Thursday, October 8, 2020

Rural cactus, two versions

On a sunny Saturday in September I hit the Cascade Nursery Trail. More on the nurseries of the trail tomorrow, but today I want to share a couple photos of an unexpected sighting while I was zooming along the roads of rural Oregon. First this craggily tree caught my eye, it's kind of a spooky beauty, right?  

Then I spotted the blue conifer to it's left, and after that, cactus!

Talk about unexpected... 

But how fun... 

This sighting reminded me of the passages Andrew has been reading out loud, from The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Whenever those boys hit a patch of opuntia—which was surprisingly frequent—he'd share the tale. 

I know these aren't native (like the ones Lewis and Clark encountered) but it's still fun to see them growing in a rural setting in Western Oregon...

Weather Diary, Oct 7: Hi 75, Low 53/ Precip 0 

All material © 2009-2020 by Loree Bohl for danger garden. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

11 comments:

  1. I love that Andrew has been reading passages from the book out loud. I'm adding the book to my library shelf.

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  2. It's sweet of Andrew to share those passages with you, knowing how much you'll appreciate them.

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    1. I wish I would have thought to include one or two here.

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  3. Just a couple of days ago, I was thinking I wanted to read of their travels to see what our country looked like before the settlers put their indelible mark on it. How prescient!

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  4. Opuntia is even a native here. I am not sure which one but I have often thought about the pioneers walking across this country and running into these plants. How they might have been harmed before they knew what these plants were. I wonder just how the opuntias got here. Did the natives bring them? This was originally a forested area but we are very near the prairie lands.

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    1. Yes a couple of the passages he read me involved picking glochids and spines out of their feet.

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  5. Have to agree with the comments about the book and Andrew. But I would be remiss if I did not say that a leafless oak tree is the most scary and majestic of all trees. October in Wisconsin is always very Sleepy Hollow.

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    1. Add a little fog and you're ready for Halloween!

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  6. It is native here in Arizona and it seeds in easily (most species anyway). I think it is Opuntia that were brought to Australia and now they are a terrible problem! Just all over and not fun to try to remove. Those spines, but especially the glochids are mean, mean, mean!

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