I don't get out a lot these days, mainly because of gas prices, but when I do, I try to pack as much into my "out" time as possible. In this case, I had business in Yelm yesterday, so threw my bicycle in the car with the intention of riding the extension of the Yelm Prairie Line Trail and picking up a few geocaches on the way. It was a lovely morning for it: cool at last, even a little sprinkly for a second or two at a time, and the ride didn't take as long as I'd expected (yes, I found all the caches I'd put on my list). With time still left to kill, I decided to go for a walk in a little "pocket park" which has occasionally yielded up some interesting botanical finds. I hadn't walked fifty feet before I spotted these two plants. The leaves of the top one suggested "geranium" to me (wrong!), so I took photos of it, figuring it to be a weed. Likewise, the pink one was undoubtedly a weed as well, but it was new to me, so pictures were in order. When I got home, I put both in my photo files captioned "Identify" and then went to work with the field guides. As it turned out, the "geranium" was a Malva (mallow): Malva neglecta, aka Dwarf Mallow. The pink one was a little more difficult to narrow down to Erodium cicutarium, Common Stork's-bill or Red-stem Filaree. I should have known. Many years ago, I identified it as such in a different location. I added the photos to the Burke Herbarium's image collection, bringing my total photos to 246 covering 138 different taxa. Turned out to be a pretty good day!
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