Wendy B G wrote:

Please help identify two native shrubs in Sequim, WA.

One is tall, about 8 - 10 feet, multistemmed. The leaves are very large, up to
8" long, oval, smooth, alternate. It bloomed last week, in the last week of
August to first week of September. The flowers are tiny, white, strung along on
3" long strands, foamy looking. Each leaf node, along the stem, has a tuft of
flowers. The flowers look like seaspray flowers, but the shrub definitely isn't
a seaspray or an elderberry.

Wendy, I do not profess to a be a native plant expert, but the only native shrub I
can think of that blooms with this description at this time of year is not native
and not a shrub at all but a nasty, thicket forming weedy menace, Polygonum
cuspidatum, aka Japanese knotweed.
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/pl...s/aqua015.html

Most other native shrubs with foamy white flowers, like Holodiscus and Omleria,
have long since finished their bloom.


The second shrub is about 3 feet tall. The leaves are 1" long, oval, smooth,
alternate. Currently, it has bright red, rather translucent berries (not
opaque-surfaced, like a cotoneaster). The berries have a little circle on the
bottom, like a blueberry. I saw this shrub growing in a clear cut field, along
the trail to Shi Shi Beach.

This sounds very much like our native red huckleberry, Vaccinium parvifolium. Very
common - much more so than its evergreen black cousin - and widespread in its
distribution in clearcut areas around the foothills or in higher, more wooded
settings.

I'm thinking of taking a little drive north in the next month or so - still want a
visitor? :-))

pam - gardengal