Millipedes in May

I've noticed the millipedes have been out en force this weekend.

Here is one that I found skulking around my pots this morning (he was moving too fast for my poor camera to get a good shot):

I first learned about these 3 years ago, almost to the day.  I reprint here a 'Note' that I posted to my facebook friends entitled, 

"In case we’re all dead in the morning, here’s what happened:"

May 7, 2010 at 11:32pm
Children playing outside in front yard while mom prunes monster rhododendron bushes. Children find a “caterpillar”, want to keep it as a pet, “Mommy isn’t it cute, it’s only a baby, it’s so tiny,” etc. Mommy looks at “caterpillar”, is pretty sure it’s something else, tries to convince kids to leave it alone (“It KNOWS where to find its OWN food”), finally gets frustrated with disobedient children and chucks “caterpillar” into underbrush so children can’t find it again. Mommy ushers children to back yard where they promptly find another one. Mommy thinks she convinces the kids to WATCH this one to see where it goes, only to find them holding and playing with it soon thereafter. 

Mommy gets fed up and goes on the computer to find out what species it is. Turns out it’s a millipede:Harpaphe haydeniana to be exact. Oh, and by the way it is one of the species that secretes cyanide when it’s distressed. Mommy looks up to see the kids helping themselves to crackers, “DROP THE FOOD, GO WASH YOUR HANDS!!!” After a thorough hand-scrubbing session, mommy explains about “poison” and reads a first-hand account of a boy who got cyanide in his eyes after handling a millipede. Children duly impressed. 

Son (age 4) later caught sneaking out back door with something behind his back. Lo and behold the millipede in a plastic container. Daughter (age 6) had snuck it into her room while mommy was researching – she still wanted it as a pet until the whole poison thing was revealed – and convinced her little brother to return the pet to its natural habitat. 

We did take photos of “our” millipede, but the children appear to have hidden the camera. 



I later found the camera and these were the photos we took at the time:

Places to learn a bit more about this species of millipede:
Wikipedia
Evergreen State College
The Bug Guide - information and photos

Ajuga

Four years ago my British gardener friend was visiting and helping me plant up some of my flower beds.  We went to a local nursery (garden center) and she picked out one of her favorite groundcovers - Ajuga reptans "Black Scallop" - or Bugleweed.  She had put these in my garden in Essex, England as well before we moved to the USA.  After planting them in a flower bed close to the house, she noticed that it was actually growing wild in the meadow in front of the house.  She gathered up as many as she could and transplanted them all around.  I now have a carpet of Ajuga which sends up beautiful flower spikes at this time of year (April/May).

Ajuga is native to Europe and Asia, but has been introduced to various parts of the USA. (The USDA website has a map showing where it has been introduced.  The New England Wild Flower Society also has a map and photos showing its distribution in that part of the country.)  It does produce seeds, but apparently the seeds don't always mature.  It spreads mostly by sending out runners, like strawberry plants.

It is a great plant for the Pacific Northwest because it is very hardy, is good in the shade and likes moist soil. It also has purple leaves which lets it stand out among all the GREEN. The deer, rabbits and slugs leave it alone. It holds its own against more aggressive weeds, but still plays nice with taller plants.  The photos below show it sending up flower spikes despite being engulfed by creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) and blackberry brambles (Rubus sp.) in one photo and grass and English plantain (Plantago lanceolata) in another.  It hasn't come up yet, but in the carpet of  bugleweed close to my house I also have columbine (Aquilegia hybrid) which emerges from the carpet and rises above it to bloom in mid-summer.

Ajuga reptans flower spike

Ajuga spike rising above the weeds

Ajuga among the grass and meadow plants

Some websites that have other information about Ajuga:

• Wikipedia - lists all the various species
• Botanical.com; a Modern Herbal - places Ajuga in its historical context discussing how it has been used medicinally over the years. (With the appropriate caution that historical use may not jive with modern medical knowledge!)
• Kew Garden's Fact Sheet
• Some information about a fungus that can affect cultivated Ajuga from the Pacific Northwest Plant Disease Management Handbook published by the Oregon State University Department of Botany and Plant Pathology.

Something You Don't See Every Day... Until NOW!

I was walking the kids to the bus stop the other day and my eye was drawn to a bright orange mass of something on the ground.  It's an area near several fir trees and a couple cedars and an old stump that has been colonized by ferns.  There are a fair number of fir needles and small downed branches, bits of cedar debris, etc.  It has not been "cleaned up" in any way other than to sweep organic debris from the road onto it.

Upon closer inspection the mass was made up of hundreds, possibly thousands, of little orange balls.  My first slime mold.  I was so pleased!  I've been watching its progress the last couple days.  Rather than migrating, per se,  it seems to be drying up and then a new colony sprouting up a foot or two away.  This may have to do with our weather at the moment.  Mornings are starting out quite "dewy" and cold (in the 40's Fahrenheit) and the afternoons have been sunny and dry (temperatures in the 60's).  We've only had a small amount of rain in the last week.

My limited knowledge of slime molds tells me that these are the fruiting bodies, though when I punctured one with a pin, I didn't get dry spores like with some molds.  These were creamy inside.

I'm having trouble figuring out what species this is.  Some of the reading I've been doing gave me the name, "Common Orange Slime Mold" but not a scientific name.  The early pictures don't resemble another common one, Fuligo septica or "Dog Vomit Slime Mold", though a later one is a similar color.  If any mycologists out there would like to chime in, I welcome your insight!

Here is the progression over the last several days:

This is how it looked when I first noticed it on the morning of the 29th of March.

By the evening of the 29th, the balls had elongated and turned darker in color.

Here, I've added a US penny to demonstrate the size.  These are each millimeters in diameter.

The next morning, March 30th, they were quite dry and starting to turn black at the tips.

I skipped a day and then Monday, the 1st of April, went to check and the original colony (on the left) was nearly all black and a new colony had sprung up nearby (on the right).

Close up of the new colony.

Close up of the 'old' colony - mostly black, dry with a few of the fruiting bodies collapsed or broken open.

2nd April - The first colony is almost completely black, the second colony is going the same way - dry, orange ...

...and a 3rd colony has sprung up about a foot away. (Apologies that the photos aren't well-focused.  The camera was not cooperating.)  Quite a colorful picture with the fir needles and the lichen for contrast, if I do say so myself!

In looking for information about the species I found a couple websites/blog posts about slime molds that I found helpful:
The Mushroom Expert
BTweenBlinks (Washington State)
WiseAcre Gardens (New York State)
UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology -- Introduction to the Slime Molds
The Hidden Forest (New Zealand)
Tom Volk's Fungi of the Month (Wisconsin)

Here is the 3rd colony this afternoon (3rd April) going the same way as the others.  No new colonies have appeared.

On the 4th of April it started raining again after 6 days of mostly sunny and dry conditions.  When I checked the slime mold this morning (5th April), I struggled to find the first two colonies - they pretty much blended in with the rest of the detritus.  The 3rd one also was quite black and the individual nodules had shrunk.  About a meter away, however, there was a small new colony.  It was on a brown leaf, dropped from a big leaf maple.  This one had veins!  My nerdy biologist self giggled with glee at the flowing protoplasm:

"Flowing" slime mold forming a new colony with a baby slug added for interest.

Spring Babies

My husband cut down some trees a couple months ago and the stumps have been lying on the ground ever since.  Over the weekend he decided to tidy up that area and found someone had made a home in the rotting wood:

They're baby mice.  We carefully replaced the top part of the log that had been covering them.  When we checked on them the following day, they had gone - hopefully mommy moved them to a new location.  We do have garter snakes, and other predators, however, so they could easily have been eaten as well.

I'm not sure which species our mice are.  They are grey with a slightly lighter grey undercoat.  They don't seem to match any of the pictures I find on the local wildlife websites. They live outside - underground and in the wood pile and occasionally come into the house in the spring to find food.  Our current cat has been an excellent deterrent, so we haven't had any food stolen for the last 2 springs.

Local resources with information about wildlife:

• Burke Museum Mammals of Washington
• Washington Nature Mapping Program

Harbinger of Spring

There are certain plants that define certain seasons for me.  In England, I would watch spring approach by watching the bulbs come up.  First the snowdrops, then the crocuses and, finally, the daffodils.  Once all the daffodils were up, it was truly spring.

In the Pacific Northwest, my Early Spring Plant is the Indian Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis).  This is a lovely native shrub that sprouts up on the edges of the forested areas on our land.  My neighbor has a whole bank of it that borders the main road.  I posted pictures back in February of the leaf buds that were starting to emerge.  In the last week, the flowers have erupted.  They dangle down from the stem like ragged little bells, but are so cheerful that they fill me with delight whenever I see them.

I will be forever grateful to Shirley at Tadpole Haven Native Plant Nursery in Woodinville for posting a picture of Indian Plum on her website.  I had noticed the plant in my yard a couple years ago, but had no idea if it was a weed. She posted a photo of the flowers right at the same time mine bloomed and described what it was.  I was so excited!  I went to visit the nursery at their next open day to talk with her about the plant.  

Shirley also taught me to tell the difference between the male and female plants.  I couldn't find anything on ANY website describing the difference. You have to open one of the flowers.  The female plants have ovaries at the base of the stigma while male plants only have the stamens.  Reportedly insects pollinate the flowers to produce the fruit, but I haven't found anywhere that indicates which insects do the deed.  The plants also have to be quite close together to get any appreciable pollination action and resultant fruit. Some insect certainly likes to munch on the leaves, as you can see above, there are quite a few small holes in the leaves.

Female flower on left; Male flower on right.

I have found one report of the flowers having a smell.  When I read this I went out to check, since I never noticed before.  There is a *faint* aroma when you get your nose RIGHT up close.  The author describes the male flowers as having a skunk smell, with which I'd agree, and the females having a "cucurbitaceous" smell, which I had to look up in the dictionary and means having to do with the gourd family - i.e. pumpkins and cucumbers (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cucurbitaceous). Not sure about that one.

What I DO know is that spring is truly sprung now that these flowers have arrived - oh, and there's a daffodil!

This little guy greeted me this morning on my way back from the bus stop this morning:

I'm pretty sure this is a song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) singing his little heart out on a bare big leaf maple branch.  He saw me and carried on singing while I took this little video.  He then darted into a neighboring cedar to continue his song out of sight.  I'm sorry for the quality (or lack thereof) of the video - it was mostly the song I wanted to share with you.  He does come briefly into focus in the middle of the video.

Makes me happy listening to him!  I hope you feel the same way.

More about song sparrows:
Seattle Audubon's Song Sparrow Page (The song is different from my little guy's, but my book says there are 43 different subspecies, so I presume the song varies.)
Cornell's Ornithology Lab's Song Sparrow Page

Groundhog Day

So, our East Coast friend, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted an early Spring this weekend.  Looking around my garden, I thought... "Well, I could have told you that!"

I have 3 "early bloomer" plants in my garden, and 2 of the 3 are ready to burst:

This is an Indian Plum (Oemlaria cerasiformis).  It is the earliest native bloomer.  It is a medium-sized shrub that will have some lovely small white flowers soon. 

Close-up of Indian plum bud

The second early bloomer is my Helleborus.  This was an impulse buy at the local home improvement store a couple years ago.  I took a detour through the plant section and saw this in bloom in January and HAD to have it! The species is native to Eastern Europe and Asia, but is grown extensively here in Washington State.  Most importantly, it does well in the SHADE, so it is a good plant for my back yard where the sun is blocked year-round by the house and the mature fir and cedar trees.

Helleborus Silvermoon getting ready to burst!

USDA Helleborus plant profile

Hellebores.org - a site for people who grow Hellebores

My third early bloomer isn't visible at the moment.  I'm afraid my neglect of this corner of the garden has choked it out this year.  It is a "White Glory of the Snow" or Chionodoxa gigantean alba.  This is a lovely delicate bulb.  The first year they came up I thought  they were going to be snow drops, but then they opened up into beautiful star-shaped flowers.  Here is a photo of one from 2 years ago when it first came into bloom:

BBC Plant Finder - Glory of the Snow

Hopefully I can get out there and de-choke the bed so we can see them this year.  Stay tuned and see!

Rhododendron Hedging (Bets)

We have at least 7 rhododendron plants in our yard.  They vary in color and variety.  Unfortunately I have not yet learned enough about them to know what varieties they are.  They were all here when we moved in and one of them even looks like it may be a "wild" variety (Pacific rhododendron [Rhododendron macrophyllum]) as it is at the edge of the wooded area of the property on the "other" side of the stream.  The "wild" one has never bloomed, so I can't say for sure.

There is one, however, which is the first to bloom every year without fail. 

This is a very large rhodie that is located in the north east corner of the property.  It is flanked on either side by laurel bushes which are also large and bully and crowd the rhodie a bit.  It is on the edge of the wooded strip of land between us and our nearest neighbors and it gets LOTS of afternoon sun on its western side.

When I say it blooms first and early, it usually has its blooms open in March or early April, whereas the rest of the rhodies wait until late April or May to show their colors.  This year - mild winter it has been - this plant had her blooms open in DECEMBER.  My daughter noticed it during the week after Christmas.
 
Unfortunately, we then had two weeks of frost in January, so the blooms have received some serious frost damage.

When I went to examine the blooms, however, I noticed something interesting.  There were 3 different stages of bloom on the bush:  Fully open, and now brown and crispy; partly open, brown-tipped, but possibly not all lost; and quite healthy-looking tiny unopened buds. 


Brown frost damaged blooms.  They used to be pink.

Partly opened bloom with some frost damage.

Unopened blooms.

We talk a lot in the Northwest about microclimates.  The weather forecasters say it is impossible to predict the weather for the Puget Sound area with any degree of accuracy because of all the microclimates around the Sound.  I find the same thing in my garden:  certain areas are warmer than others, receive different amounts of sun and rain, are slightly different elevations (the northeast corner of the property is 50 feet higher than the southwest corner), etc.

So were the blooms on this plant simply responding to the microclimate on their particular part of the branch... or was the plant "hedging" her bets?

Links of interest:
Western North American Rhododendron Species Project
Rhododendron Species Garden Botanical Garden

Brown Creeper

As I was trying to take photos of the very quick Townsend's warblers I noticed another bird off in the woods, about 20 yards away, circling the trunk of a large fir tree.   It was another small bird - about 5 inches long with a brown dorsum and a strikingly white belly.  It was clinging to the bark and hopping around in a spiral up the tree trunk, occasionally stopping to probe into the crevices in the bark. 

It turns out this little beauty is an appropriately-named Brown Creeper (Certhia americana). 

Here are its pages on the Seattle Audubon website and the Cornell Ornithology lab's All About Birds site.  Both sites say that these birds are permanent residents of Washington State and are common.  This is the first time I've noticed one, but will be keeping my eyes and ears open for them in the future!

Townsend's Warblers

A couple weeks ago we noticed a new kind of bird in the yard, but couldn't get close enough to see it.  At first we thought it was some kind of hummingbird because it would hover around the trees.  We decided it couldn't be, though, because it would then land and hop around the branches like a chickadee.  Also, it was in the fir and ceder trees, not around the flower beds.

I saw the birds again yesterday morning on my way back from walking the kids to the bus stop.  The five-minute walk back from the bus stop is often my quiet observation time since there are often birds and red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) around busily gathering their breakfast.  I was able to get quite close by staying very still and listening for the soft "chip" of their alarm call.  They were small - about 4-5 inches long - similar to a chickadee in size and movement except for the hovering they would sometimes do with their wings dissolving into a blur at their sides for 2 or 3 seconds at a time.  They had dramatic yellow stripes on their heads and wings.

Like the black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) we often get, these moved too fast for me to get a photo.  I managed to find a photo in my bird book of a bird that looked similar, so I'm pretty sure they are Townsend's Warblers (Setophaga townsendi).

I found information about them on the Seattle Audubon website as well as the Cornell's Ornithology Lab's All About Birds site.

They eat insects which they glean from the branches and leaves of trees.  They prefer coniferous and mixed coniferous/deciduous forests and they migrate down to Mexico in the winter.  The Seattle Audubon site indicated they they should be gone by now.  I suspect it has been such a mild winter that they have had plenty of food and haven't had the pressure to migrate this year.

In our neighborhood, they were going through the downed fir branches on the ground, the blackberry brambles and salmon berry thicket, the cedar trees and the noble fir by the side of our house.  One could watch them pecking at the joins between needles/branches, leaves/stems, and branches/trunks.

I hope to obtain a picture of these little cuties at some point, but I need a faster shutter!

POST SCRIPT:
Looking through the photos (mostly of branches and brambles) I did manage to capture one, but you get the "impression" of the bird rather than a nice sharp view --

First Frost

January is certainly the coldest month of the year in our neck of the woods. I thought it was rather fitting that the first proper frost of this season in our yard happened on the first of January 2013.

The skies had cleared over the previous weekend and the temperature had gradually dropped until all the moisture in the air solidified and blanketed all the surfaces outside.

The back deck on a frosty morning.

Lavender

The grass turned crunchy and the lavender and strawberry leaves looked like they were made out of sugar.  Inside the humidity dropped dramatically as well.  Suddenly our hair lifted with static like it does in Utah or Arizona and the skin on my hands started to crack.

Our trusty analogue thermometer showing
 the temperature under the deck cover
 at  noon as 34 degrees.

The next two days were frosty as well and it was a good opportunity to teach the kids about checking the thermometer before heading out to the bus stop - if it's below 40, you will want an extra layer or two!

From the garden perspective - all of the plants that I have purposely planted are hardy enough to withstand a short light frost like this one.  Several of them get damaged by heavy snows or prolonged frost, but something light and brief like this isn't a problem for them.  Even plants in pots that I haven't gotten in the ground yet seem fine after this kind of weather as long as I haven't *just* watered them.  I did kill a pot of rosemary last year by watering it the day before a heavy frost. Oops.

Strawberry leaf

Jack Frost making patterns on the front deck!