Some of these plants were photographed in the wild and some in our backyard.
I love the look of skunk cabbage but I'm also thankful I have such a poor sense of smell — they don't come by their name by accident. There is a small patch along the Oaks-to-Wetlands Trail at Ridgefield but it's a bit overrun and despite my best efforts I've never been able to get a decent picture.
While hiking along the Elk Prairie Trail in in Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, I came across a couple of small patches of skunk cabbage when the trail approached a large meadow. One flower in particular caught my fancy and I knew I had my chance to finally get a decent picture. I took some pictures with the lenses I had with me but since the flower was away from the trail, I wanted to return the next day with the big lens.
After hiking throughout the following morning and into the afternooon, I had a short window to revisit the cabbage before heading down to hike to Trillium Falls. The cabbage turned out to be near a trailhead so I took the short route up. But each turn of the bend revealed no cabbage, the patch farther away in reality than memory.
I nearly turned back with each disappointing bend in the trail, worried I wouldn't have enough time for the next hike. With the heavy lens and the bright sun and the light breeze I wasn't sure the cabbage would be worth the effort anyway, nevermind the nagging suspicion that there would be a lot of cabbage near the stream from the waterfall that would be better subjects than these. I did continue on and find the particular patch and the particular flower I was looking for. The leaves had shifted so it made an even more compelling scene than my previous visit and the forest canopy kindly shaded my chosen flower. To top it off, even more of the flower was in bloom. The breeze was moving the plants around so I waited for those brief seconds when all was still.
As it turns out there was a bunch of skunk cabbage on the trail to the waterfall, sitting right beside the trail with no big lens required, but I never found another that was as photogenic as this one. To be honest part of me didn't want to find one, after going to the trouble to photograph the other, but I looked just the same. That might not sound like I went to a lot of trouble, and in truth I didn't, but I'd wager it's still more trouble than anyone has ever gone to photograph skunk cabbage.
And I'm glad I did.
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We have three clematis, one in the front yard and two in the back. The backyard versions grow the best and often produce a large number of purple or white flowers. I cut them back each year in the early spring and they soon renew their climb up the trellis. |
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Four’s A What?
If two’s company and three’s a crowd, what exactly is four? We have several patches of coneflower but only this one seems to be in the right spot as it gets dozen of large blossoms while the others bloom small in both quantity and size.
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Isn’t It Always The Way?
You’re all set up to take the picture that you want and at the last second as you trip the shutter someone jumps in your way. These are two blossoms from our backyard, a shy and retiring younger blossom in the back and an older camera hog in the front.
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Tough
The scientific name for this species of iris is Iris tenax, which literally means tough iris. They are also commonly known as the Oregon iris and are native to the Pacific Northwest, they are fairly short for an iris and have narrow leaves. I first saw these blossoming one spring day in a meadow at William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge and fell in love with them, so I bought one at a nursery and planted it in our garden. Unfortunately, we moved before I ever got to see it bloom and I don't know if the new owners appreciated its subtle beauty compared to the large, showy irises more commonly seen in gardens.
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Papa Smurf
When we moved into our house, there was a forest of weeds growing under the grapes that lined the backyard. While clearing out the weeds, I found a few good plants as well, either remnants of an old garden or volunteers from some other place. I preserved as many of the good plants as I could, but some of those were later casualties when I decided to dig up the grapes.
One such casualty was a cluster of onions, the bulbs got broken up by the shovel while digging up the roots of the grape vines. One onion survived, though, as it grew on the other side of the little metal guard that separated the yard from the grapes. I need to move it so it doesn’t get cut down by the mower, we don’t use the onions but it makes a lovely flower when it blossoms. Here, the flower is just about to break out of the casing and fully bloom. |
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Oberon in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
An unexpected delight from my visit to Redwood National Park was finding trillium all across the park, little jewels blooming beneath the giants. Our western trillium blooms white early in the spring and turns purple as it ages, like the flower in the bard's tale.
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I’m terrible at identifying flowers, but I was struck by both the pink against the green and their lovely trumpet shapes. Taken at Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. |
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Red & Yellow
These colorful beauties really stood out among the greens and earth tones of Rinconada Canyon in Petroglyph National Monument.
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