Tag Archives: nature

Pikes/Pines | The State Weed Control Board would like you to not spread more holly on the Hill

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Common Holly, Ilex aquafolium, growing wild in a greenspace. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

I know for certain that at some point in my past, my ancestors revered holly.

Ilex aquafolium, known variously as Common Holly or English Holly, is a plant of significance wherever it grows.

Holly was the plant of the Roman holiday Saturnalia and later picked up by the traditions of Christmas which borrowed from the latter traditions. This plant has variously protected people from evil, represented good fortune, and gave hope for the greener pastures that came with fairer weather on the darkest of solstice days. I am honestly somewhat flabbergasted that this spiky, persistent plant has held on so long in our imaginations.

It must have been powerful stuff in the eyes of my European ancestors.

Today the significance of holly in the Pacific Northwest is largely problematic. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Small, loud, rusty brown, and back in town — Have you spotted a Capitol Hill Douglas’s Squirrel?

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Douglas’s squirrel (Image: WDFW)

A few years ago I took a walk at the Arboretum while waiting for my partner to finish an appointment. It was a crisp Fall day and being mid-week and late morning, the many trails were mostly free of pedestrians and I wandered about enjoying some idle time outside. Turning down a small path beneath towering Douglas firs, I stumbled upon a pile of fir cones that had been pulled apart and heaped atop a small log.

I was amazed, because I was almost certain who had created this mess: a Douglas’s Squirrel, Tamiasciurus douglasii.

Finding the sign of a squirrel at an urban park is far from a shocker. Most of us go through our day to day seeing and summarily ignoring most of the Eastern Gray Squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis, we encounter (except for the ones that gulp down our bird seed). However, Douglas’s Squirrel was not expected. At the time, I was certain they only existed in small pockets of mature(ish) coniferous forest in Seattle, like Discovery or Seward Park. But here was nearly irrefutable proof, a telltale sign I’d come to recognize from decades of hiking and naturalizing across Western Washington.

Douglas’s Squirrels are diminutive, brown and rusty red colored, and by far the most common tree squirrel west of the Cascades in Washington. Being rodents, it should be no surprise to find one cropping up unbidden and unnoticed (and I wouldn’t blame anyone if they didn’t share my immediate enthusiasm for this). That’s exactly how Eastern Gray Squirrels have shown up across the US. They hitch a ride or are accidentally transplanted. Eastern Gray Squirrels may be introduced, but they have thrived in our cityscapes, finding plantings of street trees offering them the nuts and acorns of their native ranges and bountiful other food sources for their flexible, omnivorous diets. Continue reading →

Rabies: Health department looking for people who helped sick bat near Arboretum last week

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King County Public Health is looking for two people who may have come into contact with a rabid bat found outside a residence near the Washington Park Arboretum last week.

Officials say the encounter apparently involved people who found the injured animal and provided it water, according to a note left on the door of a Boyer Ave E home:

The bat was first identified on September 23, 2025. A King County resident found a note on their door indicating that two unknown people had given the bat water and alerting the resident to the sick bat. The bat was euthanized by an animal control agency on September 24. Public Health tested the bat for rabies and received a positive test on September 25.

Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The gall of it all — These strange, beautifully weird growths make benign houses for Capitol Hill gallformers

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A previous year’s gall on a Thimbleberry cane. The holes are where the occupants left when the gall matured. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Do you ever go outside to get something from your vegetable garden and stand up a half an hour later in a haze of naturalistic wonder? My partner calls it distracto-boy, and suggests I have ADD — which may be a good moniker and a not impossible diagnosis. Mostly I just think I have (a largely) undivided attention for nature.

My most recent spiral was initiated by several large bumps on the stems of the Thimbleberries, Rubus parviflorus, I planted in our yard a few years ago.

Despite trying to train myself to not lose my mind whenever I see a blemish on anything I’m growing (because mostly this is just a good sign that a plant is being used by other species around it), I couldn’t help but feel an initial bit of horror. I knew these bumps were galls, but I didn’t know if this was a death knell for the Thimbleberries I’d been lovingly watching grow over the past three years. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The liquefaction zones of Capitol Hill

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An image demonstrating the extent of the last glacial maximum in our region. (Image: Ron Lewis via Ice Age Floods Institute)

Separating the interesting side of geologic hazards from the true, helpless terror they can represent is a difficult task.

This is why, when you read headlines about our region’s volcanoes and earthquakes, they are rarely serene. And rightly so. Swarms of earthquakes at Mt. Rainier and tsunami warnings from Russian tremors are fear inducing, regardless of hyperlocal impact.

However, having our heads in the sand — or the glacial till — isn’t going to help.

Capitol Hill is mostly a pile of sand and rocks deposited during the last glacial maximum around 16,000 years ago. This isn’t particularly unique across the Puget Sound landscape because the entire basin was covered by glaciers, and the deposits left by their expansions and recessions is part of our environmental heritage. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Capitol Hill’s house sparrows live in apartments

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A male House Sparrow. (Image: Russell Sutherland via Flickr)

I was in a rush to get out of town a few weeks ago and needed a quick meal. A quick detour took me up to Broadway and there I was, waiting in line with a dozen other mostly sober people at Dick’s on a Thursday evening. When I stand in lines these days, I try really hard to not reflexively reach for my phone. Sometimes this means I have awkward conversations or eavesdrop on awkward conversations. Mostly I daydream and consider my surroundings. In this case, I looked down to see several small brown birds, one with a handsome black bib, picking at bits of food and other detritus around our cueing feet.

They were House Sparrows, Passer domesticus, birds so common that like gulls and pigeons, they often get overlooked. As a kid I’d reflexively leave them off my bird lists along with European Starlings and today still occasionally mark them with an “X” rather than counting them on eBird, which purists consider a cardinal sin. They are one of the most widespread wild birds in the world, inhabiting every continent, native or introduced. Continue reading →

Stumps appear along Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave as Seattle needs help to quickly grow its tree canopy to 30%

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The nearly 50-year-old Norway Maples were dead and dying (Image: CHS)

As Seattle hopes to help cool its streets and sidewalks against global warming by achieving 30% tree-canopy coverage across every area of the city in the next twelve years, the new stumps along Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave are an example of the challenge — and the opportunity — in the numbers.

The old Norway Maples just removed from the sidewalk along the Capitol Hill Kaiser Permanente campus were dead — and had been for years. Planted in 1977, the maples were maintained by the Seattle Department of Transportation. Coming up on 50 years later, most of the 15th Ave trees were completely dead with branches and bark falling off. A few hangers-on were in serious decline.

SDOT says it hired a contractor to remove the old maples “due to safety concerns, particularly because they were adjacent to Metro bus lines.”

SDOT says there is no evidence “porous paving contributed to the trees’ decline” as the city’s tree wells have been filled in recent years to prevent injuries to pedestrians and people using tree-lined sidewalks.

Despite the city’s ambitious goals of quickly establishing a 30% tree canopy cover, there is no plan for re-planting. But there will be a first step. Continue reading →

The fallen willow at Streissguth Gardens

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The fallen willow (Image: CHS)

The maple bench (Image: CHS)

By Domenic Strazzabosco

Streissguth Gardens, on the sloping hillside between 10th Ave and Broadway, lost an iconic willow tree after a wet snowfall this winter. The willow, seemingly weighed down by the snow, fell westward and perpendicular across two of the park’s paths of thin, winding trails.

“It’s kind of bizarre. I never really thought about losing it until it came down,” said Ben Streissguth, who describes himself, unofficially, as the director of the gardens. Streissguth’s parents’ personal gardens were the beginning stages of what constitutes the one-acre space today, and though it’s unknown how old the tree was, he can remember it as far back as his teenage years. Based on Streissguth’s memory, photos and size of the tree, it is estimated that it was around 80 years old.

Streissguth, his wife and a few others, including some community members, have been working to do as much cleanup of the willow and surrounding area as possible. He estimates they’ve spent about 120 hours cleaning up and restoring the space as best they can. Further work will have to be done by Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Just three weeks after the willow fell, a maple toward the southwest side of the park toppled, too. Streissguth has taken what he can of the trees to work on the gardens. So far, there’s a new bench beneath the top of where the willow fell, made out of maple, while the pathway above where the willow stood is being reconstructed using slices of the felled maple. Instead of walking behind it, you can now look down at the willow’s massive root structure. Other projects include creating a wattle fence to create a stronger border between one of the trails and the vegetation running up to it, and edging portions of other trails with willow branches.

Though what will happen to the tree and the space left behind has yet to be decided, the Capitol Hill community around the garden has found ways to mourn the tree, often sharing different connections residents each had with it. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines Classic | These Capitol Hill bird moms put all their eggs in one basket

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(Image: annycampbell via iNaturalist)

A ruby-crowned male (Image: City of Seattle)

At this time of year, birds often fly around carrying bits of grass, twigs, cobwebs—and sometimes, here on Capitol Hill, trash—for building nests.

Many birds lay several clutches of eggs every season in an attempt to raise as many chicks as possible.

But one of the Hill’s smallest songbirds, the ruby-crowned kinglet, has a different strategy.

The ruby-crowned kinglet gets its name from a tiny red crest on the male’s head, but this crest only pops up when he is agitated or trying to attract a female. If you see a kinglet, you may not see any red at all. You may only see a tiny gray bird with some yellowish coloration on the underside. Continue reading →

When will Capitol Hill-grown magic mushrooms be legal in Seattle?

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A wavy cap found on Capitol Hill (Image: CHS)

A home-grown culture of psilocybe cubensis (golden teachers). (Image: Colby Bariel)

By Colby Bariel/UW News Lab

A Capitol Hill expert has taught hundreds of people, from grandmothers to neuroscientists how to cultivate magic mushrooms guiding many into the world of psychedelics.

With years of teaching experience, they cover the responsible use of entheogens, contemporary psychedelic theory, and their therapeutic applications.

“Psychedelics are meaning-making chemicals,” the expert tells CHS. “Magic mushrooms are therapeutic, not medicinal.”

Their work is facilitated by a 2021 Seattle City Council decree decriminalizing the noncommercial cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms and several other entheogens. This decision has allowed Seattle residents to engage in home-mycology and explore the spiritual, religious, and therapeutic experiences offered by psychedelics.

But Seattle is not yet safe for psychonauts. And the shadows of the Trump administration have darkened the situation to the point where recent progress here is being slowed and rolled back.

While personal psilocybin cultivation is decriminalized, its use remains illegal. In February, a man on First Hill was busted for what police said was a “drug lab” with thousands of dollars worth of magic mushrooms set up inside a First Hill apartment unit.

Organizations like REACH (Responsible Entheogen Access & Community Healing Coalition) Washington are advocating for state-level entheogen decriminalization.

Oregon is already a step ahead. Continue reading →