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Perhaps not quite wild, but neglected -- forsythia is one of the first flowering shrubs to bloom, and hardy "volunteers" lurk in untended back lots, on the fringes of industrial sites, here there and everywhere. |
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I have no idea what this prehistoric-looking plant is. We saw it in one limited patch, along a drainage ditch on a logging road off Nanaimo Lakes Road, in the foothills. It looks like a huge fat asparagus spear, but the top opens out into a crown of stiff, spiky blossoms. |
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Fully open it's rather a festive little critter, but quite alien-looking. I must find a plant book and try to identify it; have never seen one anywhere near sea level, only by running water up in the foothills. |
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A sure sign of spring in BC is the skunk cabbage blooming in shady wooded spots, near running water. The flaming yellow "pulpit" is unmistakable; the leaves come later and eventually eclipse the blossom in size. These are in a swampy spot out in the clearcuts above Nanaimo Lakes. |
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These skunk cabbages are nearer home, in the little Beach Estates Park (a jewel of a park in a ravine from Departure Bay ferry landing up to Brooks Landing shopping centre). |
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Say what you will about the skunk cabbage -- it is decidedly proletarian and doesn't smell nice -- it's a showy and cheerful plant. It's also one of very few plants to be exothermic: it actually shows up on IR. |
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Skunk cabbage season -- early Spring -- is also trillium season. One of my favourite wild flowers, the trilliums (trillia?) don't last long... |
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... but while they last they enliven the woods like a picnic of ballet dancers. |
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In a drainage ditch near Campbell's prop shop I saw what I swear is watercress! If it only weren't a drainage ditch on a hill made out of coal mine tailings near a park that may or may not have been sprayed with herbicides, I'd have been very tempted to harvest some and make cress sandwiches. Ah well. |
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A sign of spring (mid-April) is this purple bloom -- some kind of stonecrop? -- on one particular boulder on the W shore of Newcastle Island. It's a landmark -- ephemeral but familiar -- every Spring. |
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A closer view gives some idea of the delicate beauty of the flowers. |
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The lush grass of late Spring is sprinkled with daisies and dandelions. |
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In the Brechin Hill park playing field the grass is lush and green, sprinkled with dandelions and daisies. It just makes a person want to lie in the grass and watch the clouds drift overhead... and maybe make daisy chains. |
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I don't know what these stiff, shiny little white blossoms are, but they show up in late Spring in neglected corners of vacant lots and suburban yards. |
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Beside Jon's house (and in similar green shady spots all over town) bluebells suddenly burst forth in late April to early May. |
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Over at Shingle Point, an old Lyaaksen First Nation settlement is now just ruins... ruins, and drifts of beautiful irises that someone planted many decades ago. It's stretching a point to call them "wild," but no one is tending them so at least we can call them feral. |
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I don't know what this showy, snow-white ground cover is, but it occurs in just a few places on the waterfront, growing among the stones of the seawall. |
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