Getting ready to leave Cle Elem it was time to organize the back of the truck -- all the botany stuff. Everything below supports the specimen collecting and preserving. The black box contains pressed specimens ready to ship to the NYBG when it's full. We have collected 492 specimens as of this writing. It would be great to hit 1000 but our goal is 750.
Right out of Cle Elem we stopped at a terrific site that yielded 50 specimens, all of different species. Keep in mind we only collect plants that are blooming or that have fruit or seeds. 50 is a lot. Here are some of them:
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| Philadelphus |
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| Mahonia |
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| Amelanchier (saskatoon) |
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| Eriogonum |
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| TBD |
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| Erigeron |
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| Mixed bouquet for the truck |
We headed for the Cascades and stopped in Roslyn WA, a historic little town.
Along the highway in the Cascades the wildflowers got a little intense. Gazillions of Digitalis.
The Cascades are covered in water cascades that give the landscape an intense lushness.
The snowpack is still deep.
We went to Seattle. Part of the demands of this trip is to collect blue flowers and berries, from any source, for a company that is interested in a natural blue food coloring. We have not been finding many blue flowers and those we do find, like Lupine, are often poisonous. So we visited nurseries along the way to little advantage. We knew that Seattle nurseries would have a lot of flora and they did. We bought about 20 blue flowering plants. While Daniel pressed specimens of them, I plucked the little flowers off, crushed them, and put them in three vials for each species. One vial of water. One of citric acid. And one of ethyl alcohol. Very few gave up any color. Blue is very tricky.
I kind of freaked out in Seattle. There were three things I am now totally unused to: traffic. red lights. and humanoids. We went out for dinner on the water (view below) and then got out of town as fast as the traffic would allow.
Do you realize that with the route we have taken we have probably stopped for only a dozen red lights in over 3000 miles? Most towns we pass through have no stop signs let alone red lights. We did stop for this light a couple of days ago in South Dakota. It was about 100 degrees out. The AC wasn't working and we hit this light in the middle of absolute nowhere. We were the first car and not sure what to do...
...so we waited, and waited and waited. About 15-20 minutes in all. Then this truck comes, turns around and gets in front of us. On the back is a sign "pilot car. follow me." and escorts us over a several mile long construction site. It was so weird. That was probably our last red light until Seattle.
This morning, as I write this, we are in Sultan, WA. It's raining. We are having the oil changed in the truck. Doing laundry and relaxing. I head out to collect in a moment. There is a pretty river across the street, the Skykamish, where we will kayak if it stops raining. More when there is more.
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