Native plants of the Puget lowlands springing to life

It's been wet, yes. And cool, no doubt about it. But that's all the sweeter for native-plant afficionados, as our Puget lowland native plants unfurl in adagio splendor.

Pick your pleasure: All over Seattle, from Discovery to Carkeek, Ravenna to Schmitz Preserve, parks are offering a sweet reward to counteract this sourpuss spring. Native plants are resplendent just in time for Native Plant Appreciation Week, celebrated statewide May 1-7.

With its temperate climate, the Puget Sound lowlands always offer a slow-motion spring.

But this year some plants are two and even three weeks behind schedule, Sarah Reichard, director of the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, noted on a native-plant walk at Carkeek Park on Sunday.

Some plants are cued to open their buds by day length, and others by temperature, so the effect of this record cool spring is varied. It doesn't have to freeze to slow the development of some plants. Sustained temperatures significantly below average will do it.

Native plants provide contributions unique to their niche: They feed the birds and bugs that depend on them and provide the shelter and nesting opportunity for the suite of life they evolved with.

And they are the visuals for our spring soundtrack: Chorus frogs, who are just now singing their hearts out, spent their winters snugged at the base of sword ferns. Swainson's thrush, divas of the evening summer woods, are stoked by the juicy fruit of salmonberry bushes, spangled now with magenta blooms.

The earliest of the ripening berries, in some years salmonberries' delicate fruit is tasty by May. But this year, the flowers were still barely opened on some salmonberry bushes Sunday. The cold spring hasn't zapped the zeal of some plants. From upstart invasive weeds — Down, dock! Back, creeping buttercup! — to horsetail, the tough guys take it all in stride.

"The cockroach of the plant world," Reichard said of horsetail, an ancient species dating back some 200 million years. "They will be here long after us," she added. So resilient is horsetail, it can shove its pointy head through even cracks in asphalt, and it is so full of sharp silica crystals it can scour a pot.

Yet even the horsetail was beautiful on a long overdue sunny Sunday morning, the light backlighting its weirdly frizzy bottlebrush shape, showing even the cellular structure of its hollow stems.

Coarse and rough in its form, it was the perfect foil for the delicate curves of lady fern, just now in circinate vernation, the slow ballet of unfurling tightly coiled fronds. Like awakening sleepers, in the warming sun the fronds seemed to stretch their arms wider and raise their fiddleheads taller by the minute.

All that April rain — nearly twice the average rainfall — stoked luxuriant growth of some plants: The red-osier dogwoods were resplendent with soft new growth that will stiffen as the new stems mature.

Nettles reach knee-high already, covered with stiff little hairs ready to shatter and sting like a bee at the slightest touch, part of this plant's protection against ravenous spring browsers. Except people, of course. Locavore gourmands know to don gloves and gather nettles while they're still tender in spring and cook them to take out the sting, yielding a fresh, tonic dish of greens.

And everywhere, the maples are in bloom, from the demure, white flowers of vine maple to the blowzy beauty of bigleaf maple, with extravagant tresses of bloom. The pendant inflorescence, dangling 6 inches and longer, is just a hint of what's to come, as the bigleaf's trademark leaves grow on to become some of the largest of any native tree, with a stem that can reach 1 foot and a spread that can cover a dinner plate.

Still soft to the touch, the new leaves of spring on many plants carry a slight bronze tinge, natural sunscreen that protects them until they color up to deeper green.

The alder leaves are still uncrimping, their folds stiff and crisp, and their toothy edge slightly turned under. Ingenious colonizers of disturbed ground, alders can pull the nitrogen they need right from the atmosphere and fix it in nodules on their roots, enriching the soil for plants to come.

Willows offer a clue to what's ailing spring allergy sufferers: All the smooth, furry gray pussywillows that studded their branches in deep winter now are furred with stamens, golden with pollen. Wind pollination is an inefficient business: Great clouds of gold and chartreuse blow through the air, as male catkins cast their seed to the wind, perchance to alight on a female flower.

A big nuisance for some, the pollen was a delectable treat for at least one squirrel seen Sunday at Carkeek downing pollen-dusted catkins like powdered doughnuts.

In addition to the food and shelter they provide plants and animals, Northwest native plants offer something special to us, too — a comforting touchstone, no matter the weather: "All these species tell you, you are in the Pacific Northwest, Reichard said. "They give you a sense of place."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com