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!!

This Time of Year Again

Daffodils and Oemleria blooming - classic and sure signs of spring in Portland, OR

 

Fall Flowers

Caught a whiff of something just like spring, and found these flowers blooming in October.

Equisetum Forest

A mini-forest of horsetail (Equisetum) sprouts on the floor of the Connor trail drainage this spring.

Adiantum (maidenhair fern) expanding

 

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.

Nettles 2015

March 7 this year, nettles at prime picking height

2014

2010

How Spring Happens Here, Part One: Old leaves, new leaves

In our mild Pacific Northwest winters, some plants keep a portion of their leaves all through that rainy season. It's as if, in the fall, environmental signals aren't quite harsh enough to push plants into total dormancy. In spring, bursting buds push out fresh growth to contrast with the leaves still left from last year.

(Questions: how much energy is gained from wintered-over leaves? seems introduced plants from harsher climates are most likely to display this pattern, true? is there a pattern (location?) as to which leaves are kept? and, when are these kept leaves finally lost?)

it's happening!

There is a certain small evergreen bush I spend most of my time overlooking, but every year at the very earliest part of spring it snags me by the nose. Sweet and promising, unexpected perfume of its freshly opened, hidden flowers sits in clouds along city streets.

Other spring precursors:

 

Stellaria media happy and green, growing as a mini-forest on urban mulch unmolested.

An arrangement of green-headed matches, suggesting buds yet unburst.

precocious growth

Soft new leaves of the next growing season: waterleaf, Hydrophyllum
Spotted in Marquam 12/27/2014.

Petal Sepal Confusion

How do plants keep petals and sepals separate? I found a trillium (Trillium ovatum) that doesn't.

This is a trillium, its three originally white petals fading pink in late spring. The petals rest on three pointed green sepals. Below the flower are three large photosynthetic organs, which I just learned are technically not leaves, but bracts!

And this is a trillium that looks to have merged its petals and sepals into one structure. Huh.

Stormwater

With lady and maidenhair ferns, inside-out flower, and red huckleberry adding their chords to the growing symphony, the wood is really greening, but the canopy is still open.

Just before sunset of this very rainy day, the golden hour lit the woods vivid; the air was calm and sweet, but through the leprechaun scene a thick muddy snake rushed to the Willamette.

Gathering water from the streets and roofs farther up the hill, the small creeks swelled with runoff, gathered momentum, and thundered through the park. 

Chewing the bank at every turn, the rushing stream sculpted its channel. I could actually hear small rocks caught in the water slamming the insides of a metal culvert.  

 

Nettles 2014

Last day of February, new moon, mostly sunny and rather warm. Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) letting out tiny leaves, Indian plum (Oemleria cerasiformis) raising amazing candelabras of flame-green leaves. 

And nettles -- still slightly small, but their unique flavor strong and welcome: stings into spring!

(Things are a little slower than 2010 so it seems)

Spring Indian plum candelabra

Nettling grounds

Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica)

February Fungus in the Urban Forest

Various fungus found in the urban forest this month. Some are perennial but others have just come up. Does the urban heat island expand the mushroom season of the urban forest, by bringing warmer temperatures deeper into the rainy season?

Frilly orange polypores, exploding out of an (alder?) log

Fresh, beautiful, black mushroom

 

Massively varnished, impressively layered conk

Itsy bitsy bright orange fungus

An old puffball, with moss growing out of it! Still expired spores when I poked it.

gardens still growing

My small plot at the PSU community garden is a micro-patch of vegetable plants turned jungle these days. Kale, parsley, chard, and carrot hold flowers and seeds on stems much taller than I, pea vines finding their way through the mess, california poppy and st. johns wort flowers lighting up the understory. The dish of water I normally maintain at center has become swamp, but fresh water is still to be found - as in this dock leaf cupping rain water into a tiny lake:

 So overgrown it has become, fairies actually moved in. Can you believe that?

 This is the view from their skylight

And these carrot flowers float about in great balls like spaceships made of snow, releasing drifts of powdery pollen

 

 Back at the other garden plot, giant-vegetable-dreams are realized in this fabulous lettuce (key included for scale).

 Delicious beet success, short of soccerball-size, not short on sweet

Beets and Kale, a variety of leaf texture

 Lentils! Handful of dry lentils thrown in the dirt... add water, time, warmth and sun - the seeds show some of their programmed secrets. Fine leaves and tiny pods, nice to meet you long-eaten staple.

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

Spring in the Community Garden

March First, a warm day. In that garden tucked by the freeway I found: bright winter greens beginning to bolt (the new lush growth delectable steamed), a pile of radishes gifted from a friend, my hat quickly filled with fresh-picked herbs, and volunteer mache growing up quick and buttery.

Spring in the Garden

It's decidedly autumn in the garden now , but I want to remember spring. I took these pictures on April 25, when everything was new, and the sap was rising (as I found when I trimmed the grape vines and their fresh cuts wouldn't stop dripping).

Fresh fig leaves (Ficus sp.)

Green cherries (genus Prunus)

Blooming hawthorne (Crataegus sp.)

The proud face of my garden pea (Pisum sativum)

New grape leaves (genus Vitis)