UW Medicinal Herb Garden Blog

Ok, maybe bliss is the wrong word. Relief is more like it, the sort of relief that comes after an hour or so of digging, tearing and cursing the tree roots out of a garden bed. All of the roots in the wheelbarrow are from the garden bed behind it. Less than ten feet away to the left is a border of trees and shrubs. The trees, in this case the black hawthorn (Crataegus douglasii), are sending their roots into all nearby irrigated garden beds. There was a time when the irrigation systems around the garden were working. That time has passed. So the unirrigated border plants are getting their water from the Medicinal Herb Garden beds. I spend way too much time clearing tree roots from beds and watering by hand beds where the irrigation is no longer functional. And so it goes, chin up, watering can in hand, onward.

A few feet from the mule ears, sacahuista (Nolina microcarpa) is flowering again. For millennia, its leaves have been used as a very tough fiber by native people of the southwest.  It is one of many plants native to the US southwest and Mexico that can thrive in sunny, well-drained areas in Seattle. The time is here to start planting hardy, drought-tolerant plants in our yards and around the city. At least consider having a mosaic of drought-tolerant anchor plants around your spread, plants that can serve as islands of green that will survive a major drought when water will likely be rationed.

Shortgrass prairie plant meets tallgrass prairie plant. Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum) in foreground and prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) behind have some overlapping medicinal uses, treating lung and throat complaints among other ailments. But they also share the open space of the prairies on the Great Plains. Every once in a while, maybe pause to consider what a wonder of the world the North American prairies were, after the last ice age glaciers receded but before the plows, malls, interstate highways, tract housing etc. arrived. Tallgrass and shortgrass prairie lands combined once covered an estimated 700,000 square miles of what is now Canada and the US. Take a deep breath and try your hardest to imagine the vastness of such a landscape. It’s not easy. That’s a lot of land. The percentage of that landscape that remains is in the low single digits but thankfully, a lot of good people are working to restore some of those damaged lands. Bring back the bison, the wolves and the grizzlies and take down the fences and we’ll be getting somewhere.

Those flowers attract a lot of insects. Having early and late flowering plants in the garden is good for the insects.

Bush penstemon (Penstemon fruticosus) grows mostly east of the Cascade crest. It was a bit tentative for a few years in this bed but seems to have finally settled in.

Lei gong teng (Tripterygium wilfordii) is a woody vine and it really isn’t suited to a garden bed because it wants to go up and into the trees or whatever else is nearby. Maybe I will move it one of these days or let it grow up into the low, overhanging hawthorn branches. Here it is just starting to flower. The roots are most commonly used in Chinese medicine to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Flowers and buds up close. Young shoots, flowers and buds are edible, usually steamed or fried. The common or orange daylily (Hemerocallis fulva) is sometimes recommended for its edible tubers. I don’t know about Amur daylily tubers.

This is the mediocre photo I got of Nootka roses (Rosa nutkana) in Cascara Circle’s east side. What can I say; there was a duck on my foot. Many years ago the east and south sides of this section were solid salal (Gaultheria shallon). I cut it back and planted wild roses, quaking aspens, mock orange and some other Pacific Northwest native plants. It’s good to have a variety. They will establish an order that works for them. That said, if planting something aggressive like Nootka rose, it’s good to have other aggressive plants nearby, like salal and tall oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) as a counterbalance. Cascara Circle now has all three in measured abundance.

In the heron haven woods, north of section D, these woven baskets are or were hanging from a cedar tree. I think they are made from English ivy vines.

I forgot to collect seeds from the Peruvian groundcherry (Physalis peruviana) last fall. Early this spring I went out to the garden to see if I could find a fruit to hopefully collect some seeds. On the ground was this skeleton of the husk that once enclosed the fruit. All that was left were these seeds which unfortunately did not germinate. Before taking this picture I tried blowing on the husk to see if any seeds would drop out and as you can see, they did. Does that tumbling in the breeze help to spread their seeds in warmer climates? I don’t know. It’s a moot point around here if a mild winter was enough to kill the seeds.

To the best of my knowledge, all of these pellets were regurgitated by a barred owl that lives in or near the garden. Why the one on the bottom is about twice the size of the others I don’t know. The five on top were all under a Douglas fir on the east edge of the garden and the big one was under a spruce tree at the west edge of the garden. Different barred owl? Different species of owl or maybe just a big meal? Yet another in a never-ending series of garden mysteries.

That is a typical ballpoint pen for size reference.

Beautiful Lake Washington, a paradise for water birds is less than a mile from the murky, silted, duck poo waters of this fountain cistern near the northeast corner of the garden. Something called to this little bufflehead (Bucephala albeola) to do its own thing, to take a little time alone. By itself or with the occasional company of a few Canada geese, it stuck around for a week or so. Who knows? There are ducks and there are ducks.

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

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

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

Nose…

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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…

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).

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

…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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

and on January 16.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ready for the frying pan.

The tapping zone up close.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

then appeared a little later near the garden shed.

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.

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.

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.

Opuntias in the faint, low autumn sun.

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.

Section B looking southeast.

Section D looking east

Section F looking southeast.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 got pollinated and turned into snake gourds.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

…like so.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

…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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

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