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About Illinois Valley news. (Cave City, Oregon) 1937-current | View Entire Issue (June 4, 2014)
Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, Ore. Wednesday, June 4, 2014 Stop the mass school killings: Winding Trails: by Al Hobart This originally ran in the Thursday, May 7, 1964 – Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, OR Parasitic and Sap- rophytic Plants at Rough and Ready The reason the Rough and Ready Park area is so often mentioned in describing our Illinois Valley wild plant life is because of its reads ac- cessibility and the remarkable concentration of wildflower species found there, and the fact that everyone is welcome to prowl and browse there among the flowers – everyone, that is, who is willing to abide by the park rules concerning de- struction or removal of wild plants or flowers. For those who want to study or enjoy our wildflowers, and especially those whose time is limited, the park is probably the most valuable piece of real estate in the entire Valley, embody- ing as it does so many types of environment – desert, marsh, riverbank, and woodland – thus making possible the great variety and concentra- tion of flowers we find there. The Rough and Ready flower species, how- ever, are not confined to the park alone; the same ones may be found elsewhere, scattered about the valley and its neighboring hills, if you have the leisure and desire to search them out – and a great many other species besides. I have found only one species of flower on Rough and Ready not found elsewhere in our area. It is a variety of rock-cress whose mustard-type flowers are of a purple so dark as to be nearly black. Strange and pretty little plants that are quite easily overlooked unless you watch carefully for them are the cancer-roots. We have three spe- cies, two of which, one yellow and one blue, are found on Rough and Ready Flat, the yellow coming into bloom usually in April, somewhat earlier than the blue one. The yellow species, called cluster broomrape, is somewhat the larger and usually has two or more flowering stems, Arts Red Garter Circle of Stone Friday & Saturday 9 p.m. each with a single flower. The plants are two to six inches high, glandular and short-hairy. The lower stem bears a few scales that represent the plant’s leaves. The flower is tubular and nearly straight, about an inch long and one-fourth inch wide at the mouth. The blue one, called naked broomrape, has only one stem and a single flower which is curved and usually dark blue. Both spe- cies have five pointed sepals and five roundish, somewhat irregular, flower lobes. There are four stamens. The broomrapes, or cancer-roots, are root parasites, attaching themselves to the roots of various small plants and robbing them of their food bearing juices. They produce no chloro- phyll and are therefore nowhere green in any of their parts. I have a pressed specimen of a yel- low cancer-root still attached to the roots of its host, in this case a plant called Oregon Sunshine. Whenever I’m asked where I collected it I always invoke the 5th amendment. A more conspicuous and altogether dif- ferent type of parasite belonging to the broom- rape family is the one called groundcone, or bear corn. Its host plant is either madrona or Manza- nita. It attaches itself to the host’s roots by means of rootlet-like extensions of the large roundish underground tuber-like base of the parasite. The plant is stout and seldom more than four to six inches high, about two inches thick, somewhat resembling a reddish-brown cone. It is com- pletely covered with overlapping scales spread slightly and a tubular reddish flower appear from under each one, becoming about twice as long as broad half-inch scales and each with a slender scale-like bract attached to its base. In fruit the groundcone appears to be covered with large ber- ries up to half an inch in diameter and filled with numerous small seeds. Almost always ground- cones are reddish-brown, but rarely you’ll find them pure light-yellow. Look for them under the madrones; both host and parasite are quite com- mon in our area. Some of our most fascinating and interest- ing flowering plants are among the parasites and saprophytes, and some of these may be included with the most beautiful, if not the most conspicu- ous, of our wild plant species. B’Wishes Guppy Friday, June 6 @ 5:30 p.m. Taylor’s Country Store Page A-3 Sat. June 7 @ 6 p.m. Every Friday Jay Barley Every Wednesday Open Mic. Night From 6-8 p.m. By Glenn Mollette I sold Grit newspapers when I nine years old. It was always a great day when I had sold my last Grit for the week. The profit was five cents per paper. Some weeks I made as much as two dol- lars! I lived in a very rural area so bicycling up and down the road and knocking on doors took time and was a workout. However, it was always a good feeling of ac- complishment to sell all my Grits. I had other responsibil- ities as a kid, such as mow- ing a huge yard with a push mower or cutting the hillside with a manual mowing side blade. The list is longer but enough of that. Too many of today’s kids are missing that feeling of accomplishing something from work. Too much is handed to them. Many come in from school, lock them- selves up in their rooms and station themselves in front of their hi-speed internet com- puters while texting, post- ing on Facebook or doing it all on their expensive cell phones. They come and go from the house in cars pro- vided by mom and dad stop- ping to converse with them only when they need gas or spending money. Some of these same kids never show their report cards, often lie about their whereabouts and are verbally abusive with their parents when they are questioned about anything. When asked to do dish- es, make their beds, pick up trash or help mow the yard the moaning begins. Whose fault is all of this? It’s our fault. We can only blame our- selves. Parents have tried too hard to give their kids what they did not have. We have tried to make life easier for our kids than it was for us. We have tried to save our chil- dren from pain and comfort them with extra cash, gadgets and little to no responsibility. The result has been a gen- erational disaster. Today we have kids who have enough time on their hands to sit and hate their classmates while plotting out how they might destroy them. All of this be- cause their classmates didn’t treat them like King Tut, or how mom and dad treat them at home. The recent twenty-two year old California kid is a sad example. He was driving around in a BMW with a car full of expensive guns, cash and time to create hate mov- ies and write insane diatribes about killing people. The tragedy is that he followed through. People were killed and a community is now dev- astated for the ages. The kid from California needed his butt kicked by his parents, his cash, BMW, and all the gadgets stripped away. We can’t lavish the abun- dance of life on people who are acting like monsters. As parents we make them mon- sters by continuing to under- write their smart-mouthed, Saturday night Pool Tourney Madd Moose! @ Steven Kiem Sportsmans Tavern rebellious and even evil be- havior. I understand he had se- vere mental issues. We live in a society of mental illness and it’s growing. Why is it grow- ing? That’s another column. However, we don’t like the stigma of mental illness but families must reach out for help. Importantly, we must be very active about implement- ing strong measures before disaster strikes. Dealing with such an illness requires more than a fifty minute counsel- ing session once a week. There are a lot of great hard working kids in Amer- ica. In most cases the kids in America who grow up a little hungry end up on top. Not always, but in most cas- es. These are the kids who have responsibility at home. They have to work some in the family unit. They are ex- pected to earn some of their cash. They are expected to do well in school and know that someday they must leave the house and be on their own without the financial backing of mom and dad. We don’t want another Columbine, Sandy Hook, Vir- ginia Tech or Santa Barbara massacre and one of the ways to stop it is to change how we are raising our children. Glenn Mollette is an American columnist and au- thor. Contact him at GMol- lette@aol.com. Like his facebook page at www.face- book.com/glennmollette. Now open Wednesdays! Saturday night Kareoke with Smash Sat. June 7 6-9 p.m. @ McGrews of Course! Selma Ore. 6WDUWLQJRU*URZLQJD%XVLQHVVLQ,OOLQRLV9DOOH\" 1HHGPRQH\" 0LFUR%XVLQHVV/RDQ)XQGLQJ$OZD\V$YDLODEOH 6WDUWXSH[LVWLQJKRPHEDVHGRURWKHU EXVLQHVVHQWHUSULVHV PLQLPXP WR PD[LPXP $SSO\DWWKH,9&'2RIILFH&DYHV+Z\ 4XHVWLRQV"3KRQH 0108 “Serving the Best C heeseburger, with an Attitude!” Tuesday - Sunday All you cAn eAt breAkfAst or order off the menu At the I.V. GrAnGe HOURS: NooN - Close now open Sundays! Rib-eye Madness June 13, 5 p.m. F irst three s undays oF the month From 8 a . m . to 12 noon . 12235 Redwood Hwy • Wonder, OR 541.476.8990 3763 Holland Loop 541-592-6045 or 541-592-4478 Summer 2014 June 12 • June 19 • June 26 • July 4 • July 10 • July 17 • July 24 • July 31 • Aug 7 • Dale Hopper Science!, Acoustic Duo The “J” Barley Band No concert scheduled Lonesome Road: Country Blues Rock Guppy Whimsical duo Dawna Crocker & Rosie: Coffee House singer songwriters East Fork County Bluegrass Ras Cricket and the Cultivators: Reggae
