Winter twigs

Shirley Cole

Winter twigs with Shirley Cole

On a surprisingly sunny Sunday morning, Nov. 7th, 2010, nine of us met Shirley Cole in the North mall parking lot. While waiting for departure time she showed us and explained various twigs, some with leaves still attached, as well as a beautiful collection of pressed leaves of shrubs we were going to look for. We carpooled along Duck Lake Road and hiked to Squirrel Crossing, at the Northern end of Duck Lake.

Under the bridge and along the easy hiking trail we found: red huckleberry, saskatoon, Pacific ninebark with its shedding bark, salmonberry, hardhack (also known as steeplebush), red-osier dogwood which has attractive red stems, and silver-grey barked cascara. Shirley almost ended up in pool of standing water reaching for a branch of Pacific crab apple. Finally, on the way back to the bridge, we were happy to see a false azalea bush.

This was a fun outing and, thanks to Shirley, a very informative one. It will be interesting to find these shrubs in the other seasons when they have foliage and berries.