Oak Gall

The leaves have fallen long ago from the local Oak trees but the brown leaves and galls remain on the ground.  Caused by insects injecting chemicals into the foliage, galls are abnormal plant growth and don't generally damage the health of the host tree

Hair Ice

With the recent sub-freezing weather I was hoping for more Hair Ice on our property.  I only found one example of this delicate and relatively rare ice formation.

Same twig 6 days later:

Closeup of same twig

Found another Alder branch a few feet away with similar ice formation

Found some more this morning, 1-4-2014

Closeup of the above picture; the pores in the wood are incredibly small- I got as close as I could with my 180mm macro lens.  This picture only covers an area of about 1" x 1"

False Bugbane, Trautvetteria caroliniensis

A native perennial member of the Buttercup family, False Bugbane contains chemicals that are irritating to the skin.

Spreading stonecrop, Sedum divergens

These flowers were found growing out of a dry, rocky outcropping at Lucia Falls County Park in SW Washington.

Trail Plant or Pathfinder, Adenocaulon bicolor

Growing along a path at Moulton Falls County Park in SW Washington, these native flowers are easy to miss since they are quite small.  The "bicolor" in the botanical name for this plant is due to the green front side and silvery back side of the leaves.

I folded a leaf up so you can see the green front-side and silvery back-side of the leaves

Lewis's mock-range, Philadelphus lewisii

With the sun going down, I had to take a relatively long exposure which didn't help with the sharpness of this photo as there was also a small breeze that kept everything in motion.  Anyway, I have walked all over Moulton Falls Park and can only find this one mock-orange plant in the area and it is an absolute tangle of small branches growing in a steep canyon.  It is a native perennial.

Western Boykinia, Boykinia occidetntalis

Here is another native, perennial resident of a year-round seep upstream of Moulton Falls on the East Fork of the Lewis River in SW Washington.