In Praise of Salmonberries

The Salmonberry bushes at the edge of the DNR are already bearing fruit. These are the first to flower at the end of the winter, and the first to produce berries in the spring. If, like the First Nations coming to the bog to collect plants and berries in the days before refrigeration and supermarkets, you had spent the winter living on dried and smoked food, you might be very pleased to see these red and orange jewels nestling in the fresh green foliage. Even the young green shoots were eaten like salad.

There are different reasons given for the Salmonberry's name. Some say that it is because of the colour of the berries. They certainly do vary from red to salmon-coloured to orange. Another is that they were often eaten with salmon or salmon roe.

The berries appear when the Swainson's Thrush can be heard, and so the Swainson's Thrush is often called the Salmonberry Bird.

But the berries are good to eat. If you don't find sweet enough fruit on one bush, go to the next. They can vary in flavour, but are well worth the trouble.

Sundew in the Big Bog

This morning, we had the opportunity to make a small, but totally legal incursion into the bigger bog, to the west of Highway 91.

It was amazing to see the amount of sundew. I have been waiting patiently for some sign of it in the Delta Nature Reserve, but so far without luck.
The other thing that astonished me on the western side, was some Labrador Tea coming into flower. Both the DNR and the western part have a lot of Bog Laurel in flower,  but Lab Tea normally flowers later.

The pink Bog Laurel flowers behave like a parabola, opening towards the sun. The ten stamens guide the insect in and then spring up and dust the insect with precious pollen.

The sticky 'dew' on the sundew plant, draws insects towards the plants and then traps them before digesting them.

Blueberry Beret

When I do the bog tours, I have been known to extol the virtues of poop, or, more accurately, the importance of poop. Poop brings nutrients and bogs don't love nutrients, but nutrients do have an impact on bogs.

Poop, delivered from the air, also brings unwanted seeds into the bog. Right now, I am starting to see the native bog blueberry coming into leaf.
Of course, the picture here is one from the central bog and much later in the year - when I do the tours, I rarely have time to take photos.

But the really problematic blueberries are the ones that are delivered aerially, and they have been in leaf and even flower, for a few weeks now. These are the domestic blueberries, brought in by birds from neighbouring blueberry farms. They are spectacular plants, exquisite all year round. In the winter their often red stems are beautiful to look at, when they come into bud in the spring, they are a lovely sign of spring, then their tiny flowers bring in honeybees to buzz pollinate them, followed later by the amazing and delicious fruit and then just as it seems they have no more to give, suddenly they dazzle us with their fall red.

For all their beauty and bounty however, they are tough to remove and they hasten the drying out of the bog. We are lucky that even in the area of the Delta Nature Reserve that is succeeding to forest, they have not yet taken hold.
There are many domestic varieties, and even some of the apparently low-growing ones are not our native bog blueberries. You need to look out for the roundish, more blue-green leaves amongst the moss and cranberries.
And they are there, hidden treasure.

Perilous Times

The integrity of the bog is keeping us thinking at the moment.

The 2004 Conservation Covenant applies to the parts of Burns Bog owned by the various levels of government. The owners of a parcel of land that was not covered by the covenant, but which are part of Burns Bog, have applied to have the land re-zoned. If this happens, development could follow.

The owners are presently in consultation over their re-zoning application, and the Burns Bog Conservation Society is part of that consultation.

But the bog is the bog. It's a whole - I see it as one organism, are we not all complex ecosystems? And I fear for its safety if we gnaw at its sides. How much of it can we lose, before the tipping point comes and it starts, not just to dry out, but to die?

The ecosystem review has now been uploaded to our website, so you can look at it and send us your thoughts. There are maps of the  peat layers and information about all aspects of the health of the bog. The parcels of land in question are to the east and the west of Highway 91.

Slug Love

Slugs are one of nature's recyclers, so we find them not in the bog proper, but on the forest floor of the DNR.  They are an important part of the ecosystem. The type of slug most associated with the Pacific Northwest Forest, and a native to these parts, is the Banana Slug. This mollusc can grow up to a whopping 30 centimetres in length. They are the second largest land slugs.

Not every banana-coloured slug in the forest is a Banana Slug. The colour of European slugs varies hugely and can be close to that of the native forest-dwellers.
One of the ways to sort out the Banana Slugs from the Euro-invaders, is that the home team are smooth, whereas the European ones have a smooth mantle, but a ridged back or keel. They often have a an orange stripe around the edge of their single, muscular foot.

Slugs and snails most certainly differ from puppy dogs' tails, but not very much from each other. A slug is a snail whose shell has evolved to become a leathery mantle. But this means they have lost the protection of the shell. No matter, they have their slime. It helps to stop dehydration, protects their soft body parts from rough surfaces and allows them to make themselves into an unpleasant tasting ball. It also plays a part in the mating ritual.


Slugs don't have those girl-boy issues, they are hermaphrodites, so they all have both sets of sex organs. A lot of people know this, but then sometimes think this means they don't need to encounter another slug to reproduce. Oh they do. In fact both slugs taste each other's slime.If both approve, they both display their male organs, which they insert into the other's female organs.  And they really need to be sure about each other. If one slug is significantly bigger than the other, then their male organ may not fit, it may come unstuck and have to be gnawed off by the other. Slug sex is not for the faint-hearted!

They both go away and in the fullness of slug-time, will lay their batches of translucent eggs in some damp, sheltered place, often beneath logs or in holes in the ground. Slugs have no parenting skills, they make their getaway on their one slimy foot, leaving the eggs to hatch and the sluglings to the mercy of frogs, snakes, birds, skunks and whatever doesn't mind the taste.


Picture of banana slug from http://www.birdsamore.com/critters/slugs.htm