Bog of Big Lagoon

I've mentioned this bog before, so let's finally have a tour. This is the bog of Big Lagoon. It's a mucky inaccessible place, especially after the winter floods, but that's how it has been so well preserved.

I walk very carefully when I visit, not because of the muck (which is unavoidable), but because I don't want to step on too many plants. After all, there are a few endangered species in the mix. Luckily once I got in there I found a good elk trail and stuck to it.

This place is diverse. Big time. I found this great checklist online that's helping me identify things. Click on the checklist link for a full species survey of the area.

This is the Macloskey's violet, Viola macloskeyi

And nestled underneath those lovelies are Drosera rotundifolia (!). Tiny.

Much more subtle are these little spike rushes, Eleocharis pachycarpa.

The elk trail lead me back into the old spruce forest. There I saw an A-frame fort, coming along nicely.

And, the most "exotic" of native wildflowers, the elusive Calypso orchid, Calypso bulbosa. I do have a secret patch of these, but this one was all alone and nowhere near the patch.

It's named after Calypso, the beautiful blind enchantress from the Odyssey. She was secretive, and so is this little dragon of a flower; their blooms are unpredictable. While this lone plant in the dark forest had a bloom, my secret patch had none.

Tsurai

I've been reading a book called The Four Ages of Tsurai, which is a compilation of the European accounts (including one by botanist Archibald Menzies) of the small Yurok village of Tsurai, which was just below the modern town of Trinidad, where I go for internet and library books.

"Olega’ “where they come.” A place near the end of the present wharf which got its name because objects continually drift ashore there."



Trinidad Head is a great place to see plant diversity.

Ribes sanguineum.

The flowers, as you can see, are very beautiful. They're one of the most popular CA natives in cultivation.

I don't know what this litte plant is. Shame.

This is the old lighthouse (but it still lights the way).

Equally exciting is what I can't see.

"Ko’ixkulole’gwo m, “perforated stone where it is covered.” The spot is a cave just below the lighthouse. People took aromatic angelica root (wo’lpei) into the cave and put it into a pool of water in a recess of the cavern. The water would whirl when this was done. If this root (used in many religious and ceremonial connections) was employed by the person in some undertaking,
it would turn out well."

And here's where you get the root, Angelica (lucida?). I wanted to introduce this plant to our property because it's flowers attract pollinators. I had no idea it also attracted luck.

Salal (Gaultheria shallon) is a common plant along the coast. The berries are good in muffins, and have an interesting crunch to them.

This is the silk tassel shrub (Garrya eliptica). The catkins are very showy this time of year and give the whole plant a "mossy bayou" look.

Trinidad Head may be the best place to find Mimulus aurantiacus in this area. I saw it in gardens before I noticed it in the wild. Here's a tiny plant growing on a rock.

Fringecup (Tellima grandiflora) is a common ground cover in the shade, yet we don't have any in Bayside. (Even stranger is our very sparse amount of Oxalis oreganum, the most common redwood forest plant anywhere else.)

There are many beautiful old Ceanothus thyrsiflorus trees here. (They really should be called trees, in Trinidad at least.) They remind me of African accacia trees because of their form and the many little thorn-like branches.

Much of the head is covered in deciduous thickets. Thimbleberry, Twinberry, Blackberry, Gooseberry, and...poison oak.

It seems the Tsurai had a name and story for every rock along the coast. I wonder if today's fishermen have named all the rocks (I bet they have).

Joseph Cambell says, "People claim the land by creating sacred sites, by mythologizing the animals and plants—they invest the land with spiritual powers. It becomes like a temple, place for meditation."

History, hikes, and gardening are great ways to build your temple.

Through intermarriage with whites, disease, and migration to reservations, Tsurai faded away and was completely abandoned by 1914. California has a violent history, especially in respects to the orginal inhabitants. (The Wiyots, the Yuroks southern neighbors who inhabitted Bayside, were massacred nearly to extinction.) But the town of Tsurai faded quietly away.

I haven't confirmed this, but according to the book, the site of Tsurai is grown over, but is marked by a great pepperwood tree (Umbellularia californica).

"If aromatic angelica root was burned beneath its branches and a person prayed for rain, the rain would come in two days...Children were warned to stay away from this tree lest bad luck befall them. If an infant died, the mother...hung the cradle in its branches."

The world is composed of sacred sites.

Hidden Road to Patrick's Point

Go alone. Bring a knife. Put food in your pocket (and a cell phone). This is where the hidden road at Big Lagoon begins. Yes, you have to cross a perilous "bridge" where the road has eroded into the ravine on both sides.

Then the road dives into spruce and redwood forest.

See, it's a highway, forgotten.

Many, many paces later the road dissappears completely. Don't think about bears or mountain lions.

You see a trail that sharply veers to the right. Follow this through the redwoods.

After many, many paces, and after climbing over trees fallen by winter storms, you'll emerge on a road. If you look closely through the trees you'll see a Yurok house through the spruce and alders. Find the path into Sumeg Village.

You see no one there. Crawl through the circular door of a house and enjoy the extremely dark and quiet moment.

You emerge from the earth and walk around the village admiring the structures, like this sweat house.

You find a narrow mossy path to a native plant garden. You wonder when it was last tended; it's the wildest garden you've seen in a long time. But would you really want to change anything?

Then the forest opens and you see a vast coastal prairie: douglas iris, salal, native blackberry, yarrow, and pacific reed grasses.

You step onto the Rim Trail because you've never been there.

And discover a meadow of sedges just around the corner.

And notice first flowers of spring: salmonberry barely unfurling their petals.

You wander aimlessly. It's imperative to lose yourself for a while.Tthen you can find the trail back home. Here it is: the beach below the sandy cliffs.

You watch as a few dark figures pick through the rocks looking for agates. You ask the ones you pass if they're having any luck. Just small ones. Then you jog home to give your lungs a stretch.

Not a bad place to live, really.

Casino on Big Lagoon?

There is a Rancheria adjacent to Big Lagoon, composed of a small group of Yurok and Tolowa tribe members, that has seriously considered building a casino on its shores for some time.

I remember a few years ago a friend and I canoed to that part of the shore and saw the foundation for a large buidling, that had been abandoned, and that had been grown over with blackberry and jubata grass. Well, the foundation was for the casino. According to my dad, the foundation has been around since at least 1996. But nothing has happened so far, and this video explains why.

But the latest word is that the US Department of the Interior is NOT going to let them build in Barstow.

Concerns about impacts on water quality, endangered species and scenery from a
casino on serene Big Lagoon had state environmental agencies and conservation
groups supporting the Barstow compact. With that upended, and the tribe pushing
harder for a casino on their reservation, a battle is likely over who approves
the project. The California Coastal Commission has vowed to sue, claiming that
states which adopt federally approved coastal programs have the right to review
federal projects, like an Indian casino.

(Full story from the Eureka Times Standard.)

A casino and its tourists would be a serious ecological, aesthetic, and personal tragedy. I worry about the Rancheria, but this is not (morally and culturally) the right answer to their problems. I feel it in my bones. While the lagoon is not in immediate danger, I must keep up with story and prepare my war cry.

New Trails

Yesterday, I worked on a new segment of the trail with my dad. Eventually, the trail will be a great loop through the property. We keep it simple, with dirt, logs, and leaf-litter mulch.

While we were clearing the ground for the stairs above, I found this weird burly root. I don't know what it is.

My top 2 guesses:

1. Part of a redwood root system, since the trail was below a large redwood

2. Part of a root belonging to Marah oreganus, the Wild Cucumber, also called Coastal Manroot, because it's supposed to have a massive tuber. It also happens to be dormant this time of year and we do have tons of them on the property, so it's possible.

I put it in a pot, so we'll see what comes up.

There are many rewards for traveling down the new segment of the trail, including

mushrooms red as tomatos,

old alders in a skunk cabbage bog (cabbages dormant),

and cool Polypodium scouleri growing on an old stump.

I won't be working on this trail again for some time. Today I followed my brother and his family back down to Woodland, to find my next step. The cab of my truck is loaded with the bare necessities and I'm on the quest to find a cool place to live and work while I think about graduate school or whatever's coming next. (It's going to be tough to garden without some land.) This week I'll be exploring Sacramento, San Francisco, Davis, and Woodland. If nothing feels right, I may head south. I'm going to wing it for a while.

CA Native Clovers

Thought about clovers today. If the native Trifolium wormskioldii (Springbank clover) is so cool, what about the other native clovers around here? I haven't noticed any other native clovers in the area, but according to Jepson there are 30 species native to CA (and several subspecies) and possibly 13 of those species are native locally (and are candidates for introduction to the "coastal prairie"). Unlike T. wormskioldii, most of the clovers are annuals, which makes introduction a bit more challenging.

Here are some potentials:

1. T. fucatum (annual) Bull Clover. This is my top choice for introduction because it's beautiful and distintive (see picture above, from CalPhotos). Also, seeds are available from Larner Seeds. Haven't ordered anything yet.

2. T. macraei (annual) Chilean Clover

3, T. microdon (annual) Thimble Clover

4. T. variegatum (annual) White-tipped clover. This one is unbelievable beautiful, based on photos from Calphotos.

5. T. eriocephalum (Perrenial)

If you would like to spend a good chunk of time perusing CA clover diversity, go to the CalPhotos website and type "trifolium" in the scientific name query box. Coupled with the Jepson Manual, CalPhotos is turning out to be a great tool for identifying natives, or just brainstorming what might be interesting to try in a garden.

Big Lagoon

Big Lagoon was my family's inspiration for moving to Humboldt County. I always begin my visits on Huckleberry Lane. The huckleberries were cut back pretty hard earlier this year (to give the cabins a better view of the ocean), but they seem to be doing fine. They look a little boxed in, though.

Then I walk along the street to the lagoon parking lot and onto the dock to see how high the water is.

It's high. And definetly too high for some of the silverweed (yellow) and grasses along the shoreline.

This photo is of a photo on an interpretive sign. Big Lagoon was extremely rich in wildlife. It was good to the Yurok. (There's a rancheria on one side of the lagoon.) I saw a man with a bicycle fishing in the lagoon, but he wasn't catching anything. Birds are everywhere. Especially cormorants.

If you turn left away from the lagoon, you see this sandspit, which divides the lagoon from the ocean. I thought about the ocean, but honestly, I tend to prefer the forest, which is in the opposite direction.

So that's where I head. One of the first plants to command attention is this, false lily of the valley. These berries are still young, with gold specks. I saw many older berries too, which are deep red and translucent.

The forest at Big Lagoon is much different than the one at home. The woods are DARK. It's a Sitka spruce forest that is way too crowded and many of the trees are dying or dead. Still, it's one of my favorite places. It is so quiet and eerie.

And the forest floor is spongy and deep green.

Ah, there's one of my favorite ferns, Polypodium scouleri. They normally grow up in trees, but this may have fallen with part of a tree. It's a good size plant, if I'd wanted I probably could have barely lifted it off the ground. I've often thought that this species might make a nice houseplant, grown in bark like many orchids are.

Speaking of orchids, here are two little Rattlesnake Plantains growing under an orange mushroom.
My camera is good at lightening things up, but remember, it's dark in here.

I can't help but admire the mushrooms. On my way into the forest I saw a couple Boletes edulis and some Wine Agarics. When I saw this one, I was amazed. Evenually I tried lifting it so I could see the underside and realized it was a rusty bottle cap. But I left it there because it's still a wonder to behold.

So was this, the underside of a real mushroom.

And this too. A tiny landscape within a tall forest.

This looks like a nice family.
These mushrooms reminded me of soccer. Some were as large as my hand.

The forest wasn't always so dark, apparently. There are many other trees dead and decaying under the spruces. This, I'm confident to say, was a wax myrtle.

This mushroom had the look, feel, and size of a gumboot chitin. Amazing.

Here's a slimy couple.

Daisy in the pasture.

Sun with radiating twigs.

Perhaps the most beautiful mushrooms were the species below. They were everywhere. They had this ultraviolet look to them and there's something so cool about the fringe around the cap.

I almost always check on my secret patch of Calypso orchids when I'm at Big Lagoon, but they were dormant.

But I did find this objet trouve nearby. It was a lamp.

BIG NEWS:

I may be leaving Humboldt County for a while. I quit my job last Friday (let's just say the business was nuts) and went down to look at UC Davis (in Yolo County). I'm going to be applying for the master's program in horticulture. My brother and his family live in Woodland nearby. I'm looking for a job around here and down there. Davis was nice, but it's a completely different environment (it's in the hot, dry valley). But I'm incredibly excited about the idea of going down there. The facilities look amazing, the people I met were friendly and passionate about what they're doing, and there has always been something about oak trees that has fascinated me.

My parents will still be here, so I'd live close enough to still visit and tend our forest and coastal prairie from time to time.

Well, we'll see what happens.

Humboldt Botanical Gardens

A few years ago, I heard that a botanical garden was being started in Humboldt County. So I went down to College of the Redwoods, who is leasing land nearby for the gardens, to check it out. They had large signs with a master plan of the gardens in front of a large cow pasture--the future site of the gardens. It wasn't much to look at, but the idea was exciting.

Well, I've been curious ever since about how the gardens are coming. And I have a secret desire to work there, but it's run by volunteers at the moment, I need money, and the driving distance, while not great, is enough to make me be careful about signing up to volunteer.

By chance, I heard the the HBG Foundation was giving a tour of the garden site Saturday (yesterday). It turns out that it was really only open to members, but they kindly let my friend and I tag along and even offered us food and drink. Seems like a nice group of people.



Here's a view of the HBGF meeting with snack table and new greenhouse:


We're walking..


Here's a main pathway leading to a sitting area overlooking the native plant garden.


Native plant garden (one of the few areas planted) with a drain running down the middle. I'm a little concerned that the plantings are too close, but I saw some cool plants down there...

Well, I've skipped over the Moss Family Temperate Woodland garden, which will be packed with rhododendrons (mixed feelings about this), and the Wildberries Riparian area, which is being funded mostly by the Coastal Conservancy to restore and preserve the native willows and such along the creek, to get to a little slice of land that could be most interesting. It's the gardens' coastal prairie. They've planted a bunch of bulbs and native grasses in this area and are trying to beat down the weedy annual grasses by careful mowing. I wonder if they've considered burning or even if it would help agains the weeds. Weedy grasses are tough to control in large areas like this, especially if you can't confidently tell them from the natives. While it's not on the masterplan, I think an area showing the use of native plants, besides purely ornamental, would be nice.

For more info on the gardens, check out this link.

Mushrooms

Here in Humboldt County, when mushroom collecting is mentioned people giggle. Ah...what kind of mushrooms?

Edibles

I'm interested in mushrooms I can eat without hallucinating or going to the hospital, so let's set the record straight. So last night I attended the Humboldt Bay Mycological Society meeting with my coworker, Bill, who knows his mushrooms well, to have a look at table displays of various fungi.

These are oyster mushrooms. They grow on dead and dying alders. Could be in our yard...

These are Golden Chanterelles. They have ridges instead of gills. Bill found gallons of them around where he lives, and is making up a big batch of cream of mushroom soup (and he's bringing some into work). He tends to find them growing near spruce trees under evergreen huckleberry and sword ferns. Could be in our yard...

Below are "Lobster Mushrooms." The red color is actually a mold that grows on other mushrooms and I guess it makes them taste good. You just have to be sure that the host is an edible mushroom! Don't know where these grow.

Bill regularly collects about six species of mushrooms and the only one besides the ones above I can remember him collecting is the Chicken of the Forest (sorry, no picture). This is a bright orange frilly shelf fungi that grows on hemlock and doug firs. Only the tips of the frill are soft enough to eat.



Other tips from Bill: Wash wild (and edible, make sure they're edible) mushrooms well under warm water and cook before eating. Steer clear of mushrooms with white gills and rings.



Inedibles



Well, I know these are in our yard.



From left to right: Strobilurus trulisatus, Pholiota terrestris, and the last two are some species of Lepiota. The scientific names of these are sketchy because the handwriting on the labels were pretty bad. (I brought in the mushrooms and had them identified). The Photinia was growing in the coastal prairie. There are also tons of what Bill calls LBMs or Little Brown Mushrooms (not easy to identify).

Well, hopefully tomorrow I'll have a chance to scrounge around the forest to see what I find. Top prize: Golden Chanterelles!

Resources:
California Fungi

Ghost Orchids of Humboldt County

I stumbled across an article about ghost orchids (click on the link for info and a beautiful photo). It made me begin to think about those mysterious plants, to me anyway, that reside right here in Humboldt County.

• Taxus brevifolia (never seen one in the wild, though I know people who have seen it).
• Calypso bulbosa (seen it a few times. Beautiful little orchids. There is/was a whole colony at Big Lagoon, but they seem to have disappeared--seasonal thing? hope so.)
• Euonymus occidentalis (Seen only one growing wild up the street, but the neighbors recently cut back the whole area, euonymus and all)