollinating (with the help of some insects) the Chemistry lawn tree.

Snowbush or mountain whitethorn (Ceanothus cordulatus) in the xeriscape bed. I have planted several around the garden and they do well, much better than our native snowbush (Ceanothus velutinus) in my limited experience in the herb garden. They are native to the mountains of California.

If the crossvine (Bignonia capreolata) flowered last year, I can’t remember. It is native to the central and eastern US but does well around here, attracts hummingbirds, would surely cover a chain link fence and it contains the antihypertensive alkaloid reserpine, the only known plant that does, outside of the genus Rauwolfia in the family Apocynaceae. If something about this plant seems familiar, it is related to trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) which is on display in many Seattle gardens. Both are in the Bignoniaceae family.

Orange honeysuckle (Lonicera ciliosa) slowly encircling Cascara Circle. It grows on both sides of the Cascades but I’ve only noticed it (can’t miss those flowers) on low-elevation early season hikes on the east side, along Ingalls Creek for instance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Siskiyou lewisia (Lewisia cotyledon) flowers nodding in the breeze. Rabbits have mostly left them alone over the years, and yet I’ve had to protect the wild tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) and henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) after rabbits started eating them. I think it was the kits who go for shorter, leafy seedling and I’m guessing that would be a costly mistake for a young rabbit.

Western sand cherry (Prunus pumila var. besseyi) is growing quickly. This is its second year. Fingers crossed for fruit which I have eaten and they are good.

Mountain bistort (Polygonum bistorta) prison camp. The rabbits would eat it to the ground if not for the hardware cloth but it’s not a great look. I’m hoping for a return of the coyotes as soon as possible. So far they have proven to be the most effective rabbit predators.

Narrowleaf mule ears (Wyethia angustifolia) growing by the sidewalk near the garden shed. There is a whole bed of it in nearby section C. That bed is surrounded by hardware cloth. Something, either a squirrel or a rabbit was eating the flower heads, after the petals had withered but before the seeds had matured. It’s always something.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its looks a bit like a goumi shrub (Elaeagnus multiflora) but it is our native soapberry or red buffaloberry (Shepherdia canadensis) which is in the same family, the Eleagnaceae. It is surrounded by hardware cloth because rabbits gnaw off the branches. No fruit because it is generally dioecious and this is the only plant. I haven’t yet eaten a soapberry but many years ago, while hitchhiking back from cannery work in Alaska, I camped at a spot down a sandy, wooded spit by the side of Kluane Lake in the Yukon…right in the middle of a patch of soapberry bushes, during berry season as luck would have it. Rookie mistake. The next morning I strolled down to the lake 50 feet away to fill my pot for coffee. I crossed three new sets of grizzly tracks in the sand, a mother and two cubs. Rather than browse for nutritious soapberries that night, they had detoured to the beach and gone on their way as bears usually do, avoiding humans whenever possible. I recently read that about a decade ago, Yukon had experimented with removing soapberries near campgrounds in some areas, to avoid conflict with the bears.

Last year, the Cascara Circle stream was so clogged with vegetation, mostly bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata), that the water was spilling over the sides of the retaining walls. With an old pruning saw I cut out huge chunks of roots, an incredible amount of plant biomass, big blocks of it, many, many wheelbarrows full. What a relief. Look at that open water!

Top left is green arrow arum (Peltandra virginica) with volunteer sedges, bottom right is water plantain (Alisma plantago-aquatica), bottom left is wapato (Sagittaria latifolia) whose tubers are eaten by humans but also by visiting ducks. That’s why it is growing through hardware cloth.

Cursing my hardware cloth and hopefully eating slugs instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asphodel (Asphodelus albus) near the end of its flowering period. Soon the flower stalks will be covered with large, round fruit (about the size of a Castelvetrano olive) and the stalks will flop into the pathways. That’s when I have to cut them back. Look at that lonesome, scraggly fig branch behind them. The disappearing fig tree. Old timers will remember when that fig tree shaded in half of section B. The garden does not lack for shady places or soil filled with tree roots. If I could I would take out at least a couple dozen big trees from the garden’s perimeter, but that is not an option, so the inside of the garden will have no new big trees on my watch and bird-sown volunteer trees in the borders will be cut as soon as I see them.

The prickly pears (Opuntia spp.) are spreading out into the gravel path a bit. Might have to work them back at some point. Look at the arrowleaf balsamroot flowers (Balsamorhiza sagittata). That high spot on top of pumice and gravel seems like a winner.

Periwinkle (Vinca minor) is widespread in much of the garden border areas. It’s better than English ivy (Hedera helix) because it stays on the ground but still helps to suppress weeds like Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) and snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus). Just kidding…ok I’m not. The ‘northwest natives or die’ planting craze has gotten out of hand. The people who design such landscapes should have to maintain them for a decade or so. Rubus ursinus anyone? The horror.

Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) with flowers and a new seedhead. It is a shrub of the southwestern US and Mexico but it does well here in full sun and well-drained soil. It’s quite drought and cold tolerant and should be more widely planted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The monkey protectors of Cascara Circle. When groups are meeting at the garden we often say “Meet you by the monkey poles.” But who are these mysterious monkeys? When I first started volunteering at the garden in the 1990s, I heard or read or both, that the monkeys were guardians of the garden and were modeled after monkey statues at a garden in Padua, Italy. And those statues were copied from Hindu temple gardens in India. That rang a bell. They could be none other than Hanuman, shape-shifting deity, trickster, general of a monkey army and faithful ally of Prince Rama in the Hindu epic Ramayana, though he also appears in another Hindu epic, Mahabharata, both of which are worth your attention if you enjoy epic literature. At one point in the Ramayana, after Rama’s brother Lakshmana is gravely wounded on the battlefield, Hanuman flies off to the medicine mountain in the Himalayas to find the herb that will save him. Because Hanuman did not take a plant systematics class in college, he is at a loss to figure out which is the right plant, so he picks up the entire mountain and carries it back, saving Lakshmana’s life. Hanuman can do it all. He could punt all of the Marvel superheroes at once with a lazy slap of his tail…before breakfast. So watch your step in the garden.

Japanese ardisia, marlberry, zi jin niu (Ardisia japonica) thriving in the abundant shade of section E. It is one of the 50 fundamental herbs  in traditional Chinese medicine and is used for lung and liver conditions among other things.  It grows like a champ in the shade! I want more plants like marlberry.

This raccoon (Procyon lotor) was finding something it really wanted to eat under the leaves. It was so focused on its mission that it ignored me. Normally I wouldn’t get this close.

I’m surprised the California flannel bushes have persisted so long in the garden. There are five or six and almost all are over 20 years old, comparatively long-lived for Seattle. They are all strategically located in protected spots so that could be part of their success.

California flannel bushes (Fremontodendron californicum) are having a superbloom right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The waxy flowers last a long time. If you have a protected, well-drained, sunny spot in your yard you should get one of these shrubs. They’re evergreen, drought-tolerant and I’ve never seen one bothered by insects. They are in the same family as Hibiscus, the Malvaceae or mallow family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

waiting on the seeds

of Indian cucumber

finally paid off

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

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Coyotes and more

Posted on December 18, 2022 by Keith Possee

Since late summer it has been a rare week without a coyote sighting in the garden.  There is plenty of evidence that they are preying on rabbits and squirrels; their abundant scat is full of fur and bones. Tufts of fur, viscera, bones and even feathers are scattered about the garden and adjacent green spaces if you look carefully. Feathers are nothing new. Cooper’s hawks (Accipiter cooperii) catch and kill birds in the garden and leave feathers scattered about. But based on the size of the sternum and the feathers, intestines etc., it seems likely a coyote got a goose (probably on Rainier Vista) and partially consumed it on the lawn west of Benson Hall. Good for the coyote. Geese have it too easy in Seattle… or used to.

While talking to garden visitors by the herb garden shed on Okanogan Lane…a coyote (Canis latrans) strolled past…

then appeared a little later near the garden shed.

Inspecting an area frequented by our resident eastern cottontail rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) on another morning. Good coyote! I took this photo from ten feet away. Just as squirrels and rabbits and birds go about their business all around us, so too the coyotes.

 

If you live out on the range and raise livestock, your attitude about coyotes might be less positive. In fact it’s probably pretty negative. They cut into the profit margin. With that in mind, here’s an interesting article from Scientific American about why, in the long run, nonlethal methods of deterrence can possibly work better than lethal. Even so, the ranch rifle will probably always be a tool in the ranch toolkit.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-killing-coyotes-doesn-rsquo-t-make-livestock-safer/

 

 

Pardon the horrible phone zoom shot but behold another faunal breakthrough. We can only dream of what it was like to encounter an ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) in the deep woods, swooping along from tree to tree, for they are now extinct (and we are north of their historic range). But seeing the similar pileated woodpeckers on campus was a thrill and a first for me. They are magnificent birds…so big. I see them at Seward Park regularly but campus woods are a bit of a checkerboard and probably just flyover territory most of the time.

Two pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) spent a few days in the woods adjacent to the garden. This one flew from one round of a log to the next, looking for a snack. My phone’s camera is handy but the zoom image quality is lacking.

As it flitted through the manzanitas (Arctostaphylos sp.) along Okanogan Lane (just a few feet away from the last coyote photo spot)  I finally got a clear profile shot of what I take to be a hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus). It spends time there as well as the woods around Cascara Circle.

Eyes out for any stealthy long-tailed weasels (Neogale frenata/Mustela frenata) but no luck yet. If you see one on campus, let me know when and where. They have been reported near the HUB, outside the Biology Greenhouse (with photographic proof) and near the lower Rainier Vista.

In a couple of days it will officially be winter with snow predicted soon. Here are some fall floral shots. October was so warm that it took forever for fall colors to appear but a cold snap in November set things off.

Looking up from below at the sourwood tree (Oxydendrum arboreum). Its leaves, bark and sap are medicinal. Young leaves are also edible, flowers are fragrant and sourwood honey is considered one of the world’s greatest honeys. It generally comes from the southern Appalachians. Sourwood is in the heath family, the Ericaceae.

Water in the Cascara Circle stream froze on November 18. It hasn’t frozen since but it will surely freeze again before spring arrives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few years ago a garden visitor suggested I should thin the western sweetshrub (Calycanthus occidentalis) in Cascara Circle. It had completely enveloped the brick cistern that surrounds it and it was hard to sit by the water. I resisted but the seed of doubt had been planted and one day I removed the thickest, oldest stems from the ground up. It is so much better now. Look at that dazzling autumn light on those golden leaves. Gardens never stop giving.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of Szechuan peppercorns (Zanthoxylum simulans) are ripening in this photo (near Okanogan Lane). When they fall and it rains, the air is fragrant with their indescribable aroma. By the way, they are not related to the pepper in your pepper grinder. They are in the citrus family, the Rutaceae and their flavor is spicy, not hot, more like citrus-pine umami. Black pepper (Piper nigrum) grows on a vine and is a member of the Piperaceae. It is native to southern India and Sri Lanka. You would need a heated greenhouse to grow it around here.

Opuntias in the faint, low autumn sun.

Greek mullein (Verbascum olympicum) was cut back in October to keep the seeds from spreading far and wide. Here it is flowering again on December 1.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This picture of a dang shen (Codonopsis pilosula) flower was taken on October 25. Why flowering so late? Because I started these plants from seeds in spring. They’re perennials so I wasn’t expecting them to flower this year, but our extended warm spell kept them growing.

Sometimes it can be hard to get a mental picture of the garden when you’re looking at a computer screen in a remote location. Here are some pictures of the sections with formal garden beds, so excluding Cascara Circle and all of the border areas which are hard to photograph. Starting from section A at the west of the garden to section F at the northeast of the garden:

Section A looking east.

Section B looking southeast.

Section C looking south.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Section D looking east

Section E looking east.

Section F looking southeast.

Late autumn sun gets so low in the sky around here that shadows grow long and tall on rare sunny days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the west end of the garden, not far from the paw paws and the jack pine, I planted some hardy bananas that I started from seeds this past winter. The larger plant in the foreground is Musa mannii and the smaller is Musa velutina. Hopefully they survive this first winter. They can do well in Seattle in the right place. When the plants get tall, some people around here will wrap them in plastic to protect them in winter.

Pipevine (Aristolochia macrophylla)
tripod trellis took a fall in the winds of November. The bottom of one of the bamboo posts broke so I had to cut the vines back hard to replace the trellis.

Last year I had to remove some of the drooping lower branches of this crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) on the western edge of section D. That pruning job as well as the drastic cutting back of the leggy silk tassel (Garrya elliptica) and the removal of the hulking common rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum) opened up a lot of air space in that corner, what I refer to as a feng shui smackdown. The energy now flows much more smoothly through that bottleneck edge of the garden.

The raptors and the coyotes are keeping the smaller mammals and birds on their toes. This is one of many tufts of fur spread out around the garden. You can probably guess what happened here. That might be part of a cottontail. If so, the rest of the rabbit will likely show up in coyote scat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or maybe it was an owl. Barred owls are here and they’re eating something. It’s hard to believe they wouldn’t be feeding on rabbits.

Barred owl (Strix varia) and crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) on the western edge of the garden a couple of weeks ago. If you see an owl all by itself in the city, be patient and enjoy the quiet; the noisy crows will arrive soon enough.

 

It’s almost winter solstice, far and away the best holiday of the year. Fingers crossed for many flower buds on the paw paws.

 

 

 

 

 

 

last leaves falling down

 kicked up by the winter birds

foraging for food

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

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Spring through summer (almost fall) in one post

Posted on September 19, 2022 by Keith Possee

The last post was in March, a transition month between winter and spring. Now we’re in a transition month between summer and fall. Sun’s up later, down earlier and nights are cooling off. Clouds appear on the horizon. If you’re still watering your tomatoes, do yourself a favor and stop now.

After all those days in the 90s (we set a new record of 13 days at or above 90ºF), the change in the weather felt good. Even sunny days are cooling off as the sun drops lower in the southern horizon. But it’s barely still summer and it is our duty to squeeze the very last drop of languorous joy from it, soaking up those soft golden rays before they disappear into the cold, grey mists.

The blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) on the garden borders were dripping with fruit this summer, more than I’ve ever seen. Good news. Guess who ate most of them? But the medlar tree (Mespilus germanica) has fewer fruit than I’ve ever seen. Not such bad news because not many people around here seem to know they are a delicious fruit. Most years most of them fall to the ground. When soft and ripe they taste like apple butter. They are quite good and you are missing out if you’ve not tried a medlar. The Chilean guavas (Ugni molinae) are in recovery after a rough winter. Expecting great things from them in 2023. What happened to the Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa)? No fruit at all this year. As always, they flowered early, right when we got our wintery spring. I heard that cherry production was a bust for the state this year. Same deal, they flower so early and we got sucker punched by late bad weather.

Such a contrast between our cool and wet spring to early summer and the hot and dry rest of summer but I think most of us are getting used to that extended hot spell as the new summer normal. We shall see how normal it proves to be over time but gardeners in Seattle might want to start thinking about which drought-tolerant plants could fill the voids in their yards or consider replacing the struggling water-hogging plants. If you can provide good drainage (that is key), you might be surprised by the diversity of dryland plants that can thrive in Seattle.

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In late April, multiple flowers and lots of foliage on the arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) are good signs that it is thriving in the xeriscape bed, next to the desert prickly pear (Opuntia engelmannii) which has, amazingly, not yet flowered…and that’s ok. One way or another, we gardeners learn to cultivate the art of patience.

 

Western tanager (Piranga ludoviciana) looks like it crashed in the woods north of Cascara Circle. This picture was taken on May 24, around the time a tanager regularly visits Cascara Circle and its stream each year. I don’t know how it died.

In June, for the second year, larvae of the viburnum leaf beetle (Pyrrhalta viburni) were eating leaves on the arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum), one of their favorite foods. Both the larvae and the adult beetles eat foliage. Lucky for them that their other favorite, cranberry bush (Viburnum opulus) is just a few yards away. They are native to Europe and Asia and are a new pest around here. I’m working on a management strategy that is more effective than wishing they would go away.

Eastern grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) meets California flannel bush (Fremontodendron californicum). This is the first year I’ve spotted a squirrel eating flowers of the flannel bush. It ate quite a few so they must be tasty. Flannel bush is in the mallow family (Malvaceae) so it’s not surprising that the flowers are edible. On the other hand, squirrels can eat the bitterest of acorns and all manner of garbage.

Sacahuista (Nolina microcarpa) produced many flower spikes in section C, but before the flowers could fully open…

…someone broke them off and scattered them all over the place. That’s life in a public garden in a city.

This year there are 11 species of grains from around the world in this bed in section C. The birds waited for them to mature, at which point they had a long feast. By the time you see this post, the grain bed will look like it was hit by a tornado. Dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) and song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) eat most of the grain and the rats harvest a bit at night.

An orchid only an orchid enthusiast could love, the broad-leaved helleborine (Epipactis helleborine) has become mildly invasive in the Medicinal Herb Garden beds and borders in the last decade. If only the rabbits would develop a taste for it.

The oft-photographed French rose (Rosa gallica) and pollinator in section B. So many roses this year and very little rust. No complaints.

Eastern prickly pear (Opuntia humifusa) flowering in the xeriscape bed. They look pretty sad by the end of winter but usually spring right back in the heat. Our wet winters can be hard on them.

Fragrant flowers of annual snake gourd (Trichosanthes cucumerina) in section C. Immature fruit are eaten like summer squash and the red pulp contained in mature fruit is also edible. Seeds are used medicinally.

Fragrant flowers got pollinated and turned into snake gourds.

Winter melons are growing quickly. I decided to try some new seeds rather than saved seeds from last season’s melons. They’re a slightly different shape, longer and  narrower but maybe they will widen as they get larger.

 

Squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium) flowers, foliage and fruit in section C. When the inedible and extremely bitter fruit ripen they eject their seeds. I wear safety goggles when I collect seeds. I’ve found seedlings in beds twenty feet away.

Baikal skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis) doing so much better in section C with looser soil and more sun.

Perennial lettuce or mountain lettuce (Lactuca perennis) in section D, like other wild lettuce species has edible, though bitter leaves. You should be eating more bitter foods. They’re good for you. How many times do you need to hear this advice?

Showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) in section B. Its flowers are showy but also fragrant. Look for them in June to August around here.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) in section E is thriving since some of the overhead branches that were shading them were cut back. They needed some sun. The bees, wasps, hornets, etc. visit the fragrant flowers but I’ve planted 5 native North American Asclepias species in the garden to attract monarchs (Danaus plexippus) which are unfortunately, few and far between. Someday maybe one will stop here on its journey. If you see one in the garden, please let me know and get a picture if you can.

 

Some of the common milkweed’s flowers got pollinated and produced seed pods for the first time.

Several Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia) in the garden’s borders were killed back to the ground by last winter’s cold. But they have grown back. This one is in the border between sections A and B. It grew 4 feet in one season.

While working in the east end of the garden I heard a loud crashing noise way up in the conifers just across Stevens Way. It was a falling cone from a Coulter pine or big-cone pine (Pinus coulteri) a native of southern California and northwestern Mexico. That cone is almost a foot long and weighs the better part of three pounds and it is mighty spiky. It would never do to have it fall on your head, but the seeds are edible and delicious. The grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) of California and adjacent Mexico used to eat the seeds of Coulter pine and other pine species. The fatty seeds were an important part of their diet. Unfortunately, California grizzlies were declared extinct in 1924 and Mexican grizzlies in 1964. 

Xu duan’s (Dipsacus asper) many-flowered inflorescence makes an attractive target for pollinators like these yellow-faced bumble bees ( Bombus vosnesenskii) which are covered in pollen.

 

Chinese foxglove or sheng di huang (Rehmannia glutinosa) produced more flowers than last year. It has a long history in traditional Chinese medicine as a treatment for kidney disease.

Crab spider (Misumena vatia) on the lavender (Lavandula sp.) prepared to ambush a foraging bee.

Grannyvine or Mexican morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor) is brightening up section A this summer. Who can resist those beautiful flowers? More selfies have been taken in front of that trellis than anywhere else in the garden.

The flowers fade quickly but the bees visit most of them. It’s a tight squeeze for this bumble bee.

This honey bee had just backed out of the pomegranate flower (Punica granatum) and was about to begin its flight to another flower when I took its picture.

Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) in section D is looking much better than last year. Hopefully the flowers will lead to some fruit. I recently read that maypops are andromonoecious, meaning there are functionally male flowers and hermaphroditic flowers on each plant. They are also obligate outcrossers or self-incompatible, meaning each plant requires pollen from a different plant to successfully pollinate its flowers and produce fruit.
Unlike their commercial passionfruit relatives (Passiflora edulis), maypops are herbaceous vines, not woody vines. They die back completely each winter and disappear from view. Where they will arise again in spring is anyone’s guess. It’s possible that one plant will dominate an area, fooling the unsuspecting into believing that a clonal colony is many distinct plants. Fruit production is declining in the garden and that could be the problem. In the wild they would have more room to sow their seeds and spread out. They are most unruly but might do well in a wild border. Wouldn’t it be great if our city green spaces were full of wild grape and passionfruit vines instead of English ivy and clematis. And wouldn’t it be great if someone could explain why flowers are pollinated rather than pollenated. Where did the letter i come from? And where did the letter e go?

Houttuynia or yu xing cao (Houttuynia cordata) in section F. This is a tough plant and it is a spreader, as all plants in the Saururaceae seem to be. That said, it has the distinction of being one of the few plants in the garden that has not escaped its enclosure, a large, bottomless pot sunk into its garden bed…

…like so.

The tall flowers are Natal lilies (Crinum moorei) and the lower flowers are autumn crocuses (Colchicum autumnale). They had become almost buried under some sprawling, weedy rhododendrons you can see in the left background, severely cut back. The lower border plants are responding well to the extra light. They’re both still flowering now but fading fast.

Unopened flowers of the Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus) in section E.

Late summer in the dappled light of section D.
The red is cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) and the yellow is compass plant (Silphium perfoliatum).

Naranjilla (Solanum quitoense) flower opening, with many more on the way in section A. The tamarillo (Solanum betaceum) in the same bed is also flowering. Those summer days in the 90s were not for naught, but they are both, unfortunately, in the ‘for display purposes only’ category. They need a longer growing season to produce fruit.

Volunteer prickly lettuce plants (Lactuca serriola) growing in the crack between the pavement and the concrete retaining wall in the LSB parking lot. It also shares a formal garden bed in section F with its cousin, wild lettuce (Lactuca virosa). Prickly lettuce contains a milky white, sedative sap called lactucarium which contains lactucin and lactucopicrin.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7180447/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s a little glimpse of spring through summer at the Medicinal Herb Garden, but there is so much more to see and experience. Visit soon if you’re nearby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

feral testament

to a concrete existence

prickly lettuce plant

 

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It got cold this winter but spring is here

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Keith Possee

This winter that we are about to happily leave behind brought a cold spell that was a good reminder that USDA hardiness zones are all about low temperatures. The lowest lows set the limit for what perennials we can grow outside and unprotected. Those of us who dream of zone 9 or zone 10 will often fall victim to fits of irrationally aspirational planting. We know about the Fraser Valley freezes. We just experienced one from late December to early January. On December 27 our high was 23°F and our low was 17°F. Too cold. But we keep planting marginally hardy plants anyway. Why? Don’t ask why.

The Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia), manuka (Leptospermum scoparium), olives (Olea europea), Chilean guavas (Ugni molinae), mastic trees (Pistacea lentiscus) and surely some herbaceous perennials, have suffered. It will take several months at least to fully assess the damage. The tea trees might grow back from the stumps but not the manuka. All three specimens were young and too small to withstand the cold. Some of the foliage on the Chilean guavas turned brown. In fact the smaller ones, newly planted west of Cascara Circle…fingers crossed that they survived at all.  We did get a blanket of snow but not a thick enough blanket to provide much insulation. Such are the heartbreaks of adventurous planting in zone 8b.

Today is the vernal equinox here in the northern hemisphere and the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere. Day and night are equal length today but our northern days will continue growing longer until summer solstice. If there is a soul in the Pacific Northwest who is not wishing for longer, sunnier, warmer days, please keep it to yourself. A squall yesterday brought sudden high winds, cold rain and hail, hopefully the last roar of the March lion. Today the sky is clear (for Seattle) and the brisk air delightfully fresh.

As the weather has slowly warmed, some stubborn seeds have finally germinated.

Blackthorn or sloe (Prunus spinosa) seedlings in the unheated garden shed. They were planted on 2/12/20. This picture was taken on 1/20/22, so they went through two warm seasons and almost three cold seasons before emerging.

Here they are a month later. Behind them are seedlings of western sand cherry (Prunus pumila var. besseyi) which were started on 5/3/21 (that’s when the seeds arrived). They got a warm period followed by cold, with seedlings emerging in January.

The slowly warming, oscillating temperatures of March and April trigger some seeds to sprout…or something does. Who can say for sure. Seeds are a never-ending mystery. Consider the Judean date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) started in Israel in 2005 from 2,000-year-old seeds. The earth is resilient.

Oh, but that winter was a trial. Cold damage can take months to show for some plants. With others the damage is obvious early.

Manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) sapling didn’t make it through the cold weather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia) looking quite dead in front of the yew (Taxus baccata). I’m hopeful that they will sprout from the base. I have since cut them to the ground in anticipation of a flush of new growth. Time will tell.

But spring is here and the buds are swelling and breaking and in some cases, flowering.

Masuri berry (Coriaria nepalensis) coming out of dormancy.

Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa) flowering abundantly. A few warm days next week should bring out more pollinators.

Spike winter hazel (Corylopsis spicata) flowers in section E/F border…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…and the whole shrub. It puts out a lot of growth from the base each summer so you can let it get thick or cut the new growth back to keep it more open like this.

 

Utah honeysuckle (Lonicera utahensis) in Cascara Circle is an upright shrub. It has an unfortunate tendency to flower in early winter. After those flowers come to nothing, it flowers again in late winter/early spring. This photo is from March 18.

The next time you pass some tall Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) in flower, bother to bend over and take a whiff. Experience the delicate scent of April in the northwest. It grows all over the garden’s borders. The genus Mahonia is widespread from North to Central America but also eastern Asia. Here are a couple links to medical studies of tall Oregon grape and its Asian relatives, also a link about the PubMed search engine, in case you enjoy reading about current studies on the medicinal uses of plants.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12916091/      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26387740/    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/about/

 

 

Scurvy grass (Cochlearia officinalis) in section A was started from seed and put on a lot of vegetative growth last year. This year it is flowering and going to seed. As a biennial, that’s the end of its life cycle so I’ll need to start more seeds soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mandrake (Mandragora officinarum) has flowered. Hopefully it will produce fruit this year. It didn’t last year, probably because its tap root hadn’t stored enough energy. It’s still a young plant.

Billberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) in section A. This one and its companions were started from seed last year so they’re still quite small. But so far so good.

Rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) have been munching on the daylilies (Hemerocallis citrina in this photo) in the garden’s border areas. They don’t do much long-lasting damage because they stop eating after the foliage gets a bit tougher or maybe as more plants leaf out and there is more to eat. All is well, either way.

One or more Cooper’s hawks (Accipiter cooperii) have been loudly sharing their mating calls for the last couple weeks. They sound a bit like red-shafted flickers (Colaptes auratus) with their staccato kek-kek-kek, but if you follow the sound at this time of year you are likely to find a Cooper’s hawk. There is at least one in or nearby the garden every day lately. Apologies for the fuzzy 16x zoom on my cheap camera.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pandemic cabin fever spurred me to hit the road south in early March. I needed that so badly.

 

Right place, right time. While visiting the central coast of California, I encountered the wild California peony (Paeonia californica) which is similar to our native Brown’s peony (Paeonia brownii). These two western species are North America’s only native peonies. Some had not yet flowered, others had already flowered but this one was just breaking into bloom. The boiled leaves were sometimes eaten by native people of central and southern coastal California to Baja.

Cherimoya (Annona cherimola) fruit slowly ripening in the pleasant weather of the California central coast. Who wouldn’t want to be growing cherimoyas in Seattle if we could? But paw paws (Asimina triloba), their close relatives from up north will have to do. Paw paws are delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course, citrus trees are everywhere in California. Look at that mandarin orange tree (Citrus reticulata) with ripe fruit in March. Yes, March.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 fresh sweet mandarins

cherimoyas ripening

 central coast in March

 

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

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Year end compendium

Posted on December 12, 2021 by Keith Possee

It’s been a while. The last post was way back in July. Still thinking about that heatwave. On our hottest day ever recorded, we reached 108°F on June 28. And it stayed hot, over 100°F for a long time, too long in my opinion. Now we have had our wettest meteorological fall on record, 19.04 inches from September 1 through November 30. Floods have devastated    towns north of here all the way up into British Columbia. Fingers crossed we don’t have the coldest or snowiest winter but all bets are off with emerging weather patterns. Throw in a shape-shifting pandemic and it is turning out to be an interesting second decade of this emerging century.

Where to begin? Let’s start with some garden fauna. Flora without fauna is sad flora indeed.

Back in early August, while weeding a bed in section C, movement on the ground caught my eye; a great golden digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus) was heading into the tunnel it was excavating.

It backed out of the tunnel, pulling up soil and scattering it behind, a bit like a dog would do. After stinging and paralyzing its insect quarry (katydid, grasshopper, cricket etc.) and dragging it into one of the several cells built in the tunnel, it will lay an egg on its prey. When the egg hatches, the larva will feed on the paralyzed insect, then stay in its cell in the tunnel until emerging (with its fellow larvae from their cells) the following summer. So weed your garden and pay attention; you never know what you might see.

Behold the work of  Viburnum leaf beetles (Pyrrhalta viburni) on the arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum). The beetles are in the center of the photo and they look an awful lot like the early models of the Volkswagen Beetle. Some Viburnum species were nearly defoliated and others, like the parking lot landscape Viburnums (V. davidii and V. tinus), were untouched. Maybe the thicker, evergreen foliage helped protect them. That said, the Viburnum tinus along Stevens Way is currently covered with greenhouse thrips (Heliothrips haemorrhoidalis) which seem to prefer broadleaf evergreens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The insect world is endlessly fascinating but the connection when  interacting with mammals at close quarters has something of communion about it.

The raccoon (Procyon lotor) twins mucking around in the Cascara Circle bog. One kept making the high trilling noise that young raccoons make when they’re nervous. The other seemed unconcerned that I was watching them, until…

 

…it forgot I was there while it was leaving the bog, only to suddenly spot me. I guess the linebacker pose is what passes for looking big and scary to a young raccoon. Actually, it’s not unheard of for them to make a bluff charge toward a perceived threat. That borderline menace adds some excitement to encounters in the garden. They have the darnedest way of popping out of the shrubbery when you least expect it. The good news is that raccoons are not known to carry rabies in Washington. In fact the only mammals around here that do carry rabies are bats and it is very rare (Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says “less than one bat in 20,000 has rabies”).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once again, the canopy of the woods at the northeast corner of the garden was quiet this year. The blue herons (Ardea herodias) are gone. Maybe they found a better place to nest. But a barred owl is back. It seems to prefer the same patch of woods formerly used by the herons. As new buildings arise, the woods on campus are dwindling. Where the fruit forest used to be, I would frequently see a red-breasted sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber) working its way up the giant Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila) and the majestic black walnut (Juglans nigra). That little patch of forest is now a parking lot, better habitat for dumpster divers and trash pickers like gulls, pigeons and crows.

A barred owl (Strix varia) has been around for at least a couple months. It can usually be found in one of  the wooded areas around the garden. Listen for the alarm calls of crows and jays and you might find the barred owl perched nearby, stoically enduring the corvid interference.

And what about the fungus? The ground was dry for so long, and that heat, too much. Not good for the porcini though I did find one nice button, clean as a whistle. Some of the less picky mushrooms have shown up with the cold rain.

The shaggy mane clan (Coprinus comatus) came for a brief visit to the edge of the garden in early December.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After being trounced by aphids for several years, the tough little American plum tree (Prunus americana) finally recovered a bit this year and produced a half dozen fruit. Assuming the seeds germinate, I’m starting six more plants for the garden’s borders. The seeds are in the process of cold stratification right now.

The spiked ginger lily (Hedychium spicatum) in section A has proven extremely hardy so far. It flowered abundantly this summer and produced fruit which look like…

…this when ripe. And like many herbaceous perennials…

…the aerial parts die back and the plants disappear underground for winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The olives (Olea europea) have gotten bigger as the olive trees have matured north of section A.

Fall color in canyon grape (Vitis arizonica) leaves on vines that have run up into the leafless, nearby chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus). In the center background is an atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) and to the right is a Japanese umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata) which is doing much better since some large, overhanging branches from the atlas cedar broke off and opened up a lot more light. The Japanese umbrella pine is the sole representative of its family, the Sciadopitaceae, so not a true pine from the genus Pinus in the family Pinaceae. But who’s counting?

A few yards from the canyon grape are flowers and immature fruit of the balloon plant (Physocarpus capitatus) from South Africa.  They have faded by now but you can see them at this stage next July/August.

Mi meng hua (Buddleja officinalis), a Chinese native, is a fairly recent addition to the garden and it is flowering right now. Supposedly it is more or less evergreen though deciduous in the northern part of its range. Time will tell how it does in Seattle. The flowers are scented like many of its relatives in the Buddlejaceae, aka the butterfly bush family. Extracts from the flowers are used in some skin care products.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ju hua (Chrysanthemum morifolium) in section D. It starts flowering in late autumn. If you’ve ever tried Chrysanthemum tea or any of the canned tea drinks on the shelves of most food stores in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District (or wherever you get your food products from the Far East) it was probably some variety of this flower infusing your beverage.

Mild winters have allowed the many small Australian tea trees (Melaleuca alternifolia) around sections A and B to prosper for the last couple years. Feel free to run your fingers over their foliage to release the essence of tea tree oil.

South American native lemon verbena (Aloysia citriodora) in section A has become a big shrub, five feet tall and wide. That’s because we haven’t had a really cold winter in recent years to knock it back. If you need a quick dose of aromatherapy, rub up against it and your clothes will be lemon-scented all day.

Two of the more photogenic garden plants in winter, the bluish green honey flower (Melianthus major) and the Chinese ground orchid or bai ji (Bletilla striata) whose seed pods and zigzag-jointed stems have a sculptural quality that stands out as their leaves fall away in winter. Extract from Bletilla rhizome is used as an astringent hemostatic agent. In other words it helps to control bleeding. Pictured is part of the little border bed to the west of section E.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soap plant or amole (Chlorogalum pomeridianum) senesced after a season’s growth and flowering, only to reemerge from its brief dormancy by November. It sows its seeds freely…

…maybe too freely. These seedlings are emerging among the spiny pads of plains prickly pear (Opuntia polyacantha) in the xeriscape bed. And they can stay right there. Soap plant’s name relates to the use of its leaves and underground bulbs which are crushed to release a soapy substance that is effective on delicate fabrics or as a skin or hair cleanser.

Nearby in section B, the festive and ornamental seedpods of chuan dang (Codonopsis tangshen) dangle from their tripod trellis all winter. Chuan dang is a member of the Campanulaceae, the bellflower family. Both the flowers and seed pods resemble bells. Several species of Codonopsis are considered important tonic herbs in traditional Chinese medicine, and three of them grow in the garden. The other two are C. pilosula and C. lanceolata. They’re often referred to as poor man’s ginseng because they are an easier plant to grow in an average garden. True ginseng (Panax spp.) is pretty fussy and naturally grows as an understory plant in hardwood forests (both in eastern Asia and eastern North America), though commercial growers mimic the overstory shade with screens of all kinds. Ginseng belongs to the Araliacae, the same plant family as English ivy (Hedera helix). Strange but true. Wouldn’t it be great if ivy were as hard to grow and expensive as ginseng.

In section D, hanging from a bamboo tripod trellis, a seedpod of swallow wort (Vincetoxicum hirundinaria), yet another in a long list of Eurasian plants in the garden. It has been used as a diuretic, diaphoretic and emetic. Its status as an emetic is recognized in another common name, German ipecac.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The seeds took forever to germinate and the young plants just sat there for a few years, but the ba qia or Chinaroot (Smilax china) in section E, a tonic herb from eastern Asia, has finally come into its own. It has not produced fruit yet but when it does, the mature fruit should turn red.

The vines began to cascade downward after topping out at the apex of their trellis, giving it the look of a Smilax staircase. Many perennial vines are a bit unruly and not ideally suited to formal garden beds. They make their escape, one way or another. The nearby wu wei zi or five-flavor-fruit vine (Schisandra chinensis) has grown up into the overhanging hawthorn (Crataegus sp.), fulfilling its mission as a vine. I probably won’t be able to harvest any fruit from the vines but that’s a small price to pay.

Storm damage to one of the oaks (Quercus robur) between section C and the Chemistry building. The standing portion of the tree will eventually be removed.

The miniature fruit forest between Cascara Circle and Benson Hall is creeping westward. I cut and rolled up the sod, pictured to the left of the bare ground, and will add chips soon. The plum trees (Prunus domestica) needed room for their roots to expand into some looser, richer soil and I will plant more Chilean guavas (Ugni molinae) along the edge. Like the rest of this garden, and every garden, it is now and always will be a work in progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On August 5, the chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus) was still flowering. On a typical summer day, the Medicinal Herb Garden resembles a busy airport in miniature. There are constant incoming and outgoing flights of pollinator insects.

But the flowers and leaves are mostly gone in the garden by December. It’s time to turn our attention to the leaf and flower buds. There are many excellent books on identifying woody plants in winter. Do yourself a favor and get one. It is a new horizon to explore, especially during a pandemic. What a great way to spend a winter day, wandering the local parks, forests, yards. There are trees and shrubs everywhere. These buds belong to the northeast Asian tonic herb, Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus) in section E

If one tree could represent the land around Puget Sound, a likely choice would be the red cedar (Thuja plicata), a larger western relative of the white cedar or arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) of eastern to central Canada and US. This tree is in the wooded edge of section D.
Here’s a link to Native American Ethnobotany Database listing some of the historical uses of red cedar by Pacific Northwest Native Americans. http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=thuja+plicata

Red cedar branch and…

 

 

 

 

 

 

a seed cone and…

a seed cone next to a Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) seed cone for size comparison.

In addition to Cascara Circle, an area of the garden devoted exclusively to Pacific Northwest native plants, the rest of the garden, including the wooded border areas, holds many other regional plants traditionally used by Pacific Northwest native peoples for medicine, fiber, dye, building material, ceremonies and purification rituals. There are also edible plants like huckleberry, serviceberry, salal, thimbleberry, currants, roses, camas, wild onions, lily and brodiaea and fritillary bulbs, wapato, American plums, nettles, Pacific crabapples; the list goes on and on. Maybe you will take a break on one of the garden’s many benches as you investigate the native plants. Give yourself a little time to pause for an imaginative journey to picture what this land was like in the not-so-distant past, before streets and cars and bridges, grocery stores and tall buildings. Ancient forests, meadows, prairies, rivers and wetlands stretched as far as the eye could see. The native plants, the animals that lived here: elk and deer and wolves, black bears and grizzlies, wolverines, fishers and sea otters; the croaking calls of ravens that echoed through the hills; a vast array of shellfish that lined the edges of the Salish Sea, and the almost mythically dense aggregations of the five iconic salmon species whose struggling survivors still swim the once-clean waters; these were all integral to the daily lives and stories of people living here for thousands of years. Landscapes from the mountain slopes to the saltwater were alive, familiar and intimate. We will not know that intimacy again. Who among them could have imagined that, in less than two centuries, the superabundance of natural treasures that had sustained them for millennia would be so easily squandered by us newcomers. In the clear light of the twenty-first century, a deeper reckoning of the complex and ambiguous idea of progress still awaits our honest and thoughtful exploration.

If you regularly visit the garden you might (hopefully) notice that there is more light shining in some formerly shady places. I limbed up a lot of trees, cut down some trees and large shrubs and pulled the last thin strip of ivy on the wooded border of section D, adjacent to the woods. Those woods, known as Island Grove, are being rehabilitated by UW student members of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). They have pulled so much ivy, literally tons of the stuff, and removed other invasive plants, planted natives, added wood chips and helped to keep new plants watered. If you see them working out there, please thank them for their efforts. The transformation is amazing. Let’s hope they are inspired to work on other parts of campus.

The latest update on garden rabbits (Sylvilagus floridanus) is that all of the exclusion fences have made good neighbors of them. Most of what they like to eat has been fenced off with hardware cloth. The rabbits still nibble at the edges of the garden and sometimes either alter their tastes or new rabbits with different tastes enter the scene and I have to fence off plants that were formerly untouched. That will be an ongoing duty. Also, in winter there is much more damage to the trunks and branches of woody plants because there is less foliage for rabbits to eat. At this point they are barely a minor nuisance in the garden. Hopefully the hardware cloth screens aren’t too distracting. In my experience so far, garden visitors don’t seem to mind.

Ok, that’s the news. Enjoy your winter solstice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

hottest and wettest

dubious superlatives

for weather reports

 

 

 

 

See you in the garden.

 

 

 

 

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