It’s been more than a month since the worst of the forest fire smoke cleared up around Seattle. For a couple weeks in September it was hazardous just to be breathing outside. What a rough year for wildfires in the western states. Oregon and Washington have cooled down but parts of California are still burning and now Colorado is seeing its worst fires on record.
That said, it’s the beginning of the rainy season around here in western Washington, the green part of our evergreen state. And with the rains have come mushrooms in and around the garden. Last year, the death caps (Amanita phalloides) showed up in large numbers as the rains began and the weather cooled: so too, this year.
The emergence of two death caps (Amanita phalloides); in the foreground, the universal veil is just beginning to split, and in the background it has split and is falling away.
Mature death caps on parade.
This is not breaking news. They have been spreading their range each year since their arrival from Europe and they are here to stay. So learn your mushrooms well before eating any. Your life could depend on it.
In other mushroom news, just look at that porcini. Get out the butter and the frying pan.
As the autumn rain returned, this little porcini (Boletus edulis) popped up (somewhere) on campus. It’s possible that there were others… Though they can be found growing high in the mountains or on the coast, within earshot of the waves off the Pacific, porcini can also be found right in the city…if you’re lucky.
And many shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus) appeared on a campus lawn.
Shaggy mane mushrooms (Coprinus comatus) growing through the lawn adjacent to the garden.
But these are the show stoppers. This picture does not do their shade of yellow justice. Mushrooming has in common with birding, the real prospect that at any time and in the most unlikely places, you might just encounter something rare, surprising and exciting.
Across the street from the garden, these unusual yellow boletes appeared after some rain. I was stumped. Thanks to the efforts of our own esteemed UW Biology mycologist, Joe Ammirati and his colleague, Bryn Dentinger from the Natural History Museum of Utah, they have been identified as the rare Boletus orovillus. It was a very exciting find.
These were growing in the woods north of Cascara Circle. It looks like Marasmiellus candidus, but I’m no mycologist.
In case anyone has been inquiring about the welfare of the rabbits, please note, their appetites are still quite healthy.
Hedge woundwort (Stachys sylvatica) mowed down by rabbits. It’s ok if rabbits graze the more aggressive perennials. They continue to thrive. And the rabbits are fertilizing many of the beds. It is a win-win situation for sure.
It finally flowered. This is the Hedychium spicatum, what we in the west would call ginger lily. It goes by many other names in the span of its Himalayan range.
Flower of the matsukaze so (Boenninghausenia albiflora var. japonica) that submitted to the temperamental focus of my little camera. White and yellow flowers can be hard (for me) to photograph.
Flower and leaves of kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus). It’s easy to see how it got its specific epithet.
Maypop fruit (Passiflora incarnata) ain’t what it used to be. This year there were plenty of flowers but no fruit. For a while, the air here was so smokey that the pollinators took a break. Was the smoke a factor in the lack of fruit this year? Who knows? It would be interesting to hear if others noticed lower fruit production this year.
Speaking of smoke, it’s easy breathing now, with the air so fresh and clean, scoured by the rain, but it was truly horrible for a while, starting just after Labor Day.
It’s neither the rising nor the setting sun producing that orange glow on the red cedar trees (Thuja plicata). Forest fires in California, Oregon and Washington filled our air with their thick smoke and the midday sunlight, filtered through that smoke, cast an eerie tint wherever it alit.
Flower and fruit of loofah (Luffa aegyptiaca) in section C. The smokey haze softened the sunlight and made it easier to photograph yellow flowers.
The hardware cloth enclosures around the garden beds have provided more space for the vines to grow. And it looks really cool.
Wild cucumber vine (Echinocystis lobata) encircling the adjacent rabbit fence in section A.
Chinese cucumber (Trichosanthes kirilowii) in section C. Its vines made it all the way around the enclosure.
Chinese winter melon (Benincasa hispida) in section C.
Achoccha (Cyclanthera brachybotrys) fruit on the vine. I tried some and they are good, but you have to pick them early, before the seeds mature and get dark and hard.
From the dry lands, ten-petal blazing star (Mentzelia decapetala) in section C.
Three California natives that like wet ground. The white is yerba mansa (Anemopsis californica), red is scarlet monkey flower (Mimulus cardinalis…yes it is now a different genus, Erythranthe, but it will always be Mimulus to me) and the yellow is California yellow-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium californicum).
Flowers of hog peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata) in section F.
Spurge olive (Cneorum tricoccon) is neither a spurge (member of the Euphorbiaceae) nor an olive (member of the Oleaceae). It is placed by some in the Rutaceae and others in the Cneoraceae. Whatever.
Crinum lily (Crinum moorei) from South Africa, growing on the border of the garden. I moved the bulbs from behind the former Plant Lab greenhouse before it was demolished. I believe the plants were started by the late Art Kruckeberg who left his mark on the campus landscape. He also planted the loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) at the southeast corner of Benson Hall. That tree continues to produce delicious fruit.
Using tripods to take advantage of vertical space allows for more vines in the garden. They are also great habitat for birds to nest in. Every winter I find the previous year’s nests hidden in the vines.
That staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) steals the show every autumn. It’s also listing to the south and could be heading for a sudden, precipitous move to the horizontal position in a big snow storm. Hopefully not, but it has put up enough root suckers that it will live on in one form or another.
View from section B, facing west as yonder oak (Quercus sp.) begins to change color.
Dramatic clouds in the sky south of the Life Sciences Building to the left and Kincaid Hall to the right. The lower clouds look like cumulus and the higher are what? Cirrostratus? Cirrocumulus? In any case it was even more dramatic than this picture shows. You had to be there.
This garden spider is either starting a web or restarting a web. It seemed to have a supply of recycled silk, not a captured insect in the center of the web. How or if it reuses it is a mystery.
Misadventures of a fledgeling gull, part one. Earlier in the summer, this poor creature left the nest under its own power, but couldn’t get back home once it landed. It panicked when I got too close and it flew into a garden bed. The rabbit fence had it trapped but I was able to free it once it calmed down…
…and off it went. It was fleet of foot and I lost its trail.
Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) looking for someone to scold in section E by the myoga (Zingiber mioga).
Hello again. Is that or is that not a beautiful bird? Yes, barred owls (Strix varia) are quite beautiful. This bird was sitting peacefully, just six feet off the ground in the woods north of section D. Sometimes the other birds telegraph their alarm and disapproval through the woods and they all make a lot of noise. Other times they seem not to care at all. This was one of those times.
Final faunal photo. Pollinators doing the good work on the Culver’s root.(Veronicastrum virginicum).
hard to imagine
the charred hills of distant fires
rains returning here
See you in the garden.