Pageant of wildflowers continues

(Photo by D. Grant Haynes)

Today's featured plant is the desert yellow daisy, (Erigeron linearis).

This tiny daisy is actually expected to bloom in July or August in Eastern Washington, but is appearing already in Lincoln County.

Perhaps they seek to take advantage of the liberal rains of recent days.

D. Grant Haynes

A propitious beginning for summer

The backyard of the apartment where I dwell is dominated all summer by a pleasant little bush that produces hundreds of yellow flowers from the first warm days until the last ones.

Succeeding generations of flowers attract bees and butterflies each lazy summer afternoon for at least three months running.

During the bitter Eastern Washington winter, this brave and uncomplaining little woody plant defies all cold with a certainty that it will be reborn again when soil and air temperatures reach a minimal level in the spring.

Today, June 1, 2011, my cheery bush produced its first four flowers of the 2011 season. Within days now, I can expect the shrub to be covered with five-petaled yellow flowers. Again, they will continue until the days begin to grow short and cold in late September, perhaps.

Being a determined researcher, I am pouring over taxonomic descriptions to learn the botanical name of the plant. I will certainly post that designation here when found.

Until such time, I will simply call the bush my "sunshine flower".

This, because I know the plant will lend a sense of warmth and gentle peace to my life each afternoon as I sit in my backyard listening to bird calls and other comforting sounds of the natural world.

D. Grant Haynes

P.S. -- I have learned from an area nursery that my sunshine flower is a shrubby cinquefoil (Dasiphora fruticosa).

P.P.S. -- And 11 days later (June 12), four blooms have been transformed into at least a hundred on the shrubby cinguefoil! Such is the beauty and wonder of the natural world and of spring. -- DGH

I thought I was in Texas!

I have lived most of my life in Georgia, West Texas, or some other place noted for thunderstorms and tornadoes at almost any time of the year. But such storms are very rare in Washington State. Typically, one hears thunder only a few times in a year--usually in late spring or early summer.

But we had a humdinger this evening that would do justice to Warner Robbins, Georgia, or Clyde, Texas. No, there was no tornado and not a lot of wind, but the lightning was fierce and there was small hail even.

D. Grant Haynes

Weekend walk yields another diminutive Washington wildflower

Purple Cushion Daisy (Erigeron poliospermus) (Photo by D. Grant Haynes)

A solitary stroll on this very quiet Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend did not see this striving photographer and chronicler of the natural world in Lincoln County Washington encounter anything as spectacular as my bitterroot find a couple of days ago. (See Bitterroot extravaganza at: http://strigidae-bitterroot.blogspot.com/.)

What I found today were clumps of purple cushion daisies scattered about in an old farm roadbed. They are newcomers in the spring pageant of wildflowers that I seek to record here. While small (the photo is actually about 125 percent of the size of the flowers), and unspectacular, they too have their niche in the natural world that is Eastern Washington. Many small flying insects seemed happy to find the neat little white daisies blooming today.

I accept whatever blessings of beauty, innocence, and guileless goodness I encounter on my walks. Today, in addition to the purple cushion daisies, I saw a pair of ring-necked pheasants that are, no doubt, nesting nearby.

"Day by day the manna fell...", went the refrain from a religious hymn of my childhood. Purple cushion daisies and wild pheasants were rewards enough for me today.

D. Grant Haynes

Long-leaf phlox doesn't shout

Long-leaf phlox (Phlox longifolia)
(Photo by D. Grant Haynes)

Flowers, as humans, come in a variety of presentation styles.

Some, as the ostentatious arrow-leaf balsamroot now blooming in brilliant yellow clusters visible for a quarter mile in Eastern Washington, shout their presence. No man nor animal is likely to miss seeing them.

But other plants, such as the diminutive long-leaf phlox also blooming now during Eastern Washington's delayed spring, whisper their presence without shouting. Such small plants lend a delicate beauty to the landscape one can find and enjoy only by exploring the sage brush steppe closely and at a leisurely pace.

As in humans, the reward if often greatest when one takes time to cultivate and know the understated.

Upland larkspur lends its delicate beauty to spring in Washington

Upland Larkspur (Delphinium nuttallianum) (Photo by D. Grant Haynes)

Arrowleaf balsamroot brightens May landscapes in Washington

(Photo by D. Grant Haynes)