I'm a Hawaii plant guy and would like to be a part of this blog and pix scene, but I dont understand how it works. How do I become involved? I apologize for my ignorance, but a brief step-by-step guide might help.

Much aloha to you, too, Ken. Here's your step-by-step guide, courtesy of Andy Carvin.

Step 1: If you're not a member yet, join Flickr. It doesn't cost anything to join, though if you want to use it to share a lot of photos - ie, hundreds or thousands - you may want to purchase a Pro account.

Step 2: Upload some pics you'd like to share with the Talking Plants group. (If you're having trouble uploading, consult Flickr's help guide.

Step 3. Go to the Talking Plants group on Flickr and click "Join this group." You'll then have to click another button to confirm your membership.

Step 4: Find a photo from your personal collection that you'd like to add to the group. Between the title of the photo and the photo itself, you'll see a series of tabs. Click "Send to Group" then Select "Ketzel Levine's Talking Plants."

And that's it; you're done. Your photo will now be included in the group collection.

(Me again. Now even I get it. Guess it's time to finally jump into the Flickr Pool. See you there)

If you're anywhere in the southern CA area and you've never been to Antelope Valley, the time is NOW. Admittedly, I've just read that the poppies have peaked, but there's still plenty to see.

Kent writes: These were all taken just outside the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve in the high desert in the northern edge of Los Angeles County. Make a note for next year, as this shot was taken two weeks ago.

photo credit: Kent Roberts

 

Another no-brainer for you So CAL flower power types...here's a number for your cell phone: (818) 768-3533. It's the Wildflower Hotline sponsored by the Theodore Payne Foundation. Let me know if you get somewhere gorgeous and whether I should knock myself out to go, too. I could make it next wkend if you say it's a must.

Today word arrives that two young men from Flatbush have discovered that pomegranate juice can help fight cavities. Here's a bit more from Touro College contact Barbara Franklin about Zev Zelman and Elliot Lutz:

The students based their research on the knowledge that cavities are not caused by the consumption of sweets, but rather the bacteria that ferment the dietary carbohydrates to produce lactic acid, which eats away at tooth enamel. However, pomegranate juice, and to a lesser degree pomegranate tea, effectively deactivate the bacteria within 10 minutes of contact. Other beverages tested that were effective included grape juice, cranberry juice, and some wines. The other beverages tested in the research had slight or no effect on the bacteria.

So maybe this should have been a picture of pomegranates in the wild instead of Zelman and Lutz in the office of their Dean of Students (Robert Goldschmidt) to merit the TP blog? Perhaps. But if it's the thought that counts, my thinking is this: Man brags while Nature indulges.

photo credit: Richard Lobel Photography

 

Feedback, please. Do you or don't you want to see TP venturing this far from Eden?

The BBC reports:

A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface.

Wouldn't have spied this if not for our own Greg, who turned me on to http://pruned.blogspot.com/ which mixes plants with science, landscape architecture, environmental issues, all the juicy and provocative stuff. Check it out!

Guillermo Meraz, aka Guissimo, went for a recent hike near the Merced River in Mariposa County, CA., home to the Sierra National Forest. So you've got to be wondering about those blue wildflowers, huh? Guillermo has the answer:Nemophila menziesii var. menziesii, or baby blue-eyes.

photo credit: Guillermo Meraz

 

Another TP regular didn't have to go very far to find stunning spring ephemerals. The prolific and talented Aleth11 just had to wander into the woods behind her house to behold the sparkle of the truly wondrous Sanguinaria canadensis (that link will take you to the bloodroot profile from my book).

I have this note from our photographer: "These flowers ooze an orange/red color when a leaf or stem is "damaged" so I imagine that's where they got the name. Sounds like a horrible name for such a pretty flower, no? The sap is apparently toxic and has been used in salves and such on warts and skin cancer.

photo credit: Aleth11

 

Finally, though there's not a whole lot new to be said about tulips (after moving to the NW, I'm pretty much ready to give them up, except for the unimproved smallest species), TP friend Troye captured a few lovely shots that pretty much tell the story of why they'll always be a market for tulips.

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Troye's shown us his, time for you to show us yours. The Talking Plants Flickr Group has more than 300 members who've posted almost a year's worth of gorgeous, memorable and classy pix. To join, all you need is a camera and a love of the natural world. We want you!

photo credit: troye

 

You may have noticed I'm not the hippest blogster in the bunch. In other words, if it's hot and happening in the blog world, you're NOT likely to read about it here.

Believe me, I'm not bragging. I get that my creds as a blogger are slightly pathetic, possibly even considered rude, if the standard of gentility is linking to others.

So consider me a plant in need of sunlight and nourishment and help me out here. What are the enlightening, surprising, irreverent and relevant plant-related blogs I need to read?

It's a question that floats along city streets and woodlands this time every year, and an answer that changes with the light and time of day. Sometimes I hear a solo oboe, at other times a Baroque instrumental fugue.

I know this much, it's as loud and sublime as it gets during this busting-out-all-over week I'm spending in D.C. Which reminds me of a few musical moments I collected a few years back; perhaps you'll give them a listen and let me know if they sing for you.

It's hard to make out the tiny blue wildflowers amidst these dandy lions, but in this particular wildflower preseve, the non-native "weed" appears to have neither colonized nor displaced any of the native flora.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

It's a banner year for dandelions around Portland, I don't ever remember them looking so fulsome and jaunty before. They're strewn like wildflowers along parking strips, lawns and empty lots (the few that are left here in Boomtown) and by and large, their arrangements are quite picturesque.

So what's the deal? Why do millions of Americans prefer using 2,4-D to kill them instead of making dandelion fritters and enjoying the show?

No doubt the answer dates back to the heyday of the British lawn, rhapsodized and defended by no less a plant lover than one of my favorite garden writers, Anna Pavord who wrote, "dandelions are bullies. They simply had to go". At least she had the good grace to feel guilty about buying a weedkiller, but buy it and publicize it she did.

Perhaps a later blog needs to throw open the debate on 2,4-D, still very much in ample supply on the garden shelf but so clearly deserving of more consumer dissuasion. But the focus here is on the dandelion itself.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this gorgeous flower was a chrysanthemum, since both that venerable flower and this dandelion are in the same family (Asteraceae). The dandy's grown-up name is Taraxacum officinale, but at least once in its long life it was referred to as "piss-a-beds" because of its diuretic properties.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

It's been two decades since the New York Times reported on the "weirdo" Maine farmer who canned dandelion greens. Today, there are dandelion cookbooks, dandelion dinners (strictly upmarket), dandelion blogs and in honor of Passover, Jewish dandelion news:

Conveying the misery of the Israelites' slavery, bitter herbs vary from place to place and even from family to family. Ashkenazim favor freshly ground or sliced, fresh horseradish root, bottled horseradish, or romaine lettuce. Sephardim prefer bitter greens such as endive, escarole, chicory, sorrel, arugula, dandelion, or watercress.

Nearing holiness, let us not forget that dandelions make wishes come true. You just have to do is put your lips together and blow. But if you really can't bear them yet know better than to use herbicides (what, me, guilt you?) garden writer Anne Lovejoy suggests you love them to death.

The aqua-tinged, smoky-blue bud tip of native camassia.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

Never mind the body electric, mine doesn't seem to much sizzle and sing anymore, but it's no small compensation to have the time, patience and appetite for hanging out with wildflowers which, this very week along the Columbia Gorge, have burst into audacious blues. We're talking a color wave of genera that includes nothing less than lupine (a dozen different species!), forget-me-not, larkspur (a half dozen!) and pools of multi-hued camassia which I most enjoy in bud.

Doing its very best to impersonate a delphinium, behold the Northwest native Camassia. We gotta million of them. Question: is this simply C. quamash or subsp. breviflora? The pictures/descriptions in my wildflower guide don't quite settle the dispute.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Camas is the Pacific Northwest for many people, certainly for my neighbor's mother who saw fields of them when she arrived in Oregon (a young woman traveling alone from Arkansas) and decided this was where she belonged. And camas has kept untold thousands of indigenous people alive over the millennia, even the not-so-indigenous as described in this excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes:

On their trek to the west coast, Lewis and Clark saw vast meadows filled with the blue flowers of camas, noting that they looked like lakes in the distance. The hospitable indigenous people rescued the expedition from starvation offering them, among other foods, baked camas bulbs...Humans cannot easily digest raw camas blubs, so they were always cooked first...No matter how they were prepared, poor Meriwether Lewis found the bulbs indigestible, but they helped keep the Corps of Discovery alive...

...unlike the meadow death camas, Zigadenus venenosus, which is also blooming this week. One of my field guides, Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest notes that much to their later upset, members of the L&C expedition ate this bulb as well.

So, I showed you, now you show me. Natives in the woods, on the roads, by the stream? Post those pix at the Talking Plant Flickr Group and I'll share the best on the blog. If you're not flickr friendly yet, here's how.

Ketzel,

We had one of these cool little nests on our porch one summer, and watched three little beaks being fed by their parents for several weeks. All our neighbors even came for a looksee, it was simply amazing.

Well, I was there the day the little hummers decided to fly, and for all the effort that the parents put in to getting to this one day, well let me just say it was over in a blur. On their first flight out of their nests baby humming birds simply leave and never look back at their homes or their parents. Ours flitted about on the porch for a moment while they figured out their flight controls and then two of them hovered into the yard and disappeared.

The third, well he got an unexpected mid-flight dog bath.

Our black lab, which was sleeping on the porch while all this was happening, suddenly awoke to the sound of something buzzing around in front of his face, and so he instinctively snapped and much to our horror caught the little bird inside his mouth! Luckily, labs are known for their soft touch and we managed to get him to cough up a wet, drool-covered baby hummingbird. After a wash and a tissue dry, the little bird briefly scratched his head and cleaned off his beak with his foot and then he buzzed away into the sky.

That was the beginning of one of those really great summers!

Interestingly enough, my experience has been nothing like Anthony's. The birds are still in my garden and to my surprise, extremely comfortable around my own wildlife. My alleged labradoodle was lying on the ground right beneath her, and the beagle...well, the beagle...let's just say she's not something birds need worry about.

So...rats with wings...anyone get why my (as yet unnamed) colleague calls them that?

The good news is that I got to watch each of my two little tidbits flitter around the nest once they'd fledged, under the strict supervision of Mama. To witness such intimacy, so much flapping to get from branch to nearby branch ...

And the way Mama remained within inches of their every move once beyond the nest! I even got to see her feed them while she hovered mid-air, though in truth her maneuver reminded me of a far less romantic aerial refueling.

Here's one of the last shots I got before big boy here — always the more active of the two — left the nest for good. By next morning, he/she was flying solo, under Mama's constant watch.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

One of the sweetest things I witnessed was when the little guy left behind was rejoined by her/his nestmate after a long, cold day alone (how I suffered for her!). The next day, the proverbial nest was empty, and has remained so. But to my great joy, the family remains in my garden playing hide, seek and eat while enjoying the shelter of my dense Pittosporum 'Tall'n'Tough' as its primary habitat.

I'm guessing this was fledgling #1 because he/she always seemed to have more personality: more curious, always busy and ever-grooming. I suspect he/she is looking forward to the end of my fascination; posing is such hard work.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Though I am reluctant to call too much attention to "what the birds have taught me", I have had quite a few more wake-up calls re:turning fantasy and projection into fact. Shortly after baby #2 fledged, I couldn't find any of the birds. Nowhere. Not one. And earlier that same day I'd heard a scream, like a baby but not quite. So I immediately concluded the entire family had been massacred by a murder of crows.

Not.

Also, as you might remember, I was all in a flutter that one of the three original babies was dead. Another fearful projection made real. See for yourself, and blame me not! I am, alas, morbidly human.

What I first thought were three mouths are in fact only two. The bird on the right has its beak wide, wide open, while on the left, you can only see the upper beak. So much for my powers of observation but wow, what a learning curve.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Thanks to all of you who have encouraged me to hang with the hummers. I am late to the birding party, but I get it. I get it.

So far, two esteemed colleagues have offered two different opinions about what this native NW perennial is: a forget-me-not relative (think blue) or a composite (think generic yellow daisy). I'm skeptical that these buds will open to yellow; admittedly my first thought was a kind of borage, but now I'm convinced it's not. Can you help?

So very promising in bud, possibly uninteresting in flower, but it's likely I'll never find it again when I return to this wildflower preserve. What is it?

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

The grass widows (formerly known as Sisyrinchium, now split off as Olsynium) are just about done in, but the camassia has yet to begin; larkspur and lupine, except in the odd hot spot, are still playing it safe.

Not so the glacier lilies (aka yellow avalanche lily), no ma'am, no way!!!

On the hike I took with my botanically-trained piano teacher Megan Hughes, we found acres -- honestly, acres -- of Erythronium grandiflorum blooming in the woods of Catherine Creek, 90 minutes outside of Portland.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

In case you've never met, Erythronium is a fabulous genus and a very garden-friendly plant, with lovely, pendulous flowers ranging from white to yellow to pink (not all in one flower, of course). It also comes in species with showy, mottled leaves.

And while I'm making introductions, consider spending a little time with Keith Wiley, one of horticulture's most electric plantsman. Several years ago, Keith visited the Pacific Northwest searching for erythronium. Just an update since he was last here; Keith is longer with The Garden House, but did show up recently in the Royal Horticulture Society Journal.

The breadth and depth of yellow-blooming E. grandiflorum was way beyond my photographic skills; let's just say the forest floor was filthy with them as far as the eye could see. I expect to find acres of entirely different wildflowers when I return to this same preserve later in the week.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

And indeed, I will (any day now!), but first let me invite you to see life through my eyes: standing on the front porch, crouched in a fairly miserable position, camera aimed at the action in the nest.

Here it is, unedited and unemcumbered (oh shut up already) ... the video: