Forest Report: Third Week of February

I went to Marquam Nature Park on the 18th of this month. This is a little of what I saw.

Indian-plum (Oemleria cerasiformis) is blooming.

And leafing out. The young leaves taste like the bitter peel of a cucumber.

Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) seeds are sprouting.

Lots of them.

Elderberry is also leafing out. This could be red, blue, or possibly black elder (all in the genus Sambucus). According to Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast (known as "Pojar", an author's name), while red elderberries are edible cooked, every other part of the plant is toxic.

And this is a very pretty currant (genus Ribes).

On the 20th of this month, I went to Forest Park.
Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is already at least a foot tall along the main trail where it grows in patches. Stinging nettle has perennial rhizomes that send up new shoots each year. In this photo you can see both the new growth at the bottom and last year's tall, dead stalks.


Tiny horsetails (genus Equisetum) coming up.

This is a special rosette of very tasty leaves. Whenever I find one of these, I taste a leaf. But only one tiny leaf, because up until recently I didn't know what it was. Now I think it is very likely oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), the leaves of which are indeed edible.

This is garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), a non-native supposedly introduced as a culinary herb. I don't understand why, because even the young leaves taste really bitter to me.

Small-scale Farming

This 25lb bag of dry green peas...

...contains the split seeds of a variety of Pisum sativum (in the family Fabaceae).

And to my surprise, these seed halves can germinate! The plant embryo must be attached to just one seed half, or at least can be separated from the other half without damage. The germination rate for these seed halves, though, was very low (in the range of 10%).

The seeds grew into 5-6 inch tall plants -- before they began to fall. Maybe it's the tiny fruit fly chewing at the base of their stem, or maybe not. But for some reason the outer tissue at the very base of their tiny trunks is disappearing, leaving only a few thread-like strands of vascular tissue.

The plants were also unsuccessful at wrapping their tendrils around the provided supports. Even though the tendrils actually touched the supports, they seem to have forgotten that they are meant to wrap around other things, and not just in upon themselves. Was it starting life with just half of the normally provided nutrients that did these seedlings in? Or was it bad genes?