On December 10th of last year I had the pleasure of visiting a small patch of forest in Washington's southern Cascades.
There were snow-topped shelf mushrooms,
the recent work of a Pileated Woodpecker,
and a Western Redcedar (Thuja plicata) growing in a unique way.
The crunchy snow underfoot had lain for quite some time, with conifer seeds accumulating on its surface.
These seeds are winged, and spin down from the trees like maple seeds. The largest is in the center right, but the smaller brown specks are also seeds (along with a few shed needles). Probably, the large one is from a pine (genus Pinus) and the small ones from Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla).
A month later I revisited the Cascades when fresh snow was falling. In the morning I went for a walk through the powdery snow that was nearly flawlessly white, yet here and there a seed had fallen. I thought of the crusty, older layer of snow below with its seasoning of seeds, and how this fresh snow would be after a couple weeks of collecting everything that fell from above. Now that's cold stratification!
