Green Things From The Trees, Bushes, And The Ground

Spring has come to South Central Alaska.  Enjoying the wonders in our front and back yards.







Bleeding Heart.

Cottonwood leaf.  The sticky outside - leaf bud scales - fall off and stick to everything.  A good reason to take your shoes off before going inside.  The saving grace for me has always been their wonderful sweet scent.  But it appears they are much more useful than that.  From the Statesman Journal:

"Honeybees collect the resin from the spring leaf bud scales and take it back to their hives as an antimicrobial and sealant, called propolis. It is powerfully anti-microbial, inhibiting fungal and bacterial growth.
Pacific Northwest tribes and early Euroamerican settlers collected and used the bud scale resin as well. Infused into oil, the resin is known to help soothe swollen arthritic joints and sore muscles. Resin was used to waterproof boxes and baskets. The bark was made into buckets for storing and carrying food. The leaves, buds and bark of cottonwood were used to lower fevers and reduce inflammation and pain. Plant chemists isolated this analgesic compound and call it salacin; it is found in all cottonwoods and willows."

The daffodils are popping up.  The last couple of years only a few of the bulbs I planted came up.  This year I planted some with my granddaughter on Bainbridge Island over Thanksgiving and they were blooming by the beginning of March.  All them.  And it looks like the vast majority made it through the winter here and are coming up.








I thought this was kind of funny when I saw it on Carr's online order app.  I've been benefiting from our abundant back (and front) yard supply the last few summers.  Ours too have no artificial fertilizer or pesticides.  And they are starting to come up already.




When you see them in your yard, instead of cursing them, think:  $3.49 a bunch.  And remember they are full of vitamins and other health promoting properties.

Governor, oil has tanked, but we've got an endless renewable resource in dandelions.  And at $3.49 a bunch, they're probably more valuable than oil was when it was $60 a barrel.  And health food stores have all sorts of pricy dandelion products.  Here's a dandelion extract at $14 an ounce!

There's economic value all around us if we just have the right eyes.  But lets not value our flora and fauna only for their economic value.  They play an important role in keeping the earth vibrant and healthy.  If you haven't seen my post on The Overstory, I do recommend it.

High bush cranberry leaves are budding.

 Lillies.

Tulip buds are growing.

Wild geraniums.  From Common Sense Home:

"Early Native Americans [Is that as opposed to late Native Americans?] recognized the value of Wild Geranium and used it as an ingredient in many medicinal treatments. Chippewa Indians used dried, powdered rhizomes mixed with grape juice as a mouthwash for children with thrush. A poultice from the base or pounded roots of the plant was used to treat burns and hemorrhoids. The leaves and roots were used to treat sore throats, hemorrhages, gonorrhea, and cholera. Like many other tannin-containing substances, Native Americans also used Wild Geranium as an anti-diarrhea treatment. A plant- infused tea was made to achieve this purpose, though some sources say the tea could have had the opposite effect, causing constipation."

And we have visitors out for the summer too.

This fly was cleaning my breakfast plate out on the deck.

And I'm guessing this dead tree was sculpted by a woodpecker.  Dead trees often have more life than living trees.

Enough Cottonwoods? Electronic Health Records, Senior Joy, Climate Illogic

Some reactions to yesterday's Anchorage Daily News.  Nothing earth shattering here.  Don't have time to right now for that.

1.  How essential are electronic health records for treating patients? 

In an article on loss of FCC funding for rural health care, Anchorage Daily News reporter Annie Zak wrote:

"They rely on that connectivity for electronic health records, essential for treating patients."

I remember going to a focus group on electronic health records eleven years ago.  At that time the hospitals here didn't have EHR and were pushing to get them.  And now you can't treat patients without them?  I wonder what all the doctors who practiced medicine before EHR existed would say about this statement  or what all those doctors around the world who don't have electronic health records do?  Shut up shop because they don't have an essential tool for treating patients?

Yes, electronic health records make it easier and faster to get patient medical histories and to share records when referring patients to other doctors.  BUT they are NOT an essential tool for treating patients.  If they are essential in some settings, it's only because hospitals have now made them the only records kept.  But, if worse comes to worse, the doctor can ask the patient like they used to do.  And they also mean that confidential medical records are now highly vulnerable to hackers.  It's not a question of if they are breached, just when.

2.  Does senior joy make older folks irrelevant to the young?

Charles Wohlforth had a piece on Tom Choate who climbed Denali five years ago at age 78.  The article talks about older folks giving up ambition and competitiveness for happiness.  He then writes,

"But Angell noted that his quality [being happy and not competitive)] has the perverse effect [of] getting old people ignored, as if contentment means you don't matter."

He gives an example of being ignored in conversations with younger men.  Wohlforth muses:

"Interesting, isn't it, our tendency to patronize the old as we do the young? It's as if, like children, their joy disqualifies them, indicating they can't understand the true toughness of life. As if they don't know adulthood's difficult struggle for goals and status." 

This seems to me a giant leap to a questionable conclusion.  Is it the joy that disqualifies them?  Is it even joy he means here, or rather contentment?  I suspect other possible explanations.  One, the contented senior doesn't have the need to push himself into the conversation as much.  Or, if it is about the younger men's regard for the older, it's that he's no longer keeping current in all the details they think are important and/or he doesn't have power in the world that matters to them.  This would be more consistent with Wohlforth's earlier (in the article) note that being ignored is a condition shared by women and that form of snubbing is much more about power than it is about joy.


3.  Climate Illogic  

This was a letter to the editor.  It's short.  So I can give you the whole letter:

Is there climate change? Of course. Earth's climate has always been in a state of change. Alaska was once a sub-tropical area that became an arctic environment.
Puny man cannot stop or slow this change. One volcano eruption can put tons of greenhouse gases into the environment. Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas produced by every animal that breathes air. It is used by plants and is needed by them to grow and the plants turn this CO2 back into oxygen that we animals breathe in order to live.
If you want to really make a difference, plant trees, disconnect the natural gas and electricity to your house, throw away your vehicle keys and walk everywhere.
Charles Brobst
Anchorage    [emphasis added]

There's plenty of evidence that while climate has changed over the billions of years of earth's existence, that the last 200 years or so have seen a much more rapid change than in the past and this change coincides with the beginning of the industrial revolution.

But that's not my point here.  First Mr. Brobst tells us that "Puny man cannot stop or slow this hang"  and then he makes a list of how 'you' can make a difference (which I take to mean slow the change.)  All the things he lists seem to imply - give up our modern life style.

So I'm guessing he really means to say, "If you want to stop climate change, we have to go back to the StoneAge."  This is not the case.  We just need to find alternative energy sources, cut back in consumption that isn't sustainable, an be willing to explore alternatives to how we live - and the Stone Age isn't the only alternative.  The impacts of climate change - if we do nothing - is clearly problematic for our economy.  The impact of actions to stop climate change actually improve our economy.

4.  People really do hate cottonwoods

In another letter to the editor, Patricia Wells laments to poor state of the Anchorage Coastal Trail - cracking asphalt, trash, leaves piled up on the trail, trees blocking views.  And then she says it:

"Believe me, we do not need any more cottonwood trees."

I get her sentiment - particularly now when the sticky cottonwood catkins pile up on our deck and stick to your feet as you walk on them, using you as their way into your house.  I've written a few posts on cottonwoods. (I just looked - there are 30 posts with the label 'cottonwood.'  Here's one that takes an alternative look at these trees.)  Ultimately, they are huge trees - an anomaly this far north - which grow fast (also an anomaly here) and clean the air, anchor the soil, provide habitat for birds and other animals.  But I get it.  Besides the catkins now, the fluffy cotton will start littering Anchorage later in the summer.

Coming Home To The Sweet Smell Of Cottonwood

I still can't share fragrances with you here on the blog.  Pictures and sound, yes, but not smells.  Too bad, because when we got to the front door last night, the powerful and sweet smell of the cottonwoods filled the air.  It doesn't smell like cinnamon, but it tickles the nose in a similar strong seductive way.


I've written about cottonwoods before - they're a big presence, and lots of folks hate them.  The sticky sweet buds attach to the bottom of your shoes and later the cotton catkins strewn all over test even my patience.  But the sweet (English is really deficient in words for odors - I'll have to start making a list of types of smells that need words) smell and the big leafy green trees are worth it in my book.







We left LA under clouds last night. 

And it seemed cloudy below the whole way up.  But since it's May, the northern horizon eventually got light again as we got north, though below was solid dark cloud.

McHugh Creek

Here are a few pictures from Sunday's hike on the Johnson Pass trail from McHugh Creek.  The cottonwoods - and everything else - are still naked.  Below you can see them in different states.

Devil's club was budding. 

A couple of weeks ago, we came by and only the lower parking lot (right)  was open, but Sunday, the gate to the upper parking areas was open. 








And the creek was still flowing mostly under the ice. 

How To Stop Your Cottonwood Tree From Shedding Cotton

OK, this is a longshot.  But we had some wind yesterday and I found this on my deck.  I'd never actually paid attention to these before.

These are the young pods that will eventually grow into the big cotton puffs that will make a huge mess over the deck and the yard and, for some, make breathing hard.  I took this picture yesterday and today the pods had already started opening in the kitchen.  (Those little balls are about the side of very big peas.)  Why not just look through the tree and cut all these off before they ever open and spread their cotton?


So I went out today with the tree trimmer and I realize that I couldn't find them in the tree, and probably, if I could, they are so high up that I could never reach them.  Cleaning them up after the fact is probably easier.  But if anyone has a trained monkey, it could work. 

BTW, one of my posts that still gets lots of hits is on uses cottonwood cotton.

Bugs In The Night

Windows tend to be left open as summer comes on here in Anchorage, and as it gets sort of dark outside, we get really interesting critters flying in.

Last night this bizarre looking moth visited while I was brushing my teeth.

No, it wasn't like a bi-plane, it was resting on the mirror.  The closest I could find in Dominique M. Collet's Insects of south-central Alaska was a Leaf Blotch Miner, Family Gracilariidae.  The Bug Guide website shows lots of examples, but I couldn't find one with its wings spread out.  Most of them look like dead specimens.  So, I'm not quite sure.

Note the hind legs have little 'branches' on them.

Here's a closer view of the left wing.

The wings were an inch, maybe an inch and a half long.  Collet says,

"The larvae of the leaf blotch miners tunnel between the two outer layers of aspen leaves.  The flat caterpillar pupates at the end of the tunnel."

 The cottonwood (in the aspen family) plus the aspen leaves just came out in the last week, so this guy didn't have a lot of time tunnel and pupate.  

For those wondering - pupate means to become a pupa which the free dictionary defines as:

The nonfeeding stage between the larva and adult in the metamorphosis of holometabolous insects, during which the larva typically undergoes complete transformation within a protective cocoon or hardened case.

Maybe someone out there knows for sure what this critter is.  

[UPDATE May 18, 2014:  I emailed Dominique Collet with a link to this post and asked if he might double check my identification.  He modestly said his book was hardly comprehensive and thought it was a Pterophoridae or plume moth. He also suggested someone else if I needed more details.  The link shows there are lots of species of this kind of moth, but pictures do show the same kind of branching on the legs.]

Anchorage Spring

Spring doesn't necessarily mean that robins are pulling worms out of warm soil and that green leaves are sprouting all over.

In Anchorage it means that the sun is high enough on the horizon that you can feel its heat and that every day gains five or six minutes of daylight (13 hours and 16 minutes today.)  Sun both melts and evaporates snow, ice art forms again at night.  Here's what it looked like today near Campbell Airstrip.

Cottonwoods reaching skyward, basking in the sun's warmth, 

waking their sweet smelling sticky buds.

 








Campbell Creek still mostly covered by snow below the bridge.

 

The birch sending out its own Morse code messages.  

I'm sure it's profound; if I could only read it.

Taking a Break on a Snowy Day

Wet snow.  Fog.

Ravens gather in cottonwood.

Short break.  Change of scenery.

Russian Jack greenhouse.

Add a little color to gray white day. 

Fall's Hanging On, But Winter's Already Claimed the Upper Hillside

It's definitely fall in Anchorage, with winter having already made a preview appearance.

The geese are packing meals for their flights south. 

The cottonwood leaves cover our back yard, though, if you look closely, the amur maple leaves are still on the tree (on the right.)  The come out later in the spring too.

Up at Powerline Pass, the snow we had in town stuck.  This was Sunday evening. 

Shaggy Manes Pop Up And Campbell Creek Rises

The big storm didn't quite materialize, at least in our part of town. There was enough wind to move the leaves around, but not enough that we heard it like last week.

And it's raining sometimes harder, sometimes barely a drizzle. I took advantage of a lull to bike over to someone's house where I found a bunch of shaggy mane mushrooms.  These are very distinctive mushroom that I know is safe and tasty. 

They weren't as excited about the mushrooms as I was and gave me a plastic bag.  I picked a few. 




While I was out I checked on Campbell Creek.  It was up above its banks a bit, but nothing serious.  At the two spots I checked.  Though later I learned that a friend whose house is next to the creek had nine cottonwoods down in his yard.

The winds did stir last night.  The trees are dancing gently to the beat this morning.  Predictions are for rain until Thursday.  

 The mushrooms, by the way, were delicious. 

Mudflats, Rocks, Downed Trees, And More On Sunny Sunday on Seward Highway

It was too nice a day to stay home.

We drove down the Seward Highway.

Here are the railroad tracks looking south down Turnagain Arm.












Looking back toward Anchorage you could see the Alaska Range bright and clear in the distance. 

Our goal was a patch of rocky beach we like.  But it was pretty windy (I'd guess 20 to 30 mph) and J found a nice rock that blocked the wind and let her enjoy the sunshine while I walked down the beach.










The rocks go to the edge of the mudflats.  Here you can see a layer of mudflats, then the water, then the base of the mountains on the other side. 














 J didn't want to walk in the strong wind so we backtracked to McHugh Creek and took the path toward Potter.  Up there - on the other side of the Seward Highway and up a bit into the trees - there was no wind and it began to feel warm in the sun.

 But all those cottonwoods proved to be vulnerable to the winds we had last week.  (I'm assuming these were recent falls we came upon, though some - as you'll see - had been sawed to clear the trail.)

 It was a little messy, but we could negotiate the trail pretty easily here. 

















 The insides of the downed cottonwoods were pretty soft.  You could squeeze the pulp like a sponge almost. 

I liked the sun-like design where the chainsaw had cut the mature trees, with their ridged trunks.

While you could see the water through the trees for a lot of the trail, this was one of just a couple of spots where you got a view of Turnagain Arm and the Seward Highway below.

 This spider - well I assumed it was a spider, but I only see five of its eight legs - seemed to be enjoying the sun on the newly exposed cottonwood insides.  [Now that was a good case of transferring human feelings to animals.  Who knows what it was feeling out there?]

The body would have fit on a quarter easily.


In addition to cottonwoods, devil's club was everywhere and also some red baneberries. 

At first glance they look pretty similar, but the devil's club has much larger thorned leaves and their berries aren't translucent like the baneberries are.  Don't eat the baneberries!!


The US Forest Service has lots of information on baneberries:

NUTRITIONAL VALUE: Red baneberry's energy and protein value are rated as poor [21].  Red baneberry's name comes from a poisonous essential oil or glycoside (protoanemonin) found in all parts of the plant but most concentrated in the berries and root [43,72].  Symptoms of poisoning include gastroenteritis, stomach cramps, headache, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea and circulatory failure [72].

 But some bird species eat the berries and elk and other deer eat the foliage.

We hiked about 3 miles in (almost to the Potter Marsh end) but decided these two big cottonwoods across the trail was a good place to turn back. 

There were lots of people on the trail and lots of dogs.  We heard reports from hikers going to and back of four black bears sighted.  We didn't see them.  J wasn't very disappointed about that. 

We also saw this young agent of the devil's club.    Actually he zipped up the hood to show me that his sweatshirt turned into this neat Halloween costume. The eyes had a mesh covering he could see through.













These trees seemed to be dancing on the side of the trail.

Here's yet another fallen cottonwood, but it was high enough over the trail not to be a problem.


As we got near the McHugh Creek parking lot we passed a man in an electronic wheel chair making his way up the trail.  I'm not sure how far he would be able to get, but I was impressed he got that far. 


Finally, on the drive back home we stopped at Potter Marsh where we saw a pair of swans in the distance.  If I had a good telephoto, I'd show you.  This picture is much better than the one I got of the swans.