Cascades National Forest

Yesterday started with spectacular weather.  The truck was repaired by 11:30 so we were happy to move on out of Sultan.  We thought of all of you sweltering back east as we piled on the layers in the morning, removing them one at a time as the day warmed.  Our first collecting stop was in Sultan next to this field which was by the Skykomish River.

There was some pretty cool stuff to collect.  Including this big leaf maple.  It's an interesting tree.  Besides having leaves on steroids, it is very hospitable to moss so the trunk gets covered.  This creates a separate ecosystem and is so thick that other plants grow in the moss in the canopy.  The helicopter seeds are nasty, though with prickly little hairs on the seed part.

I found this hazelnut which was a bit of a find since they are kind of uncommon.  The aboriginals used to bury the nuts so the husks would rot off and then they would eat the nuts raw or roasted.  Another way to collect this is to raid the cache of squirrels since they like them a lot but I think that is kind of mean.

There were these weird squash-like vines, called Marah oreganus.  Manroot was used by the coast Salish to treat venereal disease, kidney disease and scrofula sores.  Mahrah is a Hebew word for bitter.

We drove into the Cascades and came upon Desolation Falls.  It was so cool there with all the mist which made the ferns and mosses in the area especially lush.

This is a brief video of the falls.  Note my superior camera work.  Cassie -- I need a tutorial.

This is an Oplopanax.  It has giant leaves and thorny stems.  Aboriginals throughout the NW considered it protection against evil influences of many kinds.  The wood of the plant was used to make fishing lures.  They also burned the plant and mixed the ashes with bear grease for ceremonial face painting.

As we drove into the National Forest we saw many wonderful plants that, unfortunately, we could not collect.  The diversity is so great that for a future trip Daniel will obtain permission to collect in the park. It's a lot of paperwork but will be worth it.  This little pink plant is Linnaea borealis.  This is a famous and historically significant plant in the world of botany because it is eponymous for the father of modern botany Carl Linnaeus.  It is the ONLY plant that a botanist has been allowed to name for him/herself.  A one time deal for the big daddy of botany.  It is all about 4" high and super cute forming neat blankets of little pink flowers.  

These little lilies were all over the side of the road.  The caps are about 2" across.

We drove for a while on a service road.  The view was great and the plants were interesting too.  Some of the mossy areas were covered with bunchberries.

We saw trees covered with hairy lichen.

And these giant hogweeds.

Out of the forest we drove along the Columbia River in a desert valley that had miles of irrigated fruit orchards.  It's where many of our pears and apricots come from.  We stopped by this one lane bridge and collected a few things.

These are hop vines.

We found some elderberries that are different from the NE varieties and were hopeful that they would produce blue coloring.  We separated the skins from the seeds, that was gooey fun, and then put the skins in vials of water, ethyl alcohol and citric acid.  I can report that we did not find the holy grail.

Moving on into the high desert we stopped at this windswept canyon.

There was a huge Saskatoon bush.  Aborinals made cake from the berries.  Lewis and Clark munched on them.  Daniel loves the fruit and collected a bagful which we will eat on cereal as soon as I finish this blog entry.

The Saskatoon grow only out west.  Which is too bad because they are so good.

While he was doing that I collected and arranged some canyon wildflowers and tried not to slide down the slope which was very steep and gravelly.  Another 25 cent cup picked up in SD.

In the town of Waterville we saw a couple of funky trucks.  Like the abandoned houses we see along the way, we like the patina on these old trucks.

After the canyons we were in these vast fields of wheat.  I love the look of the silos on the spare landscape.

Best of all was another wonderful abandoned house.  Just sitting there waiting for love or time to take care of it.

Then into another canyon area.  This one had walls that glowed with chartreuse lichen.

We ended up here at the Ala Cozy Motel, the only lodging in Coulee City.

We got a suite!  Notice the LaZyBoy rocker and the protective towels.  You don't see that at a W Hotel.

That's it for now.  We got 40 numbers yesterday which is not bad considering all the parkland.  We hope to make Glacier this afternoon.  Stay cool.  

50 numbers and a search for blues in Seattle

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:

Philadelphus

Mahonia

Amelanchier (saskatoon)

Eriogonum

TBD

Erigeron

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.