Thimbleberry, Shady and Delicious

These thimbleberries are not yet ripe.

A very seedy, red, and aptly named thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) is delicious.  Someone ate all of the red, ripe berries before this picture was taken (right) in the Tillamook State Forest in Oregon.


Thimbleberry has wide, velvety leaves which protect wildlife from the elements.  Dense thickets of thimbleberry form good nesting and foraging habitat for many small birds. In summer, during the hottest part of the day, I would want to crawl into a cool stand of thimbleberry. 


Elk (Cervus canadensis) browse the leaves of thimbleberry.  Due to the softness and size, hikers find find the leaves very handy as 'nature's toilet paper'.  

A wasp gall forms on the stem of this thimbleberry.

Short-lived, parasitic wasps (Diastrophus kincaidii) burrow into thimbleberry stems and lay a multitude (30-50) of eggs. A gall will appear on the stem (above) three to four weeks later when the larvae continue feeding, stimulating the formation of excessive parenchyma tissue. The larvae within the gall are easy targets, trapped within the thick tissue, and most of the time they fall prey to other parasites.

I wonder if the parasitic wasps are as delicious as the berries...

Nice Shade Under Old Cedar

Old western red cedar (Thuja plicata) trees make great shade.  Walking through an old cedar stand can be quite comfortable year round.  When it's raining, the upper canopy intercepts the rain.  If you were out in the open, then your forehead would intercept the rain.  This photo (left) is of the ancient trees on Long Island in Willipa Bay in Washington State, just east of Long Beach Peninsula.

Summer heat doesn't penetrate very far (<100m) into the forest, horizontally and vertically.  As you walk closer to the edge of the forest, the temperature raises, your eyes start to squint, and your nostrils start to dry out.  As you return to the forest, you can smell the moist forest floor, springy with layers of decomposing materials and mycelia.

The ground stays moist, dead branches break when you fall into them, and mushrooms grow on leaf litter and downed woody debris.  Snails and slugs wander through the forest floor. A deadly lancetooth (Ancotrema Sportella) searches for a mollusk meal.