The Fruiting Body of the Violet Cortinarius

  Pojar and MacKinnon is a field guide to Pacific Northwest plants. Most of what I saw on my hike in Olympic National Forest last week were plants, but we also saw an array of fungii.
   Taxonomically speaking, mushrooms and other fungii are not plants. They do not possess chlorophyll and do not make their own food via the process of photosynthesis. Fungi are parasitic and live off a host plant via thread-like filament called hyphae. Most of the fungus on earth is underground. What we see on the ground is the fruiting body of the fungus.
 Click here to see a beautiful photograph of the spectacular fruiting body of the Violet Cortinarious, also known as Cortinarius violaceus. This mushroom could really use a nickname.
  Still with me, cloud lovers? In his book, Tales from the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life, David W. Wolfe of Cornell University writes this:

"...in 1992 genetic analysis of samples of wood-eating fungus Armillaria bulbosa, collected in a Michigan hardwood forest over an area equivalent to several football fields, showed that it was a single organism that had been alive and remained genetically stable for more than 1,500 years."

And, he continues, the weight of that organism was estimated at 220,000 pounds--the size of a Blue Whale! Something to remember when you are walking in the forest.
   Here are some other things to remember about fungii. They reproduce through spores (not seeds and pollen); fungi are the decomposers (not producers) in the ecosystem; and the cell walls of fungi are made of chitin, not cellulose.
   Happy Trails!

Pojar and MacKinnon

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 I woke Monday morning and turned on the radio. NPR was airing a story about a hot new kids toy--a spinning top called Bleyblades. Apparently it's the rage among six year olds. Unlike the old-fashioned wooden spinning top, these tops are plastic, come with interchangeable parts, and are designed for stamina or to attack. Bleyblades appeared in the U.S. in 2002, but were conceived by Hasbro as a "three-year brand" meaning, I think, that in three years they would lose their appeal and fade from popularity. Imagine--built-in obsolescence for such a classic toy! Now, a bit later than planned, the tops have been "relaunched" in the U.S. with their own website for virtual battles over the Internet and their own show on the Cartoon Network.
  Where, oh where is Richard Louv when I need him? Go Play Outside, America!
  I switched to PRI (Public Radio International) for what I hoped was some real news--something pithier than a product promotion spun as a holiday news story. I tuned into a story about the outraged residents of the Los Angeles neighborhood near the HOLLYWOOD sign. The nine 45-foot-tall letters have been hard for tourist to find until now when GPS-equipped cars guide them into the winding hills without a hitch. Though the sign is on public land, the neighbors are complaining that the traffic and gridlock is "...dangerous. This is all unsupervised. It's like the Wild West, " according to one woman. Uh-huh. My heart goes out to them. I turned off the radio.
   I had yet to read the Sunday Review section of the New York Times. So I made a cup of coffee and settled in with that. Everything was going along just fine pith-wise until I hit Delia Ephron's "If My Dad Could Tweet." Really? Have we all completely lost our perspective here? I needed some news from the outside, from the bigger world. I needed Pojar.

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   If you are a member of the flora cognoscenti here in the Pacific Northwest (I am not), this is how you refer to a well-loved and indispensable field guide, a book the rest of us call Pojar and MacKinnon's. The guide's official title is Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia & Alaska, but I have never heard anyone call it that except in print. This book is known by it's main authors and compilers, Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon, two research scientists from the British Columbia Forest Service--job titles that do not do justice to the wealth of knowledge these men have in the fields of botany, ecology, ethnobotany, and forestry. Bringing Pojar and MacKinnon along with you on a hike is kind of like bringing Pojar and MacKinnon along with you on a hike. I have never met these men, but it seems that they are right there with you, describing all the beautiful and functional things about the trail-side plants in their friendly and engaging style.
   Pojar and MacKinnon were not with me on the hike I took with two friends last Friday around Spider Lake in Olympic National Forest. The two friends were plant savvy. They both had a copy of Pojar. They both left their copies in the truck at the trailhead intentionally--to be consulted after the hike. I left mine at home accidentally.

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    Spider Lake sits in an old-growth hemlock forest. The trail around the lake is flat. It is a two-mile loop. It took us two hours. Plus a half hour for lunch. We walked slowly because there was so much to see. We walked slowly and stopped often. Every thirty feet or so, to look at something green. We looked at moss, we looked at ferns, we looked at lichen. My friends identified everything. They spoke Latin. We examined mushroom gills, fern sori, growth rings, tripinnate fronds, spent seed pods, winter twigs, bud scales, newly fallen trees, a nurse log carrying a miniature forest of inch-high hemlocks.
    If my friends came upon a familiar plant, they would find something new to tell about it. If they weren't certain of their i.d., they'd describe it out loud to each other. All three of us had forgotten our cameras so we had to rely heavily on our minds, our minds' eyes, and our minds' ears to help us remember what we saw. Being the novice botanizer, I offered my services jotting down plant names in my little waterproof notebook...until the ink in my pen froze.
    The slower we walked on this cold and sunny day, the more we saw. The slower we walked, the more beautiful everything was. The slower we walked, the slower we walked. My feet were frozen and my fingers were numb, but I am not complaining. I am full of gratitude. I have seen this forest in a way I have not seen other forests. I know who lives beneath these ancient hemlocks in winter. I know one hairy woodpecker and a few Pacific wrens that live here, too. I can feel this forest.

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   On the way home, one friend drove, I navigated (sort of), and another read Pojar aloud from the back seat. I tried to take it all in. That was last Friday.
  Monday morning, I was curled up on the sofa with a cup of coffee and my own copy of Pojar and MacKinnon. In 528 pages, Pojar and MacKinnon describe 794 species of plants--2 per page. Each entry includes a general description of the plant; details about its leaves, flowers, and fruit; its ecology; and extensive notes about its habitat, range, and traditional uses. There are 1100 color photographs, 1000 line drawings, and 794 range maps. This is the latest, 2004 revised edition. When it was first published in 1994 by Lone Pine, I doubt anyone was thinking of this field guide as a 10-year brand, nor of relaunching it with its own website and TV show. The revised edition, much like the original, is a lovely, hefty, sturdy, round-cornered paperback that weighs in at 1.7 pounds. It is full of news. It is full of amazing stories.  
  Here is what was happening at Spider Lake on December 12:  Lobaria pulmonaria. Pterospora andromedea. Asarum caudatum. Vaccinium ovatum. Gaultheria shallon. Tusga heterophylla. Polystichum munitum. Blechnum spicant. Adiantum pedatum. Lycopodium clavatum. Petigera neopolydactyla. Oplopanax horridus. Ramnus purshiana. Linnea borealis. Alnus rubra. Thuja plicata. 

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Snowy Owl at Nisqually

All photos courtesy Dennis Ellison, Nisqually NWR Volunteer. These photos were taken in 2005. 

   I was out for clouds on Wednesday morning, completely happy with just the clouds. Until a volunteer pointed out the snowy owl, sitting on a hummock out in the estuary, bout 100 yards north of the trail. Once I saw the owl through the spotting scope, I couldn't take my eyes off this beautiful bird of the tundra--the Arctic tundra, the dry, frozen, treeless land between the northernmost forests of Alaska and Canada and the icy Arctic Ocean. Using an online "as the crow flies" mapping tool, I figured this snowy owl could have flown about 2000 miles to Nisqually from a randomly chosen tundra location--Atqasuk, Alaska. Distances to other areas of the tundra would be comparable. Incredible.

    Snowy owls are adapted to spending the entire winter on the tundra, but not all snowy owls spend every winter there. Some regularly migrate in winter to southern Canada, and the northern US--the plains, New York, and New England, notably. Once every four years or so, winter irruptions bring snowy owls much further south--to the Pacific Northwest and even as far as California, Texas, and Florida.  

  Irruptive behavior is linked to the food supply and, in the case of the snowy owl, this means lemmings, a year-round resident of the tundra. Lemmings are rodents that dig vast networks of tunnels beneath the snow where they survive the harsh winters by eating plant roots. 

    Snowy owls pick off lemmings when they emerge from their tunnels for fresh air. An adult snowy owl will eat three to five lemmings a day; a breeding male will spend hours catching dozens of lemmings to pile up in front of a female he is courting. If the female accepts him, they will fly off together, the overjoyed male may catch another lemming and pass it to his mate with one foot in mid-flight.

   In a boom lemming year, the snowy owl may raise a dozen chicks, feeding them up to 2000 lemmings before they can hunt on their own. 

  After a 4-5 year cycle of successful feeding and breeding, the lemming population reaches a peak and soon  deplete their food supply. Yes they panic. Yes they become hyperactive. Yes they run across the tundra in all directions (and once in a line stretching 30 miles long). Yes they drown trying to cross large rivers. They are  desperate, and behave like proverbial lemmings. Exposed, the lemmings are either hunted or starve, and their population crashes. This starts a chain reaction through the tundra food web. Snowy owls are forced southward in search of new sources of food. 

Two snowy owls perched on snags at mouth of the Nisqually River. 

  So, the snowy owl I was seeing--likely a juvenile male, according to the refuge biologist--was likely exhausted and starving. Nisqually is abundant with food sources for the owl, but the owl has at least two things going against it. There are numerous birds of prey at the refuge competing for the same food: while I was watching the owl, I spotted bald eagles, a harrier, a red-tailed hawk, and possible a kestrel (the birders out that morning recorded 71 species, so I know there were more raptors out there). And, because snowy owls hunt on the tundra, the biologist tells me, they are not adapted to hunting where there are trees or other obstacles. They face the ground when they hunt for lemmings and so may crash into buildings, barns, trees, and other large objects while hunting in our landscape.

In the absence of lemmings, snowy owls will prey on small mammals and birds including rodents, rabbits, squirrels, songbirds, water fowl, wading birds, and...oh no...alcids. That could mean marbled murrelets.  

 Does one snowy owl an irruption make? No, but the birding community is all a-flutter with online postings about snowy owls right now. Earlier this week, snowy owls were spotted in Washington State in Douglas and Okanogan Counties as well as at Ocean Shores; owls were reported in Oregon--one at the airport; birders posted sightings in Minnesota and Michigan and a whopping 100 were spotted in Wisconsin. You can go to a recent irruption map to see how widespread the irruption is this year.

   You can also go out to Nisqually. The snowy owls might not be there, but I guarantee something wonderful will be.