Tag Archives: pikes pines

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

Posted on by
5

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 →

Pikes/Pines | Ferns aren’t just Capitol Hill cottagecore

Posted on by
3

The very fern-y Interlaken Park on Capitol Hill (Image: City of Seattle)

When my partner and I moved to our home, we stood on our back deck, exhilarated to have a space for our creative endeavors and also completely overwhelmed by all the work we’d signed up for. Below us was a sprawling tangle of blackberries, Vinca, and St. John’s Wort – none of which we wanted to keep. When I asked Caitlin what she wanted to replace this chaos with, she immediately had an answer: “Just ferns. A hillside of ferns.”

This isn’t just a home cottagecore decorating trend using the plant to make a lush, textured, and fashionable connection to nature. And it isn’t such a bizarre request because if you have spent any time in the Pacific Northwest, you know ferns are a common native plant. The most well known species, the Sword Fern, Polystitchum munitum, can be found all around the Salish Sea, and is happy on the Hill both growing wild and rampant in untended spaces and as ornamental plants that are primped and trimmed to look their best each season. They are so commonplace, low fuss, and hardy, that they are easy to take for granted. Continue reading →

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
6

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

Posted on by
5

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 →

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

Posted on by
2

(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 →

Pikes/Pines | No, you can’t (entirely) blame your Capitol Hill pollen allergies on botanical sexism

Posted on by
4

Sunflowers need insect visitors to move their pollen around and many bees are happy to oblige! (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Dandelions and their relatives are examples of monoecious plants that have both male and female parts contained within a single flower (though their flowerheads are actually made up of many individual flowers). (Image: Brendan McGarry)

I spend a lot of time outside. I tend the garden, I walk the dog, I nerd out on nature, and I even manage to sit still and relax occasionally.

These are all activities I am grateful to be able to enjoy because I know that not everyone has the same opportunities, nor can they enjoy certain seasons with the same zest.

Unlike a few of my close friends, I don’t have seasonal allergies, and have never had to look at pollen counts or use medications to simply struggle through each day. (Though woe is me, I am fairly certain I am allergic to hops.) According to the CDC, around a quarter of the adults in the US have the seasonal allergy rhinitis or hay fever, which is caused by the body’s reaction to plant pollen – so it’s not unreasonable that those of you reading don’t share my joy right now.

Most plants produce pollen and all pollen is produced for one purpose – to transfer male gametes from one reproductive structure to another, receptive one. You might read this as “I’m allergic to plant sperm,” but that’s not quite accurate. Pollen are gametophytes that generate sperm once they come into contact with an embryo sac – be that on the pistil of a flowering plant or the female cone of a gymnosperm (e.g. conifers). Just like the plants that produce them, pollen is extremely varied, the better to be conveyed by a variety of animals, as well as wind, water, or a mixture of all of the above. (If you really want to get into the weeds, both pollen and the embryo sac can be considered separate organisms from their parents but let’s not complicate things.)

A microscopic view of the pollen grains from a diversity of plants reveals a hallucinatory range of shapes, colors, and textures that help transport them between plants and protect them from getting gobbled up or destroyed by the environment. (Pollen can last for days, where raw sperm would not last hours in most conditions.) Animal pollinated plants tend to have larger, stickier, and more protein rich pollen to cling to pollinators and offer them a reward, while wind pollinated plants tend to have lighter, loftable pollen, (some even have air sacs) to balloon them as far as possible.

A couple weeks ago, Justin (our illustrious leader here at CHS), sent me an unreal looking image of a Georgia skyline filled with pollen. Accompanying this (real) image (from six years ago) were comments blaming the highest pollen count in state history on cities planting only male trees. I am often late to the party on social media happenings (Justin once asked me a question on Twitter and I finally responded a year later and didn’t even realize how tardy I was), but apparently a few years ago the idea of botanical sexism hit TikTok by storm after a single video rested the weight of all pollen allergies on the shoulders of city planners, horticulturalists, and arborists “only planting male trees.” The idea is that these male trees spew forth their pollen everywhere, and with nowhere to go, they just go forth to clog up our bodies with histamines.

Botanical sexism is a term coined by a researcher and horticulturalist named Tom Ogren, who theorized that because of a supposed preferential planting of male plants in landscaping, we are having more societal issues with pollen allergies. At surface value, this sounds pretty reasonable, and it’s true that in some cases, tree varieties bred to not produce fruit or seeds (remember the cherries of last month’s Pikes/Pines) or only clones of male trees get planted in urban spaces. Gingko trees are a good example of this, because female gingkos are almost never planted as street trees or in ornamental gardens because their prodigious fruit production is frankly horrendous, generating rotting piles of inedible fruit that can become health hazards. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Genus Prunus — It is time to enjoy Seattle’s wealth of cherry trees

Posted on by
2

March is about one thing for me: anticipating spring. Every day I listen to more and more avian voices, thrilled by the steady increase in volume, stretching my ears to hear the first swallows and warblers. But mostly, I spend the days leading into spring anticipating the breaking of buds to reveal the season’s leaves and flowers.

For many, there is no better embodiment of this anticipation than the members of the genus Prunus, known as cherries.

Unless you live under a rock, you know that cherries are famous for their blossoms. Across the world people flock to bask in their annual profusions of all flavors between white, pink, and purple. The University of Washington Quad is locally famous for their Yoshino cherries (Prunus × yedoensis), which bear brilliant blooms before their leaves even hint at emerging. Of any country in the world, Japan takes cherry worship to unmatched heights with the number of cultivars they claim (several hundred depending on your definition), the tradition of Hanami (gathering to picnic and enjoy the blooms each year), and the use of the sakura (cherry blossom) as an important cultural symbol. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Hair ice: beautiful proof it is a wonderful chilly day between the 45th and 55th parallel

Posted on by

Some Washington State hair ice (Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

Have you ever encountered something that you have no explanation for? Maybe it’s the way someone is behaving towards you. Possibly, an object out of place that you swear was just here. Or, it’s a nature encounter that leaves you unsure of what you’ve just seen.

That’s how I felt on a morning walk in the forest outside Marblemount, Washington several years ago. The night before had been quite cold, and as I crept through the riverine forest of alder and cottonwood lining the Skagit River, leaves crackled underfoot. Like any forest, dead branches were strewn about, jettisoned by a combination of decay and force. And then something caught my eye: curling out of several branches about me, was something that looked like hair. I stopped and looked closer. I gently touched one of them and it was cold and melted against my warm fingers. Maybe this was just a weird ice formation – but why was it only on these dead branches?

Without sounding conceited, I am very confident in my naturalist abilities. I am good at identifying plants and animals and I can develop a good working theory on most animal behavior I witness. Rarely does an encounter on or near my home ground stump me. But here I was looking at this thing protruding from rotting sticks that I had never seen before. So, like any good naturalist, I took some photos and notes, and trotted off to try to figure out what it was on the internet.

As it turns out, I was not alone in surprise and uncertainty when encountering hair ice.

In 1918 a German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, formally described this enigma, and suggested that it was not just a new ice formation, but that it could be related to fungus undoubtedly lurking in the damp, decaying sticks he found it protruding from. Wegener is now noted for his theory of continental drift, but he was also a polar explorer who knew a thing or two about ice and he was pretty sure he wasn’t looking at only frozen water.

It took almost 100 years for anyone to reveal more of this. Wegener froze to death in an ill-fated expedition to Greenland in 1930 and offered no more on the subject. But researchers blessed with more advanced tools were able to discern and confirm what Wegner had deduced. Fungus was key to the formation of hair ice. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The Capitol Hill Water Quality Project — and everything else helping to clean our runoff

Posted on by

The Capitol Hill Water Quality Project bioswale in South Lake Union (Image: PG Psomas)

Even if the weather has been atypically dry lately, we all know this is Rain City. Seattle rain usually comes as a drizzle that we shrug off without an umbrella (actually, I love my umbrella and I’m not ashamed). But that doesn’t mean we don’t have plenty of it and that it needs to go somewhere.

We all know that water travels downhill because of, well, gravity. When it rains in a forest, a prairie, or even a wetland, water tends to move slowly to lower ground and eventually some sort of basin like a creek, wetland, river, or lake. When rain falls on paved city streets, on the roofs of buildings, and on our many parking lots, it has nowhere to go because it can’t penetrate and seep into the soil. Intentional and functioning designs in urban spaces direct water to places where it can drain away instead of sitting in place. The simplest place to send that water in an urban space is into a series of pipes that lead into a nearby waterway. In the case of the Hill that’s through drains that run into Lake Union, Lake Washington, and eventually Puget Sound.

This might seem innocent, but the stormwater that flows off our pavement and makes its way to the saltwater is the source of 75% of the pollution in the Sound. Heavy metals like copper from car breaks, high loads of bacteria and fertilizer from our lawns, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from vehicle combustion, wood stoves, and more, all taking a ride in stormwater. Just one acre of impervious surface like concrete can funnel a million gallons of polluted water into local waterways annually. Continue reading →