Sunday, May 15, 2011

"Botany Washington"...

is an annual event organized by the Washington Native Plant Society, and this year it convenes this weekend in eastern Washington.  I'm heading out shortly to meet a group led by EWU botanist RO'Q at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, in the middle of the Cheney-Palouse Scabland Tract.  I'll speak about the catastrophic Pleistocene flood origin of the gravelly soils, and crawl around the ponderosa pine forest with the group for a while to see what's in bloom.

UPDATE:  Some of the showier plants included western serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia)(click to enlarge):
Common camas (Camassia quamash):
Arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata):
And while the biologists crawled around on their hands and knees, keying out various mini-floras, one of the native fauna caught my attention:

3 comments:

  1. Yuk, I don't like ticks!!!

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  2. This photo tells a great story! Gotta love those botanists!

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