Pacific Sanicle
This year’s unusually cold weather is delaying bloom in the forest and native plant garden. Flowering currant buds are barely showing pink and the striking, glossy green rosettes of Pacific sanicle (Sanicula crassicaulis) that appear in midwinter along trails and forest edges look much as they did two months ago. As the weather warms, each sanicle rosette will produce a stout stalk rising to a foot or more, bearing leafy bracts and small umbels of tiny greenish-yellow flowers. By that time, much more alluring wildflowers should be appearing in abundance, and sanicle is likely to go unnoticed.
Another late bloomer this year is the Osoberry, which we presented here last February. It will soon be in flower again.