Camping trip at Cowichan Lake

The past couple days I had a productive camping trip at Cowichan Lake.

I learned to differentiate between some species which look may similar to my untrained eye, such as wall lettuce (Mycelis muralis) and nipplewort (Lapsana communis). Both are skinny green plants of a similar height (around 1m) with small yellow flowers, but they have very different leaves. Nipplewort has gently toothed ovate shape, but wall lettuce has well-defined lobes of different sizes on each leaf; I would describe wall lettuce leaves as bilaterally symmetrical, but irregular.

Several species of raspberry (Rubus) were observed: black raspberry (R. leucodermis) , thimbleberry (R. parviflorus) , salmonberry (R. spectabilis), and what appeared to be a Himalayan blackberry (R. bifrons) seedling at the edge of the campsite. The thimbleberries were green to light pink, so not quite ripe yet, but the black raspberries were sweet and delicious.

Red huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium) is a most interesting plant. It is an ericaceous (lime-hating) plant, so its presence around the campground indicates the soil was acidic. It was often seen growing on or near rotting wood, and my field guide [1] mentioned this. The berries can be eaten raw, however they are tart. An American robin (Turdus migratorius) was seen plucking berries off the shrub.

I saw a new (to me) bird, the black-throated grey warbler (Setophaga nigrescens), which is all black, white and grey except for a yellow spot under the eye. Some other birds I heard but did not see, were Swainson's Thrush (Catharus ustulatus) and Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus).

There were a couple unknown species, in particular if anyone knows about the plant with pink, orchid-like flowers, I would like to hear more: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/53555171

[1] Pojar, J., and MacKinnon, A. (2004). Revised Plants of Coastal British Columbia. Lone Pine Publishing, Vancouver. B.C.

Posted on 19 de julho de 2020, 08:13 AM by crosa