Spring Flowers to Know and Love

Our chapter president, Dana Visalli, will present  “Spring Flowers to Know and Love” at the Twisp River Pub this Tuesday. 

Dana will review our most abundant spring wildflowers and tell some of their personal stories--why they have the color, shape, size, and aroma that they do? 

You will know these little friends better after this program. He will also touch on the larger picture of how flowering plants have affected the rest of life on land.

This is a free event. Doors open at 6:00 and dinner will be available for purchase. 

The presentation will be from 7:00-8:30.

This event is in association with the Methow Conservancy.

Shooting Stars, photo by Rosalee de la Forêt

Naturally Beautiful Roadsides Project Update

Hello friends of the WNPS Okanogan Chapter,

We had a great year on our Naturally Beautiful Roadsides project. 

Richardson's penstemon was still blooming at the site on October 30th.

Background

Since autumn of 2008, chapter volunteers have cared for a short stretch of roadside along Wa. State Highway 20, between Winthrop and Twisp, from milepost 198.7 to 198.9 approximately, on both sides of the road. We broadcast native plant seeds, plant native plants, and hand-pull weeds rather than use herbicide. Each year we sign a No-Spray Agreement with the Wa. St. Dept. of Transportation (DOT).

Look for our sign!

This spring DOT installed a sign identifying our site and flexible plastic stakes that alert spray crews – red stakes at the beginning of our site mean “stop spraying”; green ones at each end of our site mean “resume spraying”. Those stakes should prevent any accidental spraying of our site. Also, we ordered small “no spray” signs to install each growing season.

Quite a lot of seed

In the past, we always hoped to collect lots of seeds for the roadside, but most years we just didn’t get it done. Still, we wanted to kick-start colorful flowers at our site. So at the 2014 annual meeting, we requested and were granted a budget of $500 to spend on the "no spray" signs described above, and seeds. We spent $474.07 to get signs and all the seeds listed below.

1 lb. of Lupinus sericeus, silky lupine

2 lb. of Linum lewisii, flax

1/2 lb. of Eriophyllum lanatum, Oregon sunshine

1/2 lb. of Penstemon venustus

Ipomopsis aggregata, scarlet gilia (both purchased seeds and seed collected by Dana Visalli, Dorothy Evans, Lucinda Tear, Juliet Rhodes and others)

And many other seeds we collected - 

Ericameria greenei, goldenweed

Erigeron pumilis and E. linearis

Purshia tridentata, bitterbrush

Lithospermum ruderale, puccoon

Gaillardia aristata, blanketflower

Mentzelia laevicaulis, blazing star

Bluebunch wheatgrass, Idaho fescue, and who knows what else

Gloria Spiwak collected penstemon and others from the MVIC native garden.

Autumn work

On a rainy October 30, a hearty crew whipped through the weeding and then put down all the seeds listed above. Peter Morrison took our bags of weeds and continues to compost them as he has in the past. In the future we plan to step back from this project, do only light weeding in spring and fall, and hope that all those seeds pay off with some flowers observable at 60 mph.

On Fire: Methow Plants, Wildlife & Fire

fire on Balky Hill on 7.19

Our local Okanogan Chapter of the Washington Native Plant Society is sponsoring a free program that Dana Visalli will be giving at the Twisp pub titled: 

On Fire: Methow Plants, Wildlife & Fire

Join us Monday evening, 

November 10th at 7 PM

doors open at 6:00 for snacks and drinks 

Dana will be discussing the adaptations that our local plant and animal species have to fire, and how they have been responding to date to the summer fires. 

It's a fascinating subject and we hope you can come and participate. 

The doors open at 6 PM for drinks, snacks and socializing.

Regarding fire, why do some of our plants resprout after a fire and some do not?  

And why are there little sunflowers blooming here and there out in the burned areas (have you seen them)? 

Beyond that, we will also briefly address the question what exactly is fire anyway--why can a stick or a tree turn to a pile of ashes--and what impact has fire had on the human evolutionary journey?  

We hope to see you there!

Field aster, Aster campestris, blooming right now,

out of season, due to the fires

Help keep our roadsides beautiful! Seed planting party...

One of our most inspiring projects could use your help! 

The Naturally Beautiful Roadsides project aims to restore native plants alongside the highway in between Winthrop and Twisp. This "no spray zone" is a testament to using natural habitat instead of harmful herbicides to control roadside weeds. 

We need your help with our Naturally Beautiful Roadsides project this month. We've planned a seeding blitz this year - we have many native wildflower seeds that need careful planting. We'll start with a quick walk-through weeding and move on to the serious work of putting in LOTS of seeds.

Thursday Oct. 30, 9am - noon, rain or shine

(We may finish earlier than noon, with your help.)

Let Joyce know if you can help, or if you have shrub-steppe seeds to donate.

Fall planting day at the Native Garden

Join us this Saturday October 18, at 9am at the Methow Valley Interpretive Center native plant garden. We'll be planting little seedlings into the garden beds. These gatherings are always fun, and we always learn from each other. With this planting the garden inventory will move above 100 species. 

Please RSVP to Rob if you can participate.

Rob Crandall 

Native Plant Sale at Twisp Farmer's Market

Fall is the perfect time to plant perennials - root growth during the winter readies them to take off and bloom in the spring. 

Our chapter and the Methow Valley Interpretive Center have joined up to sell native perennials at the Twisp Farmers' Market this Saturday only, October 4. 

Stop by and pick up some favorite native plants such as penstemon and globemallow. 

After the Fire - A special hike with Dana Visalli

Our Okanogan chapter of the WA Native Plant Society recently sponsored a special hike to observe plants after the fires. The hike was led by naturalist and current chapter president, Dana Visalli. 

About 20 people gathered to take a stroll through recently burnt habitat in the Methow Valley. With plants already springing back after the tremendous fires we had this summer all were eager to see what which plants were thriving. 

Before setting off Dana proposed these questions to ponder about fire: 

1. What is fire?  Why can you take a piece of paper or wood, raise it to certain temperature, and it disappears and cloud of smoke and heat?  What’s going on here?

2. If plants in arid regions can adapt to fire by simply resprouting from the root crown, why don’t all of the plants that grow in the Methow have the ability to resprout?

3. Why did the oxygen content of the atmosphere reach 30% during the Carboniferous Period 350 million years ago and then sink back to today’s 21%.

4. Life on land would be enormously diminished without fire.  Why is this the case?

5. It is now thought that fire was instrumental in the evolution of flowering plants, including the grasses.  Why?

Dana supplied everyone with a handout showing which native plants are increased or decreased with fire. This handout will be available in the next Methow Naturalist. You can buy your copy here. 

Here's some of the plants we saw coming up through the charred ground. 

Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana)

Pine (Pinus ponderosa)

Bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata)

Aspen (Populus tremula)

Lupine

More aspen, they were quite prolific. 

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Please sign up on our mailing list (in the upper right hand column) to be notified of our free plant walks in 2015.