Some of this year's mast production and a couple artifacts of years gone by.
It's a mast year for the Douglas firs. I was reminded of that as the pollen cones crunched beneath the tires of my wheelchair. They are everywhere and in greater abundance than I recall seeing ever before. Besides bringing back memories of the miserable time Kitty and I have had with our allergies, it also brought to mind the little winged seed pod below.
Actual size about 1/8 to 3/16 inch
The little wonder floated down to the glass-top table on our deck one afternoon. It came from one of the mature Douglas firs that grow in my backyard. Crammed inside are all the instructions needed to both assemble and operate one of the 250 foot giants that we know as Pseudotsuga menziesii. Our relatively small half-acre lot is home over a dozen of the wonderful things. One of the projects I had in mind prior to the stroke was making a master list of all the mature specimens in the back half of the property. My plan was to tag them, calculate their individual heights and maybe their ages, and take photographs of their various main characteristics, I finally may get around to that once the summer weather gets here; in the meantime I'm continuing to study and plan for the endeavor.
A view of the backyard showing several inhabitants.
There are abundant resources on the Web for this kind of endeavor, including the State's own DNR, WNPS, and many more. And just recently I ran across a particularly handy app that I would recommend for those with less of an academic interest in the subject.
Trees PNW its called, and besides being deceptively full of easily accessed information, it's free! It's also quite easy to use and makes a handy field reference.
Cliff Cantor, developer of the app keeps a nifty blog going as a companion piece. In one of his posts he estimates that a mature Douglas Fir can produce upwards of 10,000,000 seed pods in its 500 year lifetime. It's no wonder these mighty giants have taken over so much of the forest land of the West. They've certainly taken over a part of my heart, that's for sure!