Ironwood

Ironwood in camp

The Adventurer, Vernon Wade

Vernon was born in the Pacific Northwest and still lives in the shadow of Mt. Hood, near the small town where he grew up. Vernon has spent decades wandering the hills, hunting mushrooms, camping and riding motorcycles into the remotest nooks and crannies to be found in the region.

Holodiscus discolor

Holodiscus discolor, commonly called Ocean Spray, arrow-wood, or ironwood, is one of the more abundant flowering shrubs in the Pacific Northwest. Known for its hardness, it was used for tools by native people throughout the region. Ironwood was fashioned into fishhooks, harpoon and arrow shafts, scrapers, digging sticks, needles, and many other tools. It can be tempered with heat and polished with horsetail stems to form a hard, smooth working surface. One of the notable uses was for skewers used when roasting salmon over open flames.

It seems to favor open and disturbed areas and is prolific along road cuts through the forest. It forms a shrub up to ten or fifteen feet tall, with many straight stems fanning up from the base. In the spring and early summer sprays of white flower clusters hanging down from the tips of the branches make this a very distinctive and showy plant. By the end of July in the Columbia Gorge, these flowers have dried and faded brown, but the flowers remain fresh and bright later at higher elevations.

Holodiscus discolor flowerThe flowers are reminiscent of lilacs in habit. They form tiny, dense, cream colored, pyramidal clusters at branch tips, turning brown and remaining on the plants over winter as clusters of seeds.  Holodiscus discolor

 

 

 

 

 

The leaves are alternate, dull green, broadly triangular, 1 1/2 -3″ long, with coarsely toothed margins, minutely wooly surface, and a distinctly wedged shaped base.

Holodiscus discolor leaf detail

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