Christmas-Card Redtail

Day 67: A few days ago, I was making my Christmas deliveries and as I pulled into a friend's yard, I noticed this Red-tailed Hawk weighing down a lichen-covered fruit tree branch. As always, I had the camera handy, but the light was poor and the hawk was too far away to be within preferred zoom range. I've done quite a bit of post-processing on this image to bring out sufficient detail to confirm the identification, so the photo is not up to my usual standards. That said, most of you already know that I've been dealing with dental issues, so I wasn't able to get out into the field this week. Today, I am slated for a rather involved oral surgery and probably won't be feeling exactly chipper for a couple of weeks while I'm healing up. I intend to keep up my daily posts, but I beg your indulgence if they aren't up to par. Mr. Red-tail will have to suffice for a Christmas greeting since I'm unlikely to be out on any serious walks in the near future.

Before And After

Day 13: Between one of the Morris dancers and a Parkie friend, I came by a windfall of apples and pears this week, and settled in this morning to the job of paring, coring and canning. I seldom eat the tasteless, over-processed canned fruit sold in stores, but I find it hard to keep home-canned things on my shelf. Since both the pears and apples were tart varieties, I used a medium syrup, preserving the colour with a product called "Fruit Fresh." It's essentially a mix of ascorbic and citric acids, and when added to the syrup, it prevents the fruit from browning, not that any of this will last that long. I'm already into the plums I put up two months ago. Today, I canned two pints of pears and seven of apple chunks from at least five different types of apple. These are going to taste really good when the January snow flies.

Buttered Lichens

Day 13: Another wonderful present from far away arrived in my mail yesterday. A Parkie friend was visiting Michigan and had asked if I'd like some specimens of local lichen. I said yes, and asked her to look for species she had not observed in the Pacific Northwest. She replied, "I'm trying to get you some orange ones." Visions of Xanthorias and Candellarias danced in my head like so many sugarplums (Teloschistes being beyond my wildest dreams), and then she sent a photo. I burst out laughing. "Anne," I wrote back, "don't try to mail those. They'll go to goo in the post. Those are jelli fungi." "Too late," she replied. "I already mailed them."

Fortunately, she sent the parcel via priority mail. The fungi (Tremella mesenterica, commonly called "Witches' Butter") had only just begun to biodegrade, and were restored to health after spending the night outdoors. I spent yesterday evening examining samples of the lichen under the dissecting 'scope and determined from the sparsity of rhizines, absence of apothecia and granular soredia arising "from pustules" (per Brodo) that the specimen was one of Michigan's commoner species, Flavoparmelia caperata. Also known generically as "Greenshield," Flavoparmelia will grow on almost any bark substrate and may even attach to rock. Anne's specimens were taken from pine and maple. They are unlikely to survive in the Pacific Northwest, but I've given them the option to colonize on Acer.

Corallorhiza Mertensiana

Day 206: "You're looking for pink asparagus." Those were the words I used to describe our quest to Park colleague and friend Anne Spillane this morning. We'd already visited Corallorhiza trifida at two locations and had discovered one more specimen, bringing the year's total to an astonishing 17. During the hunt, I had noticed a few spears of Corallorhiza mertensiana (a related and much more common species) poking their little heads up through the forest duff. I asked Anne if she would like to visit a site I call the "Mertensiana Grove," a suggestion to which she readily agreed. It was there where the search for pink asparagus began in earnest. By the time we had covered roughly half an acre of mossy ground in open forest, our tally of Western Coralroot surely numbered over 100. There were 21 spears in this colony alone, more evidence that 2016 promises to be another banner year for mycoheterotrophs.

As a footnote, our trip also included removal of two more specimens of Tussilago farfara, the invasive I described a few days ago. Both were found at the site of the original infestation. In a moment of whimsy, I put today's score in an interoffice envelope directed to our Plant Ecologist.

Rhubarb Uprising

Day 155: Last summer, one of my Park friends asked me if I wanted some rhubarb roots after presenting me with a jar of rhubarb jam. I said yes, and she brought down one enormous clump in a box just as we were about to enter a spell of hot weather. I sectioned the root mass into two parts with skill and precision, which is to say I took a sharp-bladed shovel to the middle of it on the premise that if one half died, the other would probably survive, and bedded them in behind the house, lavishly watered. It took a few days before something sidetracked me and I forgot completely about their needs in time of stress, and the next time I looked at them (maybe two weeks later), they were in a sad state. This is typical of my gardening. I plant it, and if it survives my lackadaisical caregiving, it's all well and good. If it dies, I plant something different. Rhubarb is tough stuff, hard to kill even when you try. Both roots survived, and are now putting up stems and leaves. Hopefully, they'll do double duty, serving both as ingredients for pie and jam as well as shading out a few survivors of my ministrations which I wish I hadn't planted in the first place.