Tag Archives: nature

When will Capitol Hill-grown magic mushrooms be legal in Seattle?

Posted on by
18

A wavy cap found on Capitol Hill (Image: CHS)

A home-grown culture of psilocybe cubensis (golden teachers). (Image: Colby Bariel)

By Colby Bariel/UW News Lab

A Capitol Hill expert has taught hundreds of people, from grandmothers to neuroscientists how to cultivate magic mushrooms guiding many into the world of psychedelics.

With years of teaching experience, they cover the responsible use of entheogens, contemporary psychedelic theory, and their therapeutic applications.

“Psychedelics are meaning-making chemicals,” the expert tells CHS. “Magic mushrooms are therapeutic, not medicinal.”

Their work is facilitated by a 2021 Seattle City Council decree decriminalizing the noncommercial cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms and several other entheogens. This decision has allowed Seattle residents to engage in home-mycology and explore the spiritual, religious, and therapeutic experiences offered by psychedelics.

But Seattle is not yet safe for psychonauts. And the shadows of the Trump administration have darkened the situation to the point where recent progress here is being slowed and rolled back.

While personal psilocybin cultivation is decriminalized, its use remains illegal. In February, a man on First Hill was busted for what police said was a “drug lab” with thousands of dollars worth of magic mushrooms set up inside a First Hill apartment unit.

Organizations like REACH (Responsible Entheogen Access & Community Healing Coalition) Washington are advocating for state-level entheogen decriminalization.

Oregon is already a step ahead. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | No, you can’t (entirely) blame your Capitol Hill pollen allergies on botanical sexism

Posted on by
4

Sunflowers need insect visitors to move their pollen around and many bees are happy to oblige! (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Dandelions and their relatives are examples of monoecious plants that have both male and female parts contained within a single flower (though their flowerheads are actually made up of many individual flowers). (Image: Brendan McGarry)

I spend a lot of time outside. I tend the garden, I walk the dog, I nerd out on nature, and I even manage to sit still and relax occasionally.

These are all activities I am grateful to be able to enjoy because I know that not everyone has the same opportunities, nor can they enjoy certain seasons with the same zest.

Unlike a few of my close friends, I don’t have seasonal allergies, and have never had to look at pollen counts or use medications to simply struggle through each day. (Though woe is me, I am fairly certain I am allergic to hops.) According to the CDC, around a quarter of the adults in the US have the seasonal allergy rhinitis or hay fever, which is caused by the body’s reaction to plant pollen – so it’s not unreasonable that those of you reading don’t share my joy right now.

Most plants produce pollen and all pollen is produced for one purpose – to transfer male gametes from one reproductive structure to another, receptive one. You might read this as “I’m allergic to plant sperm,” but that’s not quite accurate. Pollen are gametophytes that generate sperm once they come into contact with an embryo sac – be that on the pistil of a flowering plant or the female cone of a gymnosperm (e.g. conifers). Just like the plants that produce them, pollen is extremely varied, the better to be conveyed by a variety of animals, as well as wind, water, or a mixture of all of the above. (If you really want to get into the weeds, both pollen and the embryo sac can be considered separate organisms from their parents but let’s not complicate things.)

A microscopic view of the pollen grains from a diversity of plants reveals a hallucinatory range of shapes, colors, and textures that help transport them between plants and protect them from getting gobbled up or destroyed by the environment. (Pollen can last for days, where raw sperm would not last hours in most conditions.) Animal pollinated plants tend to have larger, stickier, and more protein rich pollen to cling to pollinators and offer them a reward, while wind pollinated plants tend to have lighter, loftable pollen, (some even have air sacs) to balloon them as far as possible.

A couple weeks ago, Justin (our illustrious leader here at CHS), sent me an unreal looking image of a Georgia skyline filled with pollen. Accompanying this (real) image (from six years ago) were comments blaming the highest pollen count in state history on cities planting only male trees. I am often late to the party on social media happenings (Justin once asked me a question on Twitter and I finally responded a year later and didn’t even realize how tardy I was), but apparently a few years ago the idea of botanical sexism hit TikTok by storm after a single video rested the weight of all pollen allergies on the shoulders of city planners, horticulturalists, and arborists “only planting male trees.” The idea is that these male trees spew forth their pollen everywhere, and with nowhere to go, they just go forth to clog up our bodies with histamines.

Botanical sexism is a term coined by a researcher and horticulturalist named Tom Ogren, who theorized that because of a supposed preferential planting of male plants in landscaping, we are having more societal issues with pollen allergies. At surface value, this sounds pretty reasonable, and it’s true that in some cases, tree varieties bred to not produce fruit or seeds (remember the cherries of last month’s Pikes/Pines) or only clones of male trees get planted in urban spaces. Gingko trees are a good example of this, because female gingkos are almost never planted as street trees or in ornamental gardens because their prodigious fruit production is frankly horrendous, generating rotting piles of inedible fruit that can become health hazards. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Genus Prunus — It is time to enjoy Seattle’s wealth of cherry trees

Posted on by
2

March is about one thing for me: anticipating spring. Every day I listen to more and more avian voices, thrilled by the steady increase in volume, stretching my ears to hear the first swallows and warblers. But mostly, I spend the days leading into spring anticipating the breaking of buds to reveal the season’s leaves and flowers.

For many, there is no better embodiment of this anticipation than the members of the genus Prunus, known as cherries.

Unless you live under a rock, you know that cherries are famous for their blossoms. Across the world people flock to bask in their annual profusions of all flavors between white, pink, and purple. The University of Washington Quad is locally famous for their Yoshino cherries (Prunus Ă— yedoensis), which bear brilliant blooms before their leaves even hint at emerging. Of any country in the world, Japan takes cherry worship to unmatched heights with the number of cultivars they claim (several hundred depending on your definition), the tradition of Hanami (gathering to picnic and enjoy the blooms each year), and the use of the sakura (cherry blossom) as an important cultural symbol. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Hair ice: beautiful proof it is a wonderful chilly day between the 45th and 55th parallel

Posted on by
4

Some Washington State hair ice (Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

Have you ever encountered something that you have no explanation for? Maybe it’s the way someone is behaving towards you. Possibly, an object out of place that you swear was just here. Or, it’s a nature encounter that leaves you unsure of what you’ve just seen.

That’s how I felt on a morning walk in the forest outside Marblemount, Washington several years ago. The night before had been quite cold, and as I crept through the riverine forest of alder and cottonwood lining the Skagit River, leaves crackled underfoot. Like any forest, dead branches were strewn about, jettisoned by a combination of decay and force. And then something caught my eye: curling out of several branches about me, was something that looked like hair. I stopped and looked closer. I gently touched one of them and it was cold and melted against my warm fingers. Maybe this was just a weird ice formation – but why was it only on these dead branches?

Without sounding conceited, I am very confident in my naturalist abilities. I am good at identifying plants and animals and I can develop a good working theory on most animal behavior I witness. Rarely does an encounter on or near my home ground stump me. But here I was looking at this thing protruding from rotting sticks that I had never seen before. So, like any good naturalist, I took some photos and notes, and trotted off to try to figure out what it was on the internet.

As it turns out, I was not alone in surprise and uncertainty when encountering hair ice.

In 1918 a German meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, formally described this enigma, and suggested that it was not just a new ice formation, but that it could be related to fungus undoubtedly lurking in the damp, decaying sticks he found it protruding from. Wegener is now noted for his theory of continental drift, but he was also a polar explorer who knew a thing or two about ice and he was pretty sure he wasn’t looking at only frozen water.

It took almost 100 years for anyone to reveal more of this. Wegener froze to death in an ill-fated expedition to Greenland in 1930 and offered no more on the subject. But researchers blessed with more advanced tools were able to discern and confirm what Wegner had deduced. Fungus was key to the formation of hair ice. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Why mixed-species flocks enjoy communal winter meals on Capitol Hill

Posted on by
2

A Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula), a less gregarious winter migrant to the hill. They are often found in mixed-species flocks but are outnumbered, at least 10-1, by Golden-crowned Kinglets. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Everywhere I looked there were birds. Sprites in perpetual motion, determined to find their next meal. Kinglets, chickadees, creepers, nuthatches, and wrens worked through the forest understory as I sat watching. It hardly felt like they noticed me. If I kept still enough, I’d just melt into the background, or at least that’s how it feels when you encounter a winter feeding flock.

Back in October I started noticing mixed-species flocks of chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets, and a few Pacific Wrens around my yard. This is my personal cue for the changing of the seasons. When the last of the year’s fledglings are self-sufficient, the winter migrants have arrived, and breeding territories are moot, it’s officially winter. The majority of birds are now much more concerned with surviving the cold, less abundant months, than defending their corners of the forest or your backyard.

Call them mixed-species foraging flocks or winter feeding flocks, every year these groups of birds form during the non-breeding season on Capitol Hill and across our region. They move together, across the landscape, foraging as they go, all day long.

The birds that make up these flocks in our part of the world have a fair amount in common. They are all small, active birds that eat a lot of insects (but also seeds and fruit). Most of them glean their meals from tree bark crevices and the undersides of leaves. Some are faster moving and more balletic, like kinglets, twirling about foliage and eating unseen tiny morsels. And others feel more methodical, like Brown Creepers, who do as they are named and crawl up and down tree trunks in search of sustenance. But they all seem to see the value of keeping close together while foraging this time of year. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Hey pilgrim, those hardworking earthworms having a feast beneath Capitol Hill are colonizers

Posted on by
Reply

The worms in the bottom of a compost cone (Image: Brendan McGarry)

Amidst the pungent, half decomposed pile at my feet writhed a mass of life. Countless gnats whirled about, a Devil’s Coachman Beetle scurried to cover, and small, indeterminate grubs wriggled through coffee grounds and slimy banana peels.

And there were so many worms.

Staring at them, I realized a few things simultaneously. First, I have no idea what species I was observing. And two that I didn’t know if we have many native worms on the Hill or elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

I’ve been composting since childhood, in charge of emptying our family food waste into a worm bin and later into a lazy pile in our regular compost after my parents decided they couldn’t bother with worm bin upkeep. Memories of rodents scurrying about my feet during nocturnal visits to deposit kitchen scraps encouraged me to start using a plastic cone with a porous basket buried underground for our household waste. It restricts rodent access while allowing other creepy crawlies access to do their job. Continue reading →

No, Bob, coyotes are not a Seattle public safety problem

Posted on by
38

This coyote stole someone’s shoe in September in Volunteer Park — before giving it back. Thanks to that temporarily shoe-less neighbor for sharing the picture.

Seattle City Council public safety chair Bob Kettle has more than street disorder and public drug use on his mind.

The council member representing downtown, Magnolia, and Queen Anne also wants to protect you from your neighborhood coyotes.

“Like many of you, I have personally dealt with menacing coyotes when I’ve walked through Queen Anne, I am concerned to see that the coyote issue has escalated beyond being a nuisance to the point that one of our neighbors was attacked while protecting her dog,” Kettle said in a message to constituents earlier this month. “I have raised this issue of both public safety and public health to the Mayor’s Office, to FAS, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. I am determined to mitigate this issue before a tragic incident occurs.”

Kettle says his office is working on a solution but the city “does not have a mechanism for dealing with animals who are in greater numbers and no longer afraid of humans.”

Kettle’s call for action comes following an October incident in which a woman was bit in her backyard trying to save her dog during a coyote attack.

Coyotes will occasionally make the news on Capitol Hill including an increase in sightings this summer around Volunteer Park. Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | A vote for Barred Owls, Capitol Hill ambassadors to the wild

Posted on by
1

A Barred Owl looking blending in beautifully in the bigleaf maples in the background (Image: Brendan McGarry)

If you have seen an owl on Capitol Hill in the past decade, there is a strong chance it was a Barred Owl (Strix varia). In our highly altered habitat melange full of rodents and other gulpable creatures, they reign supreme. These days, almost no other owl species are regularly seen on Capitol Hill.

I think Barred Owls are cool, but they also happen to be a sticky subject. They are recent arrivals, colonizers from Eastern North America. People paying attention to owl populations can agree that until the late 1990s, there were very few occurrences of Barred Owls in Washington State.

I recall a late 90s trip to Bainbridge Island to see a “for sure” pair of these owls during a 24-hour birding extravaganza. At that point in time it was worth the late night ferry trip even when our next destination was the mountains near Cle Elum. Today, that would be an absurd proposition (I suppose it always was but you get what I mean). I could probably choose any park on the Hill of decent size and adequate habitat and summon a Barred Owl with my moderately good impression of their barking,“Who cooks for you, who cooks for you owl” call.

Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | The native berries of Capitol Hill summer

Posted on by

The evergreen huckleberry (Image: WSU)

Every year, it’s harder and harder for me to feel excited about the Fourth of July. The waste, noise, and pollution is the most ridiculous way to celebrate a very dubious heritage (though I’ll admit having fun with friends and family outside is an exceptionally good way to spend a day). However, not only does the Fourth mark the end of Juneuary in my personal calendar, it also marks the beginning of berry season. The Pacific Northwest cup overfloweth with native berries to enjoy and that’s something to celebrate.

First, I will include the “Um, actually” part of this love letter to wild fruit. Not everything we call a berry is actually a berry in the botanical sense, even if from a culinary perspective we do. Botanists call any fruit grown from the ovary of a single flower a berry. They are mostly fleshy except for their seeds, which are inside the fruit. Blueberries are well named, while strawberries are not technically berries (though watermelons and tomatoes are). From the perspective of someone eating fruit, it really doesn’t matter that much, but several of the berries on my list below are not considered berries by botanists. But they also spend their days peering at the sexual parts of plants, so we can nod our heads and carry on enjoying these juicy capsules of sunshine. (Um, actually, if you like flowers, you too are a plant pervert.)

You might appreciate Himalayan Blackberries overtaking an unkempt corner or grow blueberries in a planter on your deck but we have many lovely native plants that bear lovely treats and have deeper roles to play in local ecosystems. These fruits have always been staples of the diet of the first people of the Hill and all across the Pacific Northwest. With plants as common as Salal and Trailing Blackberry, we can appreciate native plants and their connections to people and the more than human world. That’s what I think about when I consider the very muddled legacy of being an American – that we need to embrace the true heritage of the places many of us are at best guests.

But instead of being exacting and serious about the environment, genocide, and more, I am instead going to rank some native berries according to nothing but my personal opinions. I might as well be ranking 1996 hip hop albums releases, because I expect strong opinions and an overwhelmingly difficult time choosing the number one spot (just in case you were wondering, right now it’s Redman – Muddy Waters). And just like music, I am going to leave some options off the list because, well, they’re hardly palatable. The only requirement is that these “berries” need to have, at one point, grown on the Hill, and now find their way into our native gardens and restoration plans instead of maybe growing wild.

Osoberry (Image: Burke Herbarium Image Collection)

  1. Osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis) – Leave ’em for the birds; too bitter for me to love them. Not only are they not actually berries, but drupes with a little pit containing the seed (true plums are also drupes). I’d rather eat their leaves, which taste a bit like cucumbers. And besides, as one of the first fruits to ripen, they get gobbled by the birds almost immediately and are already gone.

Continue reading →

Pikes/Pines | Three apps to help you learn more online when you’re offline in the great outdoors around Capitol Hill

Posted on by

Jseattle gets around on iNaturalist

I will forever argue that finding people to learn with will always be better than learning only on your own. My recent escapades as a lifelong learner have had me diving deep into diverse topics like wooden spoon carving and contributing to the Washington Bee Atlas, where I started out “on my own.” Many people raised in the United State might have been subliminally led to believe that being “self-taught” is something to be deeply proud of. Certainly it can be. But this bootstrapping is just another way of saying you put in a lot of lonely hours into something. I took leaps and bounds in both these nerdy pursuits when I finally met some folks IRL – plus it was way more fun.

That being said, you don’t always have a bee expert at your side and we live in a brave new world of naturalist resources, often on our phones. With summer approaching, some of us spend more time outside and might even have some extra free time to ogle flora and fauna. It might seem ironic that in the days of disconnection from nature and an alarming decline of biodiversity worldwide, that we have more natural history apps than ever. But really it is because of this drifting away that people have developed said resources – we might need to get away from our phones more but we also might as well use them for good.

I might be willing to lug about a textbook called “The Solitary Bees,” but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your pocket computer has so much to offer and much of it is free. Here are three apps we should all have, that will make your summer more interesting, and might tell you what plants, bugs, and birds are about while sunning yourself at Cal Anderson. Continue reading →