I’m pretty new to the world of botany. I started getting into plants last year, when my partner and I were staying at an airbnb near mount baker in the north cascades. It was early spring, and both of us as non-native-pacific-northwesterners had never really experienced a temperate rainforest before. I mean shit, neither of us even knew that rainforests existed outside of the tropics before we moved to this area. We were absolutely not prepared.
That weekend we wandered down a nearby trail, jaws dropped, in awe of how prehistoric everything looked. The moss covers every inch of available space, softening every sound in the same way as a freshly fallen snow. The sprawling ferns and massive trees make you feel small, but in a good way, in the kind of way that makes you feel comforted and safe knowing that these ancient giants have been here for ages, and will (I hope) continue to be there for many more ages to come.
Back at our cabin, in an attempt to stay ‘off the grid’ and avoid the urge to doomscroll through the news on my phone, I browsed the bookshelves. I’m pretty sure they didn’t expect anyone to actually read these books, by the way. This was the kind of bougie cabin where everything is pristine and curated, and every item arranged on the scandinavian-meets-mid-century wood furniture is chosen more for the aesthetic and vibe1and don’t forget, everything has to be “hygge”. describing your airbnb as hygge is like putting “I love to travel!” in your tinder profile. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it (liking popular things is ok and you should never feel bad about it, fuck gatekeepers), but I do find it amusing sometimes. that it evokes rather than its content. One of those items was this antique 1940’s book about the native flora and fauna of the pacific northwest, which didn’t actually teach me anything about foraging2although it did teach me one of my favorite fun plant etymology facts. do you know where the word “daisy” comes from? Daisies bloom in the sun and close up their petals at night, so they were called “day’s eyes”, which was eventually smashed and shorted into just “daisies”. neat!, but it did make me stop and think, hey, aren’t some of those plants we just saw edible? fiddlehead ferns3raise your hand if you first learned about fiddlehead ferns from playing stardew valley. Yeah, me too. No shame. Everything you know had to be learned at one point. are a thing you can eat, right?
I was fascinated, and knew I’d just found a new target for my hyperfocus to fixate on and obsess over. After a quick google session and a couple of e-book purchases, I spent the next few hours consuming as much content about foraging as I could, ready to go out on the trail again and see if I could find any of these fiddleheads. We did find some of course – tons of them actually. Once I started paying attention, suddenly the forest came alive with fascinating discoveries. What used to look like a homogeneous blur of leaves and fuzzy moss suddenly became something so much more. I snapped pictures of every interesting plant I came across while we filled our pockets with fiddleheads.
Here’s a couple of my favorite shots.
This is a type of birds-nest fungi, and although they are not edible, they are absolutely fascinating nonetheless because of the way they reproduce. Like other fungi, they spread using spores, but it looks nothing like your typical umbrella-shaped toadstool. Look closely at the little cups, see how some have small black seed-shaped discs inside or around them4here’s a closeup:
? Those are the spores, and they rely on the rain to distribute them. As the cup fills with water, the spore “seeds” get splashed out by raindrops, scattering them around. It’s a clever and fascinating reproductive method specifically adapted to this exact environment, and honestly I just think these little guys are ridiculously cute. Every time I spot some of them I have to stop and take a million close-up pictures, they’re just too damn cool.
Pacific Trillium is one of my favorite wildflowers. It pops up only briefly in the early days of spring, often disappearing before other wildflowers have even opened their blooms yet. There’s something about the simplicity and perfectly arranged layers of three leaves, three bracts, and three petals that I just find beautiful. But they are extremely fragile and should not be touched. Disturbing or plucking the flower can ruin its ability to photosynthesise, and can potentially kill the plant, preventing it from coming back next year.
When we got back to the cabin, we cooked up the fiddleheads we harvested and added them to the pasta dish we had planned to make for dinner. They did taste good, but that wasn’t really the only thing that hooked me on foraging. It was this crazy sense of discovery, of never knowing what you might find around the next trailbend. I told my partner that it felt like “adult easter egg hunting”.
Most of what I spotted wasn’t edible (or just wouldn’t be tasty), but I couldn’t believe how many fascinating plants and fungi there were to be found once you start actually looking closely. It’s not like I’d never hiked or camped before, I just never really paid attention. I didn’t dislike hiking, but I’d often get bored quickly and spend most of the hike lost in my thoughts, not really looking around, just mindlessly going forward.
Before that day, the woods were all the same to me.
Afterwards, they would never look the same again.
footnotes
- 1and don’t forget, everything has to be “hygge”. describing your airbnb as hygge is like putting “I love to travel!” in your tinder profile. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it (liking popular things is ok and you should never feel bad about it, fuck gatekeepers), but I do find it amusing sometimes.
- 2although it did teach me one of my favorite fun plant etymology facts. do you know where the word “daisy” comes from? Daisies bloom in the sun and close up their petals at night, so they were called “day’s eyes”, which was eventually smashed and shorted into just “daisies”. neat!
- 3raise your hand if you first learned about fiddlehead ferns from playing stardew valley. Yeah, me too. No shame. Everything you know had to be learned at one point.
- 4here’s a closeup: