I was strolling along the Lacamas Creek Trail in Camas, Washington last week, happily photographing spring wildflowers, when I noticed…
Until last September Thuja plicata (western red-cedar) was the only conifer I could consistently identify, but that was only one of the…
When I first conceived of the trip to sw Oregon/nw California that I wrote about in ‘Pivoting’, I had hoped…
The 16th installment in my attempt to profile the conifers of the PNW highlights Picea sitchensis (Sitka spruce). This primarily coastal denizen,…
As I mentioned in ‘Pivoting’, I hadn’t been in a redwood forest since I was a kid, and at that…
Now we turn our attention to Abies lasiocarpa (subalpine fir, which used to be called alpine fir, until someone pointed out that…
If you can see its cones, and they haven’t disintegrated yet, Abies procera is the easiest fir to identify, because…
I’m finally ready to tackle the true firs in the genus Abies. There are 6 true firs in our region, but…
For a lepturine longhorn beetle (family Cerambycidae) that is supposedly common (I’ve found Ortholeptura valida before, one watershed to the west from…
I recently made a trip up to the Timberline Lodge area of Mt. Hood, and one of my primary objectives…