Tag Archives: growth

Strange Little Isolated Tree

Sometimes you just don’t have the right gear with you. I had gone to Juanita Bay after work and was only carrying one camera with the 500mm on it. Looking down in to the water to one side of me, I was quite taken by a stump in the water that had a new growth of a small tree coming from the top of it. It was too far away to get a decent shot with the phone so the 500mm was the only option. I took a sequence of shots to stitch together later on. I quite like the separation that you get with using such a long lens for a shot like this. I wonder how large the tree will ultimately grow to be given the limitations of its home!

How Much Can Grow on a Thatched Roof?

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Plenty of the houses in Longparish are thatched. One of them has a roof line that drops very low to the ground on one side of the house with the door and windows on the other side. That must be the side that gets more light. The back side of the house seems to be very shaded with the result that there is a lot of growth on the roof. It was covered in various lichens/mosses. I wonder whether they degrade the thatch or actually provide an additional layer of insulation.

Rooftop Growth

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We were taking a walk around the arboretum in Seattle. It is owned by the University of Washington I think (if not, let me know in the comments) and it is laid out with various areas to spend time if you choose to stop walking for a while. There is one open-sided building which could be used for a picnic of you were so inclined. What caught my eye was just how much there was growing on the roof of the structure. If you were looking down on it, it might be totally camouflaged!

Crazy Single Tree – I Think

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As we walked through the grounds of Chateau Ste. Michelle after the Avants car event, we came across this tree. As we looked at it we concluded that it was a single tree that was coming out of the ground in various places. However, we are not arborists so could be completely wrong. It just looks like it springs from a single source under ground and breaks the surface in various places. If you know about trees and more specifically this tree, let me know.

Fungus and Rings of the Log

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This tree trunk had been cut a while back. I was interested to see that some fungus was growing on the cut surface of the wood. However, there was clearly something about the outer rings of the wood that provided nutrients to the fungus that the older wood inside did not. The growth was focused on the outer rings only and there was absolutely no fungus on the inner layers. I wonder what the reason for this was. Any suggestions?

Log Feeding New Life

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I am regularly fascinated by the way in which a fallen tree will be the source of food for new plants. The decaying wood releases nutrients and provides a great base for the next generation. Of course, as it decays further, the base may gradually disappear from under them. In the interim, though, any number of plants will sprout and develop. I came across one such log in Meerkerk Gardens. It seemed to be home to any number of new plants (and that ignores the insect species that were, no doubt, hard at work on its surface).

Tulip Festival

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The Skagit Valley sits about an hour north of Seattle and is home to a lot of tulip farms. The spring is the time for the tulip festival. Unfortunately, the beginning of the festival was not a great time for us to get up there with other things going on. However, as things calmed down for us, we were able to get up there towards the end of things. We may have missed the peak time but there was still some impressive stuff to see (and hopefully quite a few less people!).

The fields were absolutely full of tulips. They filled your field of view and you quickly became blasé about the vibrance of color around you. Finding a way to try and convey the sight was a little trickier. The thing I did find particularly visually appealing was the way that people would be walking along the paths between the flowers but appear to be afloat in a sea of flowers. They were all busy photographing themselves in amongst the tulips so were not aware that they were the subject of more than one photo.