Snooping around the Snohomish county lowlands I'm enjoying the fall season as it passes by in it's very slow maritime Northwest fashion. Staying mostly in one place I can get that feeling of the Season as something passing through. Happens every year, but a bit differently each time. The Season is the traveler, and I stay here at home observing the rites of passage.

I know that Tweeters has lurkers (because they told me), but the local forest here also has some lurkers. One of them is posting right now in our local woods; the Cascara tree. The Cascara is a deciduous understory tree of the lowlands which most of the year blends inconspicuously amongst the Alders, and other local small trees. But right now the Cascara is posting it's presence with it's bright gold fall color, which sort of comes gradually by the leaf. Thereby it exposes itself as not being one of those Party Pooper's of Fall color, the Red Alder, which stays green right till leaf drop. Since the Cascara is announcing itself so clearly now it is interesting to see how many are out there in the woods- always more than I realize. You can see them quite clearly just driving around. Sometimes they can achieve a bright red fall color in the right conditions. Everett's Spencer Island is a good place to see them- they do just fine in the swamp and get a bit more orange in the sun there. Look up identity details online, or get a plant book. Cascara is an interesting plant.

Cascara is probably best known as the source of a powerful laxative (cascara sagrada ) which is extracted from it's bark. Harvester's of the bark wear gloves so as not to absorb too much of the inner bark goo: a colloquial name for the plant is "Chittum". So don't go chewing Cascara twigs, or give a branch to Fido for a chew toy. I imagine campers inadvertently using Cascara twigs as marshmallow skewers; would that result in foam explosions later on in the campground? Would roasting Mushrooms on a Cascara stick result in a tragic "shitz- kabob" leading to a rapid passage of "Toad- stools" ? I wonder, but not so much that I'd try these experiments myself. So anyway, know your plants.

Just for the record, Cascara produces mid-summer fruit which is popular with birds and other creatures.

Jeff Gibson
just a regular guy in,
Everett Wa