Wildflowers

Turtle · July 14, 2009

Operational notes: the Wildflower social group has more or less died on the vine so to speak (:doh:), and as wildflowers have my current attention this new thread seems suiting. since all flowers ultimately come from the wild, this is all about all flowers and i simply made the editorial decision to opt for the shorter title. :bouquet:

i want to start with a post by Cedars from another thread, as it involes a genus i'm currently dealing with and want to follow up on:

Just a week or two ago, as I roamed the meadows with my Crex companion, we were discussing the lupine and its dominance along the roadways and resurgence in a clear cut area (cut was winter 07-08). My friend lives near the meadows and wanted to get a few seeds to put on her property. She spent some time researching how to get these guys to grow from seed. Holy cow what a complex project.

Best practice: Buy some started plants.

otherwise place a closed screened object over the seed pods and wait for them to open (explode). Catch the seeds in your screened object (exploding pods disperse seeds). Keep seeds in dry spot for a couple of months. Store seeds in fridge for a couple of months. Remove seeds and carefully nic/rough up each seed or it wont sprout. Plant seeds. You can soak the seeds for a day or place them in wet paper towel until they swell, then plant.

Above advice comes with no warrantee. egads.

This kinda explains why we find the majority of lupine in the meadows along the roads or in recent cut areas. The seeds have been plowed, road rashed and generally abused.

You've been warned.

Roger all that. i collected quite a few wild lupine seeds when racoon & i climbed a nearby mountain a week or so ago, and initially i presumed it was arctic lupine because i thought that was the native lupine in my area, but now i'm not so sure. the plants were profuse and we simply seized the stalk below the pods and stripped them by the hand full. nonetheless, had we been perhaps a day earlier the pods may not have been ripe enough, or a day later and so dry that they opened & dropped the seed. ah sweet serendipity! chaos favors the prepared imagination. :)

i figure to grow the seeds to find out what species i collected, and i found like you that the seeds are considered "physically dormant" and require some manner of treatment to break the water-proof seed coat. :banghead: :eek: :hyper: i read about heating in a foil pack put in sand put in an oven, brief submersion in hot water, and knicking the seed-coat with a file. add to that, lupine is biennial from seed, and getting to a flower is at least a 2 year ordeal. worth it i say, if it's a native species and not some cultivar. :hihi:

here's the only decent Lupine imagery i have, though i'm not so sure it is the arctic lupine i id'd it as. :doh: it is growing in my garden from a packet of mixed wildflower seed, which only said lupine. :photos:

that's a wrap. you know what to do. :bouquet:

YouTube - bumblebee on arctic lupine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoQk33p08hQ

Turtle · July 14, 2009

continuing on the lupine, when i got home with the pods, some of which burst in the collection bags, i put them in a tray and broke them open, threw off the husks, which curl back in two halves from each other & twist up, then winnowed off the rest of the bits. regrettably i was rather single minded as to collecting the seeds & i didn't photograph or collect the plant. :photos: i did find 3 of the pods contained a tiny grub happily munching the seeds. :bouquet: i see many references to lupine as toxic, both for people & livestock, however other sources mention it as a food source for unspecified "animals". :bouquet: still again, it is recorded in ethnobotanical sources as having medicinal uses. to whit:

Lupine - Azee' bíni'í - Navajo Ethnobotany from Dykeman Roebuck Archaeology

Medicine:

•cold infusion of leaves used as a lotion on poison ivy blisters (Vestal 1952: 32)
•at Hopi, King's Lupine used as an eye medicine (Whiting 1939: 33, 80)
•Dwarf Mountain Lupine used for boils (Elmore 1944: 97)
•at Hopi, Rusty Lupine used as an ear and eye medicine (Colton 1974:333)
•Intermountain Lupine used for earaches and nosebleeds (Wyman and Harris 1951: 28)

tomorrow i prepare & plant 4 of the green mountain lupine seeds. :banghead: :hyper:

Cedars · July 14, 2009

i collected quite a few wild lupine seeds when racoon & i climbed a nearby mountain a week or so ago, and initially i presumed it was arctic lupine because i thought that was the native lupine in my area, but now i'm not so sure. the plants were profuse and we simply seized the stalk below the pods and stripped them by the hand full. nonetheless, had we been perhaps a day earlier the pods may not have been ripe enough, or a day later and so dry that they opened & dropped the seed. ah sweet serendipity! chaos favors the prepared imagination. ;)

I just gotta comment here. How big is your yard? Did you really need to "strip them by the handfull"? My friend has 80 acres and took 6 pods to experiment with to ensure she masters the art of introduction before going forth to pillage and burn.

Please if others are reading this thread and thinking of introducing some natives into their landscape by going forth and gathering on your own, show a bit of restraint until you get the hang of it.

i read about heating in a foil pack put in sand put in an oven, brief submersion in hot water, and knicking the seed-coat with a file. add to that, lupine is biennial from seed, and getting to a flower is at least a 2 year ordeal. worth it i say, if it's a native species and not some cultivar.

I believe I have read the sand in the oven part also. I dont know if it works or not but I wonder if some small quartz chips in a baggie with a good 'shake and bake' motion would knick the seeds enough. Or even some emory boards in the baggie with the seeds. Add a few small rocks to give the boards some weight.

Are you sure they are only biennial? Lots of lupine is perennial.

Cedars · July 14, 2009

i did find 3 of the pods contained a tiny grub happily munching the seeds. :) i see many references to lupine as toxic, both for people & livestock, however other sources mention it as a food source for unspecified "animals". ;) still again, it is recorded in ethnobotanical sources as having medicinal uses. to whit:

ummm.... Karner blue caterpillars are known to be in the seedpods. I am not saying you just wiped out the only colony of [insert Washington State blue here] but several of the Blues are lupine specific. Something to keep in mind.

Genus Plebejus - BugGuide.Net

Cedars · July 15, 2009

So in character for this thread heres one I photographed July 11, 2009. I like watershield (Brasenia schreberi ). Lots of wildlife around places supporting this common plant.

Photos of flowers:

Turtle · July 15, 2009

So in character for this thread heres one I photographed July 11, 2009. I like watershield (Brasenia schreberi ). Lots of wildlife around places supporting this common plant.

Photos of flowers:

ooooooo! beautimous!! i have never seen it, but apparently it's native in my evergreen state too. this source indicates that it's not in my county of clark, but lechetenberg park has suitable habitat and i will keep my eyes peeled. :confused: >> http://biology.burke.washington.edu/herbarium/imagecollection/taxon.php?ID=1078

Turtle · July 15, 2009

ummm.... Karner blue caterpillars are known to be in the seedpods. I am not saying you just wiped out the only colony of [insert Washington State blue here] but several of the Blues are lupine specific. Something to keep in mind.

Genus Plebejus - BugGuide.Net

:doh: the thought occured to me after the fact, but i wasn't going to put the spotlight on it. :doh: the uh...erhm... potential catastrophic selection cats were 1/2" or less long, green, & active. racoon & i noticed how many trees up on the mountain had either colored ribbon tied on them, or spray-painted colored lines. mostly red/orange/pink i think. perhaps the whole thing is slated for development as it bounds a golf course on one side & encrouching development up 2 other sides. the northern flank is a high-voltage power transmission line corridor.

so, i may have wiped out a species, or, i may have exposed an unknown ecological niche for what it is. i got those seeds gathered there knicked with my exacto knife today & put in starter pots. i did 4, and as soon as i have access to the computer for photo work i'll put up a shot of the prepared seeds before planting.

that's all i got. thanks for coming cedars! :confused:

Turtle · July 15, 2009

I just gotta comment here. How big is your yard? Did you really need to "strip them by the handfull"? My friend has 80 acres and took 6 pods to experiment with to ensure she masters the art of introduction before going forth to pillage and burn.

i was considering distributing the seeds to others interested. see above also a specific caveat on the potential development coming to green mountain where i collected these. we took seeds from maybe 4 plants among dozens if not hundreds. i also collect along roads before they are mowed. i consider myself a conscientious collecter, for what that's worth. :confused:

Are you sure they are only biennial? Lots of lupine is perennial.

biennial from seed, but yes i believe thereafter thay are perennial.

Turtle · July 15, 2009

good as my word; here we go. if you have Google Earth i recommned putting in the following coordinates i took from the summit of green mountain where i collected the lupine seed, and go fly around for a look-see. don't forget to try the side view as well as straight down. lechtenberg park is about 3/4 mile wsw from the mountain, and racoon san & i noticed new signs on the Eastern bounding lots of the park saying "Warning! Keep Out! development coming."

45º 39' 17" N

122º 27' 25"

elevation 823 feet above sea level

here's the lupine seeds prepped for planting. red arrow points to the spot i cut through the seed coat with a razor-knife. i shot the image on top of my print out of the official vascular plants of my county; only the 6 lupine have reported occurances by this source. my washington wildflower guide lists 8 of the most common but alludes to a couple dozen species here.

Turtle · July 15, 2009

WOW!!! :eek: two of the seeds have sprouted already!! i have not seen many, if any, seeds sprout that fast. funny too that without the nick or other breaking of the coat, the seed could have set in the pot for years & never sprouted.

to clarify my use of 'biennial' from seed, which may be technically incorrect since the plants are ultimately perennial, after the seeds sprout, a small basal leaf clump grows and then grows no further that season/year. the following Spring the basal leaf clump sends up multiple long stemmed leaves and then flower stalks. :ip: besides sharing some of my seeds with other interested parties, i was thinking maybe i'd do some guerrilla gardening and get some native plants going in waste places occupied by invasive species. :turtle:

Turtle · July 15, 2009

woo hoo! :turtle: found this sensitive 'ranked' wildflower species right in my veggy garden hiding behind the bush beans. :clue: in retrospect of now knowing it, i imagine i have pulled many up before they bloomed, having mistaken them for clover. :doh: nothing ventured, nothing gained, & a weed is just a plant in a place you don't want it. i'm on it now by golly. :D :eek: :ip:

http://biology.burke.washington.edu/herbarium/imagecollection/taxon.php?ID=2824

Western Yellow Wood Sorrel - Oxalis suksdorfii

Cedars · July 15, 2009

woo hoo! found this sensitive 'ranked' wildflower species right in my veggy garden hiding behind the bush beans. in retrospect of now knowing it, i imagine i have pulled many up before they bloomed, having mistaken them for clover. :doh: nothing ventured, nothing gained, & a weed is just a plant in a place you don't want it. i'm on it now by golly. :D :eek: :ip:

Nice find! You gonna let more of your yard go to seed now?

Cedars · July 15, 2009

Heres one for ya. Pink Lady Slipper, aka Moccasin flower. An orchid. My Crex companion found these while searching for an old gravesite on the meadows. There was a large colony of them, probably 1/2 acre of predominatly, these orchids, with more scattered in mixed vegetation. My friend notified the plant people of the meadows so the location is recorded and hopefully they wont log the area to protect these beauties.

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