New Life in the Woods

I have gradually been identifying some of the other trees in the area and there have been some nice surprises. The trees I had previously identified were a couple varieties of Oak, Madrone, Big Leafed Maple (which can be “tapped” to make syrup/sugar), Douglas Fir, and White Pine. There were a few trees that I couldn’t easily identify, however, especially in Winter. With Spring new leaves have emerged and, in a few cases blossoms.

To begin with, there were a number of relatively small trees around the cabin, some no more than shrubs, but they had a lot of brown catkins hanging down. Catkins are a slim cylindrical flower clusters that hang down from the plant. In this slightly blurry picture you can see the tan shape hanging down near the middle. That feature made these trees fairly distinctive. I finally found a picture in one of my books that matches them perfectly.

It turns out that they are California Hazel trees and the cabin is surrounded with them! In fact, they are all along the driveway here and there too. A lot of them are young, so they probably won’t produce nuts, but a bunch of them near the cabin are old enough! So, I may be able to get a nice crop of hazelnuts this Summer with any luck, if I can beat the squirrels to them.

Then, while I was working on the garden and clearing the area around it, I found this pitiful little tree. It had been smashed at one point by a falling branch or something and the boughs were wrapped with electrical tape and wire (all gone now) to hold them together. You can see the dark areas where the main trunk branches where the tape used to be. I am pretty sure this is an Apple tree! So I might get apples later this Summer.

I kept wanting to say that these were Dogwoods, but I was also convinced that those trees were a particularly East Coast phenomenon. I had missed Dogwoods as something from my childhood in Maryland (our driveway was lined with them) and never expected to see them out here. I finally found a tree identification database on the web called What Tree is That? which led me to the proper identification. It turns out that there are Dogwood trees out here and they are called Pacific Dogwoods. And that’s what I have. There are a bunch of them in the ravine below the cabin and to either side of it. They are quite pretty and they also have fruit that is edible (supposedly), although not too tasty evidently.

So, at some point this Summer or Fall, I should have Acorns (if I want to go to the trouble of processing them to make them edible), Hazelnuts, Apples, Blackberries, and lots of vegetables from my garden. There are probably lots of other edible berries and nuts around too that I haven’t identified yet… but the current list might keep me busy enough.

I have another post coming up with pictures of all the new wildflowers I have seen recently. I will also get around to putting all the pictures up on my Flickr site soon too (I promise), so you can see all the ones I didn’t include here.