Towheeblog

A California sister:
Lichen love tree bark.

No lichens can attach to the madrone, which annually sheds its outer most layer of “skin.”

In the forest above Ashland you can observe two very different approaches to reaching the sunlight needed for thriving…if you are a tree. The Douglas-fir and ponderosas grow straight often on thin trunks. Some thirty-foot tall trees have trunk diameter at their base of less than 1 foot. You couldn’t build a brick tower that high with a base that narrow. It would topple.
The madrone is circuitous in its growth toward the sun. Slower and more tolerant of reduced light it spreads out and becomes fluid in its shape:

There were few birds to see or hear but a pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches honked their horns as they worked the tree limbs.

Back down in town there was a flock of turkeys along the road. How many can you see in this picture?