Nootkas thrive in full sunlight and colonize aggressively with suckers so thickets spread fast. They do fine in wet or dry soil. Miles of our roads and fencelines are lined with rose “hedgerows”. Deer won’t touch them. The Nootkas used to bloom in June, but that’s been getting earlier. Even with this spring’s wet and cold they are running early, historically speaking.
Dewberry, aka Trailing Blackberry, is a thorny vine that climbs over anything (here it’s using a Snowberry thicket for support….Snowberry flowers have not quite bloomed yet). It blooms right through summer, eventually producing very small sweet berries. Tasty, but a lot of work reaching your hand through the thorns, which also rip up your ankles when you trip on the vines, even through socks.
Preferring semi-shade, Salal has just started blooming. Salal is an evergreen with tough waxy leaves. Surprisingly, deer eat them. The berries later in the season are blue/black and mealy, but have a pleasant enough flavor. Salal is a very common shrub in the woods anywhere the canopy isn’t completely closed over.
Of our two native honeysuckles, the Orange Honeysuckle needs at least moderate soil moisture (unlike the Purple Honeysuckle which can survive in very dry settings). It will vine way up high onto tree trunks for more sun. It doesn’t smell but has a sweet nectar if you bite down on the base. Hummers are very fond of these flowers.
Trees are eye-level. Most of the native trees with showy flowers are done now — like Madrona and Crabapple — but the hawthorns are still blooming.
Nootka’s little sister is the Baldhip Rose. She lives in shady settings, and is smaller in most ways — flowers, leaves, thorns, overall size — but her aroma is as powerful as her big sister’s. I found some blooms lit by afternoon sun.
I’d have said more about the phenology of these flowers but I don’t have access to my photos yet which is where all my data about timing sits, ie. date stamps. (I just upgraded my iMac — with help from a professional! — from Snow Leopard to Sierra, a leap of 8 years, and there’s still a bunch left to do to get back up to full working order, including moving all my photos into the current program. So far, I’m pleased with the speed at least. Happily my core is a good version, according to the pro, and can handle a modern OS. Maybe I can get another 5 years from this desktop...I’m hoping!).
What’s happening in your natural neighborhood?
….what are you seeing at eye-level?