Category Archives: Plant Communities

Redmond’s Dry Canyon Firewise Management Plan, a Critique and Call to Action

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Those who follow such things know that I’ve been involved in the preservation and enhancement of Redmond’s Dry Canyon, joining with others to form the Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area as an advocacy group, working to educate the public about its qualities and fragility, while also providing ‘boots on the ground’ with clean up projects and the control of threatening Invasive plants. Most recently we’ve been supporting other groups and participating with a guided naturalist walk, a bat walk and a recent Botany and Birds, walk with the High Desert Chapter of the Oregon Native Plant Society and Queer as Flock, a bird watcher’s group. We’ve been advocating for better signage, a trails management plan and for increased efforts to control the illegal use of electric and gas powered motorcycles in the Canyon. Additionally we have be doing the Juniper survey work for the City, to help create a plant data base linked with the City’s GIS program to aid them/us in the development of an effective management plan for Dry Canyon. We’ve only been recently notified, along with the rest of the public, that the City has a new Dry Canyon Firewise Management Plan (a PDF is linked below), which we were assured included participation by foresters, local natural resource and conservation groups…yet, somehow, they’ve produced a one dimensional plan with the singular priority of eliminating the chances of a catastrophic fire, while ignoring virtually all other priorities!!!! Continue reading →

The Eager Beaver: Sociology, Ecology and the Role of Relationship in Life and Community

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Ben Goldfarb’s, “Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why they Matter”, is an excellent model for other authors who write on ecology for the interested lay public. It is also an excellent entry for the novice into the world and thinking of ecology. As in any other ecological examination of a species, Goldfarb tells us about the roles and relationships the beaver has in their particular landscapes, how they fit in. In doing this he tells its history, that is, its historical role in the lives of us humans, and we in its, alongside those it shares intimately with the other species of its biotic community. It is a book very much about this important animal’s relationships, and, by extension those of our own and every other species on the planet. The beaver’s, or as the author also refers to them, the Castorid story, (the latinized name of our North American species is Castor canadensis, its old world counterpart, the other species, Castor fiber) is closely linked to our own. We, as the ‘dominant’ player in our landscape, have overlooked the beaver’s pivotal role in the world of water including the rivers, streams, ditches, ponds and seeps that ‘water’ the desert. Beavers were essential in the historical landscape and now, in their absence, our landscapes are often very much diminished. Wildlife, and even farmers and ranchers, who have often vilified them, are slowly beginning to understand the benefits their presence can provide, benefits that far out weigh any negative impacts they bring with them. People are, however, stubborn with long and selective memories. It is not easy for anyone to let their misconceptions go and accept what you have always rejected as patently false. Continue reading →

On Our Western Juniper Survey in Redmond’s Dry Canyon

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This is an explanation of the importance of the survey work being done by the Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area, FNDCNA, and it’s role in the creation of a broader management plan, and a fire management plan, that addresses both community safety needs, as well as those of the Western Juniper and Sagebrush steppe plant communities in Dry Canyon. This is a 160 acre portion of the Canyon Park that stretches 3.7 miles, north to south, through the City, a remnant of one of the canyons formed by one of the previous courses of the paleo-Deschutes River, (There were at least two, one some distance east of Redmond’s location, joining with the Crooked River at present day Smith Rock State Park. The current Deschutes River flows 4 miles to the west of this location through a canyon carved in its earlier stages by Tumalo Creek.) Continue reading →

On Biology, Ecology, Evolution: Health as a Product of an Engaged Life Aided by Science

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Biology, the ‘life sciences’, botany, evolution, cell biology, ecology, health and disease, plant communities, our relationship as humans with each other, geology and the life around us, are all topics that interest me. My most recent reading choices have focused on embryology and an organism’s capacity to maintain homeostasis, what is meant by ‘health’. Earlier I focused on the big question of ‘What is life?’ I’m an integrator, an intuitor, an assembler of conceptual puzzles. For me understanding is the goal and that usually involves understanding the ‘pieces’ of the puzzle and fitting them together into coherent wholes. That’s what I do when I select books and read. While my fiction choices are relatively wide and varied, when it comes to this question, I am far more focused, purposeful. I am not overly concerned with being correct in terms of conventional thought or even regarding that which is accepted as being scientifically correct. I’m looking for what makes ‘sense’. I ‘test’ what I read.

Science is conservative and rightly so. It works to define a foundation from which we may build on. Many, if not all scientific advances, came at the expense and pain of researchers who reach beyond the established to address the problems that accepted theory has revealed as the process advances. Egos and careers can get crushed. Arguably, every significant advance in science began as a controversial idea. Over time, with repeated experimentation, advances in technologies that enable scientists to address questions not previously possible, new insights and ways to ask the ‘question’, the new gains support, or alternatively, is revealed to be ‘wrong’. In this process other questions arise, that move us toward a more complete ‘truth’, a truth that enlightening and revealing, can never be the ultimate answer. What preceded it was not necessarily ‘wrong’, but more likely incomplete, unable to fully explain the world as our understanding of it itself changes. Science becomes a process of understanding at an ever finer scale. What once served, still does, but in a coarser grained way. Occasionally, it demands a radical rethink of our basic understanding of reality. Continue reading →

Holodiscus microphyllus, Rock Spiarea in Dry Canyon

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Another less common slope dweller is Holodiscus microphyllus, or Bush Ocean Spray, a deceiving name, or Rock Spiarea, which is also somewhat confusing. Confusing because Spiarea is the genus name for an entirely different genera of shrubs. So I call it simply Holodiscus. ( Botanical names can be confounding to the uninitiated. I’m not a big user of mnemonics, but I still remember first learning this plant’s close relative, Holodiscus bicolor, and the phrase immediately came to mind, ‘Holy Discus, Batman!” I know, silly, but I doubt I will ever forget that plant.)

This typically occurs on the eastern flank of the Cascades and in the mountains of SE Oregon. The common name, ‘rock’, suggests its preferred sites. I’ve not seen one in Dry Canyon bottomland. It seems most common below the east rim north of the Maple Bridge. Continue reading →

That Gray Stuff? It’s All Sagebrush…Nope

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Part of the Dry Canyon plant series

Everybody knows Juniper and I suspect that a lot of people who think they know Sagebrush, that ubiquitous gray shrub you see everywhere, may be confusing it with other plants, blurring all ‘gray’ shrubs into one. Now this may not seem to be a big deal, but if you are trying to manage a landscape with these in them or trying to create a landscape which reflects the local plant communities, then it becomes much more important that you know what you have so that you can evaluate your landscape’s condition and decide upon what you may need to do, or stop doing, to meet your goals. Continue reading →

The Cut Leaf Thelypody in Dry Canyon

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[Plants of the Dry Canyon Natural Area – This will be the start of a new series focused on the plants of Redmond’s Dry Canyon. I’m creating them to be posted for ‘local’ consumption on the Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area. It’s a City Park including about 166 acres at the north end of Dry Canyon Park which the City has identified as a Natural Preserve. The group works as an advocate with the City, on public education and helping with on the ground work projects. I’ll identify each such post here.]

As you walk the trails below the canyon rims you will be seeing these growing scattered and in bunches. This is the Cut Leaf Thelypody, Thelypodium lacinatum. These are common where ever there’s a bit of soil between the rocks on the slopes below the rims growing amongst the tumble of massive basalt. I’ve seen these elsewhere growing in other eastside Oregon canyons with similar conditions.
These are members of the Mustard family, prolific seed producers and quite competitive. Another plant that, at least so far, doesn’t venture out into the canyon’s bottomland.
Elegant when it first starts flowering, like so many native annuals and perennials, these start declining while they proceed through their flowering season detracting from their appearance. What do I mean…each spent flower, begins to form its narrow, linear, Mustard seed capsule, quickly maturing its tiny seed and then drying, twisting and browning, while the inflorescence continues to bloom out towards its terminal end. A little messy, yes, but characteristic of these plants. We humans are relatively intolerant of such decline in our garden plants and so generally refuse them admission. Under the local wild conditions, as dry as they are, species tend to either be early flowering, when soil moisture is still most available or those like this that begin to decline before the show is over. Summer drought is a ‘cruel’ taskmaster. There are exceptions to this rule but….

https://oregonflora.org/taxa/index.php?taxon=8778

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, A Review

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Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist, ecologist, a teacher and a member of the Potawatomi people of the Great Lakes region, from whom she learned her people’s particular world view, one once common amongst many indigenous peoples and in stark contrast to that of our present day dominant culture, which has lead us to powerfully shape our our world today. Her three popular books, “Gathering Moss”, “Braiding Sweetgrass” and her latest, “The Serviceberry”, present to the reader a glimpse into the natural world as seen from this ‘alternative’ world view. All three are enlightening reads and not overly technical. They are ‘invitations’ to see the world from a different perspective. The latest is the smallest, a book barely over 100 pages, with large type and in a small page format…a quick read, unless you pause to give what she presents some additional thought. The best, and the one I read first, is “Braiding Sweetgrass”.  Continue reading →

The Seat of Awareness: On Plants and What We can Learn from Them

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“From the viewpoint of the evolutionary biologist it is reasonable to assume that the sensitive, embodied actions of plants and bacteria are part of the same continuum of perception and action that culminates in our most revered mental attributes. “Mind” may be the result of interacting cells. Mind and body, perceiving and living, are equally self-referring, self-reflexive processes already present in the earliest bacteria.”
—Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan, “What is Life?”, 1995

From what do sentience, awareness, consciousness and intelligence come from? Are these capacities a product of an organism’s complexity? At what point does it first appear? is it a property inherent to even the simplest organic chemicals? of peptide chains and amino acids, of atoms themselves?What of the organizing principle that seems to guide embryogenesis, the growth and form of every living individual of every species? Is it in action in the most ‘simple’ interactions between organic chemicals and the energy flowing through them, that favors one form over another and animates those same forms once they meet some critical minimal level of complexity?  Is this evolution towards complexity and ‘awareness’ an inevitability? A product of its component parts and the energies within it? [This is an idea that is separate from the notion of an inevitable ‘progress’ of life, always moving ‘forward’. Progress is a human notion, an assessment and a valuation of the change around us, not a ‘goal’ of natural selection and the animating ‘flux’ of energies within the universe.] Rudimentary awareness must exists at some necessary and basic level in the simplest single celled organisms…even in plants.

I look to that which is shared between all organisms and question the idea of the animal brain, and its neural system, as the basis for these things and its purported absence in plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses and archaea, as lacking in them. The brain itself and associated nervous system is a unique and complex structure present only in ‘higher’ animals. This bias in favor of the brain and neural systems, especially that of the human brain, as the seat of awareness and consciousness, ignores the requirements of any organism. We are biased in our insistence that these capacities must be located in a singular physical organ and no other. A singular occurrence in the universe. A huge conceit on our part, that this capacity exists in us alone, in and organ and tissues we could could physically evaluate, one which we ‘carry’ internally within us as we move freely about. The body, any body, is a vessel which contains life and is shaped by it. Life is both of the body and transcendent, existing beyond it. Life exists within the continuously unfolding moment. Life is not a ‘thing’ so one can hardly expect awareness, consciousness and intelligence to fit neatly into a limited organ, however we define it. The roots of this reach back into the study of evolution, ecology, cell biology, neurobiology, the metabolism and thermodynamics of life and the expanding field of quantum biology.

This latest thought piece has been inspired by three recent books I’ve read, Ed Yong’s, “An Immense World”, Paco Calvo’s, “Planta Sapiens” and Zoe Schlanger’s, “The Light Eaters”. I am not a scientist. I’m a student driven to make sense of this world. The connections and conclusions I make here are mine, although they may be suggested by the writings of others. Continue reading →

On Ornamental Trees and the Remaking/Unmaking of Place: Revising the City of Redmond’s Tree List, part 2

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How Much to Water?

Recommending trees from climates with significantly wetter growing seasons needs to stop if we are to continue growing our population. Landscapes as designed, and managed, are the single largest user of residential water. Recommending trees which ignore this problem is irresponsible. Lower water use residential landscapes are possible. Local codes and recommendations must, however, reflect this priority.

Additionally, how much to water is a bit of a mystery to all of us and especially so to non-gardeners. How much? How often? Our watering practices should be determined by the local precipitation and the tree’s needs. What is commonly done, however, is that we water for our lawns and that largely determines what our trees receive, unless we have separate drip systems. A tree’s root system doesn’t stay neatly between the lines. They quickly extend out well beyond the span of the tree’s leafy canopy. In many cases even 2-3 times as far, taking up water and nutrients. A roots of a tree, planted in a small bed, adjacent to an irrigated lawn area, will move out into the lawn. A tree isolated in a xeric bed with only a few drip emitters, will quickly demand more than such a meager system affords it and such a tree, if it requires summer moisture, will struggle while competing with its nearby  ground level growing neighbors. Again ‘neighbors’ should share compatible requirements so all can thrive on the same ‘diet’ and moisture regime. Continue reading →