Saturday, April 22, 2017
09:30
Wildflower Walk, Friday, April 21, 2017
1 hour 26 minutes in the park. 62 photos, 28 keepers.
1523 hours, almost ready to leave my apartment.
1553 hours at Drumheller
Springs Park
The sky is overcast to the south and west. Beautiful broken
clouds to the east.
I’m at the west end of the park to take a quick look for
late Lomatium gormanii. I found none.
The wind is a slow draft. A gust blew up, this minute.
I’m on the high
point rock at the southwest corner of the park. The
foliage of a familiar succulent is developing on the north side of the rock. I
can’t call up the name. I climbed the rock on that side to check on anemic
Lithophragma glabrum, somewhat high up.
I haven’t been to this end of the park for a month. The many
ponds down here at that time are all gone. There were L. gormanii on the top of
the rock. They too are gone.
03
04
A mushroom that I saw scattered on the rock and again when I
got to the east end of the park. This one was alone. The next were an open
patch of several.
I’m experimenting with the settings on my camera. I am
slothful about that. I usually just point and shoot. I’m setting it for shutter
speed preferred, today. I need to pay attention to the aperture reading, to be
sure it doesn’t ‘go out the bottom’ … 2.8.
I took a specimen of Lomatium macrocarpum trying to make
sense of the arrangement of the rays and the bracts cupping the umbellets.
There seem to be two ‘rows’ of rays from the initial
separation from the peduncle and a single center ray. The inner row of rays
shorter, the central ray shortest, to give the inflorescence a roughly flat
look.
My photos of L. macrocarpum are failures. Next time.
One of the day-dreams was that I would pull away the petals
of the florets with tweezers to expose the stylopodium and the styles and
stigmas. That’s not going to happen. They are far, far to small for the old
fella to deal with, even with tweezers.
The other question was, are the longer bracts of the involucel
of the umbellet always to the outside of the inflorescence? The central
umbellet has bracts but no longer bracts with direction. I need to do this
study again.
I may have swatted away a small mosquito. I seem to have
seen two or three. I don’t get a good look at them. They seem too small for
mosquitoes, too large for gnats. No bites today.
06
I picked a small Lomatium triternatum. It has only a roughly
similar arrangement of rays. Its outer rays are much longer than the inner row
of rays and the central ray.
07
If the inflorescence was rotated just a bit to the left the
shorter central ray would be exposed. Next time.
08
An L. triternatum flower.
08.5
Perhaps you have wondered why I dink with the ‘levels’ in a
photo. This is before ‘levels’ manipulation. Mid tones and high tone levels
were reduced in the previous photo.
The L. triternatum plants, here, too, seem too short to be
in bloom … as were those on L. gormanii rock. But perhaps they bloom before
they attain their full height. Something to watch for.
09
The most luxurious Phlox caespitosa that I’ve seen this year
was on the top of the rock.
10
11
I saw few blooming Ranunculus glaberrimus but I did see some
in their prime. There were more in deep grass where there was more moisture.
Even so, they were few.
I thought I was seeing occasional stands of scrawny L.
glabrum but I was deceived. I was seeing extra tall Draba verna, some perhaps
four times as tall as those nearby.
12
13
The Balsamorhiza sagittata are just breaking through the
soil, somewhat behind the early plants east of north pond.
I didn’t see buds when I took this photo but there are some
developing.
14
There is a patch of grape hyacinth, Muscari species, at the
edge of the rock.
15
I see one patch of Olsynium douglasii and they are way over
the hill, long past their prime. I see a few more, very few.
16
17
I see a patch of O. douglasii and a little farther along, a nice
patch, a prime patch of Ranunculus glaberrimus, at the northeast base of the
hill were there is more moisture in the ground.
1633 hours back at the car. It’s overcast.
I should probably cut this walk short. I had a couple of
toenails removed this week. I’m not supposed to let my toes rub against the end
of my shoes and during the short walk downhill off the rock, some of that was
going on. I didn’t notice at the time. But there is some soreness, now.
I’m going to the north access to the park and walk till I
find a yellow bell so I can try, once again, to photograph a nectary. Fritillaria pudica. There’s an small flock
of crows, not making a sound. Seems strange.
1638 hours at the north entrance to the park.
I seem to have damaged the exhaust system on my car,
probably that last time I left the east entrance. There was a high spot to
drive over at the exit and I wondered if I had enough clearance. I didn’t hear
or feel anything. I need an oil change. I’ll ask them to look at it, when it’s
on the lift. I looked underneath. Nothing is hanging loose.
My ‘trigger finger’ isn’t too happy carrying my bucket of
stuff. The old fella is going to hell. With his bucket.
Pretty solid overcast now, some breaks, none in the
direction of the sun.
I have been watching the aperture and it has not ‘gone out
the bottom’. The experiment with 320 shutter speed is a success during
overcast. I’m a little surprised. The next task is to pay attention when I get
these photos in my computer.
Something landed on my cheek. I killed it. Doesn’t seem to be a mosquito.
I walked south, thinking I saw color on the early
Balsamorhiza sagittata in the distance, instead of turning west toward likely
F. pudica. B. sagittata is in bud and there is color but nothing that would be
seen from distance.
First attempt at a photograph a plant the aperture was
reading 2.8 so I walked to a boulder to sit and mess with the settings. I reset
the shutter speed to 200. It was a bit of a lucky distraction.
[The first image I took, aperture 2.8 was more or less
adequate but those I took later, shutter speed reduced to 1/200th of
a second [I didn’t record the aperture] had a bit more depth of field.]
18
I was tempted to say, earlier, that north pond was almost
down to a more normal high water but no. It’s still somewhat flooded. It is
down a bit, but inches. There is more of a break in the ‘arm’ of water that
joined the two ponds.
The yellow willows in the distance locate south pond.
I saw one crappy little F. pudica but it seemed too small to
bother with.
There are more R. glaberrimus and O. douglasii here than
there were on the west end but they are not in good shape here, either, unless
there is extra moisture.
19
I thought I saw a rather dense patch of Montia linearis on
the edge of the patch of Rosa woodsy, below
the B. sagittata. There are some in the tall grass by this boulder. I left my
black back cloth in the bucket by the B. sagittata but there is dark basalt on
this rock.
20
There was a scrawny Ribes aureum, golden currant, near by
with yellow color. It seems that, for any shrub species, the little scrawny
plants bloom earlier than the big healthy looking ones. Something to pay
attention to in future.
21
The willow, probably pacific willow, Salix lucida, has been
in bloom for some time. I decided to walk for my black cloth and picked up a
willow ‘flower’ on the way.
Children were screaming. One scream register true alarm but
it became clear that it was play. More children passed on the path. We
exchanged greetings.
Earlier in the day, at the west end, I exchanged greetings
with a young man walking his dog. He said something about wildflowers. It did
not occur to me to offer him one of the cards I made with my wildflower blog
address on it. Now it occurred to me, sitting on a boulder adjacent to the
north access trail that I could leave the cards at various points in the park,
for people with an interest in wildflowers to find. So I started doing that.
There are lots of Micranthes nidifica in bloom, now, on the
east end of the park. Those I saw on the west end were still in bud.
22
23
I photographed an early Balsamorhiza sagittata plant, right
by the north access trail. I have read that the size of the plant above ground
indicates the size of the root underground. This root must be huge.
24
I saw a small group mushrooms that seem to be the same that
the one I photographed at the west end of the park.
25
This is a small portion of the patch of M. linearis below
the early B. sagittata and alongside the patch of Rosa
woodsii.
no 26
Clouds, north-south boulder row, north pond
1709 hours. I’m sitting on a boulder near the north side
trail. I’m reconsidering the walk west. It’s not just my toes. I’m out of gas.
28
I left cards by the north side trail.
1719 hours at the car. The next trick is to remember to stop
at Safeway for a block of cheap cheese.
The cheese didn’t happen. Darn. I saw a traffic jam ahead
before I got to Safeway and turned east on a side street to avoid it.
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