All the Species in My Yard

The superfriend: the family dog

Martin John Brown — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:12:45 +0000

I’ve never met a person that was not obsessed with social status in one way or another; each of us is constantly checking the way that certain other ~~monkeys~~ humans are reacting to the things we’ve said, ways we’ve walked, pieces of clothing we’ve sported, and so on. Oh sure, maybe you’re not concerned about what some people think of you. But there’s somebody out there who you show off for, suck up to, etc. Some pack you are always jostling for position in.

I’m not saying people are superficial — this is simply the way we’re built as social animals. It takes another social animal to give us a respite.

photo by me

Notice the palpable quiet in these photos. Historically dogs have the most wonderful and amazing symbiosis with people — serving as guards, pest control, hunting companions, besides being vectors for other pests themselves — but their most amazing ability in this day and age might be not talking, not tweeting, not blogging, not judging you for much of anything other than whether you have a piece of Virginia ham in your hand. And for such a friend, yes, I do have that ham.

Summer’s monster: the cat flea

Martin John Brown — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:44:13 +0000

Every summer the basement, where the cat spends most of her time, starts feeling funny. If I’m down there for more than a minute or two, there are odd little scratches and tingles on my legs — and then a few days later, marks on my ankles that seem to be bug bites. But I can’t see any bugs — what’s going on? The answer is always the same: it’s cat fleas like these, sucking my blood. Left undealt with, they soon grow to visible size:

Hooke's drawing of a flea, from Wikimedia

This is one product of evolution I really just have no appreciation for. Leave it to Hooke to make something so annoying so beautiful. Drawings like his, and these, give me something to ponder as I vacuum, launder, and (most hopeless aspect of any flea-fighting campaign) try to catch the cat to give her a treatment.

I don’t get no respect: crabgrass

Martin John Brown — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:55:40 +0000

You really need to give crabgrass (Digitaria sp.) some props. It comes up out of the cracks in my (permeable, pavers-in-sand) driveway in the middle of the absolutely dry Oregon summer, in the midst of a weeklong 100+F heatwave. It’s green, pliable, even moist underneath, like nothing unusual is going on.

photo: flickr user pollyalida (Creative Commons)

Why not just convert the whole lawn to this and be done? Or, alternatively, convert the driveway to a giant Scrabble board.

There will be plenty of time to pull weeds while your opponent agonizes over what to do with EEQAGIE.

Hopeful stinker: flowering currant

Martin John Brown — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:02:40 +0000

As a gardener I haven’t been too successful at growing food for humans — I might get up the energy to plant some lettuce or something, then I always forget and it bolts or dies — but I’ve got a great record at feeding insects and birds. All I need for that is some tough-ass native plants neglect just can’t kill, especially ones with flowers and fruits that come out especially early or late. Case in point: Ribes sanguineum, or red flowering currant.

photo: flickr user Elle-Epp, used under CC

It is absolutely the first sign of spring around my property, with the leaf buds sometimes starting to break in late December — adding an atmosphere of hope to a most dismal time for the weather. Then the spring brings huge collections of bright pink flowers, and those bring hummingbirds, especially Anna’s, right to my kitchen window.

Just don’t try to bring that magic inside by making cut flowers. Leave these stalks in a vase in a closed room and you’ll discover what your grandmother, in discount perfume, would have smelled like if she lived in a high school locker room for two months. The hummingbirds don’t mind, it seems, or maybe they do — those Anna’s are pretty testy.

Monster magnet: Ceanothus ‘Victoria’

Martin John Brown — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:27:24 +0000

In the woods of the Pacific Northwest, Ceanothus shrubs are pretty common and unassuming members of the understory, squatting resentfully beneath glamorous firs — like federal employees toiling at their desks below the shiny flagpoles of their elected bosses.

Ceanothus does grunt work, fixing nitrogen at an impressive rate. Then, one day, it gets its chance, its big break: a forest fire that wipes out most of those trees. Ceanothus burns, but it regenerates fast from roots and grows thick and tall, making those once-lovely forest stands thick and impassable with 10-foot-high tangles of evergreen leaves. They become the landscape for a while before the trees get the upper hand again.

photo: flickr user mortimer, used under CC

Or at least that’s how I’ve seen it happen, in one burned area where natural regeneration was allowed to proceed.

Now in the garden, cultured varieties like ‘Victoria’ are popular, because of the spectacular purple flowers. But Ceanothus’ wild properties are still lurking there. A small bush can turn into a huge impenetrable green blob fast — which for several weeks each year will turn into a huge purple blob, especially impenetrable because it is serving as a kind of Burning Man for bees.

June’s buzzsaws: bumblebees

Martin John Brown — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:34:37 +0000

Just when the two-year stint of construction on my corner ended, a new kind of work crew showed up: bumblebees, mobbing the fireweed, and especially the purple Ceanothus flowers. There were so many and they were so loud that occasionally I just could not sit in the side yard with my morning coffee without groaning please, SHUT UP! Do you have to be so frigging INDUSTRIOUS?

photo: flickr user LeeLeFever, used under CC

And this for a genus that is generally in trouble — though perhaps between my yard and this Transformer, people are starting to cut them a little slack.

Glowing youth: Philodromus sp.

Martin John Brown — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:08:35 +0000

I was delighted the other day when I found a tiny spider in the grooved frame of an open skylight, because its red color was so incredible — like the sunset coming through a glass of pinot noir, but in tiny spider form. :) These pictures capture the color, but not the glow.

photos from sources at bugguide.net

It quickly ran away on to the roof — leaving my best guess for an ID as an immature Philodromus, or running crab spider, perhaps Philodromus marxi or rufus. If so it would have been waiting in ambush for some poor prey to wander in, where it would come out and pounce. Anyway, perhaps it’s characters like this who are the reason the inside of my house seems so free of insects.

Easy glory: fireweed

Martin John Brown — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:16:48 +0000

Fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) is one of the classic wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest — you see these gorgeous splays of pink and purple, like botanical advertisements for cherry coke, all over the mountains in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. The tall stalks sprout and wave, busting the blankness out of clearcuts, road shoulders, and even volcanic ashfields. It’s also the pollen source for fireweed honey.

photo by flickr user code_poet, used under Creative Commons

But unlike a lot of wildflowers, fireweed works really well in urban yards. Once established from seed or rootstock, the 3-10 foot tall stalks tend to spread in lines (via runners) which makes them a kind of natural fence or border. The flowers bring bees and birds and make amazing (if short-lived) cut flowers. As the summer ends those flowers turn into silky seedpods which decay in a spectacular fashion:

photo by flickr user Zixii, used under Creative Commons

Then when they’re too decayed, you just rip out the stalks. The roots remain underground, and will build you another fence next summer.

The gorgeous occupier: Black locust “Frisia”

Martin John Brown — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:29:57 +0000

Every native plant gardener has an exotic love they can’t quite resist, and mine is a beauty: a “Frisia” black locust with elegant arching limbs, yellow-green leaves that positively glow in the sunrise and sunset, and white flowers with an intoxicating smell of honey. It is remarked upon by practically everyone who says anything about my yard.

photo: flickr user velostricken

Here’s a picture of another specimen, on the edge of a field:

photo: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT

To its beauty I should add some other accolades: black locust grows fast (2-3 feet a year, meaning it fixes a lot of carbon), makes excellent firewood (with one of the highest BTU ratings of any American tree, 29.2 million BTU’s per cord), and is the pollen source for “acacia” monofloral honey. I know–the bees come in droves every year.

Nonetheless this species gets a bad rap from the botaniscenti. Though records of black locust exist in Oregon since 1898 (according to a query at http://invader.dbs.umt.edu), it is only naturalized in, not native to, the state. In concept it could interfere or supplant native plants, especially on disturbed ground, considering black locust’s ability to tough it out on dry and poor sites, and its habit of reproducing by runners.

These problems haven’t occurred in my yard, and it’s hard to even remember them when you see the golden boughs waving. Maria Callas wasn’t from Oregon, either, but it’s sure good to hear her sing…