A Calendar for the Willamette Valley

January

February

March

April -- Maple Moon (when Bigleaf maples expand their leaves)

May

June

July

August -- Blackberry Moon (when blackberries ripen)

September

October

November

December

To be updated!!

How Spring Happens Here, Part Two: Canopy closure

If we were to rename the local months in the style of Native Americans, April might be Moon of Bigleaf Expansion. Now the year's crop of giant leaves of Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) is small but rapidly expanding; now the leafy curtain partitioning interior urban forest from exterior is unfolding.

Equinox

The season is turning. A few weeks ago, a fresh layer of dropped leaves on the urban forest floor caught me by surprise -- most of them were still green.
 

It had been rather windy... but did the bigleaf maples care about the greenness they had yet to take back?

 

Some of that green is wanted by someone; they munched out the tasty softer bits between the veins of this red alder leaf.

 

Just a few days later, actual canopy color change seemed to hit the maples all at once.

While many things expanded to huge this summer season, not everything reached its full potential. As I began preparing a long neglected summer garden for its next season, this tiny cucumber was discovered beneath larger leaves.

After windy woods

Went for a walk a few days ago after a windy night in the urban forest.

Lots of material had been shook loose from the canopy. Including this nest:

Ivy is showing its winter colors.

While licorice fern stays a light green.

 

The sun shines briefly but brightly through the cold, open canopy.

So, this is my first attempt to layer a short exposure over a long exposure to create an image with more depth. It's just slightly unaligned.

Spring Miscellany

What does a pea plant do when threatened? Grab the pistil!

A maple tree without maple leaves? I don't know what to think

One of my most favorite stamp-sized islands of life

 Oppidan forest

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.