I wish I'd been closer—or that this capture had a high-enough resolution that I could zoom in further without noticeably reducing the quality of the image—but even though not ideal, I love what I caught 🐶💗
She looks so happy, and that front paw hovering over the trail is so flippin' cute! Adorable 😍
In my experience, these purple-pink phenotypes are much less common than white trillium in these parts (the forests of western Washington); I was very surprised, then, to find that almost half—by my very rough estimate—of all the trillium I saw on the Mima Falls Trail were this purple-pink color. When I got onto the McKenny Trail, the majority went clearly back to white. I wonder what it is about the Mima Falls Trail... 🤔
This isn't one of my best captures—limitations of smartphone photography—but I'm sharing because I'd like to know if anyone else has seen something like this. Note that almost every limb of the subject tree is wavy. None of the tree's neighbors, all the same type of tree, had wavy branches like that. Knowing what I know about how trees grow, I can only guess that the shape of this tree's branches had something to do with the quality of light it was receiving as those limbs grew: how much light, the pattern of light and shadows cast by neighbors, etc. Any science hippies here in the Federation have any further insight to impart?
I'm grateful I wasn't around when the windstorm brought down so many limbs in Waddell Basin, but I'm also glad I got to run thru before they were moved off the trail and out of sight. I love how some lichens look like terrestrial coral 🪸🧡