OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016
It’s spring season for the
exciting sport of botany
here was a particular willow-stud-
ded meadow along the Sweetwater
River where columbines and Rocky
Mountain irises rippled in the grass like
delicate pastel asteroids zipping in a ver-
dant emerald sky.
T
Family rock-hunting expeditions often
paused there as my dad and uncle made cer-
tain it was safe to ford the snow-fed stream
in lumbering four-wheel-drives. There was
time to wander around picking wildÀ owers
— ostensibly for mama, though truth be told,
I just liked them.
Botany, zoology and
geology were our fam-
ily sports, so by age 6 I
knew irises are less inno-
cent than they appear.
“Roots were ground
by the Indians, mixed
with animal bile, then
put in the gall bladder
and warmed near a ¿ re
for several days. Arrow
Matt
points were dipped in
Winters
this mixture, and it is
reported by old Indi-
ans that many warriors only slightly wounded
by such arrows died within 3 to 7 days,” my
uncle¶s 63 3eterson ¿ eld guide reminds me.
3oisonous or not, wildÀ owers pumping
with life force before plucking always swiftly
wither into pathetic victims, becoming limp
corpses within minutes of being picked. As
I would eventually learn about fashion mod-
els, they are best cherished in their native hab-
itat. (Jim Harrison, a literary hero of mine
who died last week, amusingly observed: “If
you’ve known a lot of actresses and models,
you return to waitresses because at least they
smell like food.”)
Bloom season begins
ome wildÀ owers on :ashington’s outer
coast are running a few days behind last
year. It’s been comparatively warm, but heavy
overcast denied plants the ambitious head start
they got during 2014-15’s bizarrely sunny
winter. As of¿ cial astronomical spring began
March 20, some local rain gauges pushed
above 6 feet for the “water year” that started
Oct. 1 — 2 feet more than our recent normal.
Any sensible wildÀ ower can’t be blamed for
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I recommend the
sport of botany —
and all sciences
— to everyone.
Knowing a
little about our
incredible world
will make your
life far richer.
Matt Winters/EO Media Group
A trillium was backlit by the evening sun on a ridge just above the Pacific Ocean this
week. A sacred medicinal species that can live to a greater age than the trees sur-
rounding them, local trillium started blooming a little early this year.
feeling a little washed out and depressed.
:ake-robins, better known in these parts as
trilliums, may be an exception. They’ve been
in bloom on the forest À oors for the past 10
days, while in 2014 they weren’t feeling very
enthusiastic until almost mid-April.
They are crawling with little insects, pos-
sibly a species of pollen beetle, though I
don’t know my bugs. Northwest plant gurus
Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon note trilli-
ums are mostly noted for a relationship with
ants, which relish their seeds. After eating
an oil-rich appendage on these seeds, ants
carry them to rubbish piles, where new tril-
liums spring up. “This is a reasonably effec-
tive mechanism for seed dispersal, especially
for plants of the dim, becalmed forest À oor,”
the experts write.
Older than the trees
n March 24 in southern Oregon, Umpqua
National Forest issued a plea for people
to leave trilliums alone. Picking the À owers
this early in the season means that the plant
is stripped of its ability to make more energy
to store in the root, the U.S. Forest Service
said. The depleted root then lacks nutritional
reserves necessary for next year’s showy
bloom to appear.
“The interesting thing about trillium is
they can grow to be very old,” said Umpqua
National Forest botanist Richard Helliwell.
“There are trillium in the Siskiyous that are
greater than 80 years. In some cases, the tril-
lium can be older than the trees surrounding
the plant.”
Like many native plants, trilliums were
O
much cherished by traditional healers. They
contain a uterotonic, which induces labor
and reduces postpartum hemorrhaging, giv-
ing rise to a folk-medicine name of birth-
root. “King’s Medical Dispensatory” of 1898
(tinyurl.com/AmericanDispensatory) attri-
butes many additional bene¿ ts to trillium
roots, including treating “tumors, indolent or
offensive ulcers, anthrax, buboes, stings of
insects, and to restrain gangrene.” Good to
know, I suppose, if you’re ever stranded in
the wilderness.
I recommend the sport of botany — and
all sciences — to everyone. Knowing a little
about our incredible world will make your life
far richer.
(Closing with a personal boast, my uncle
Tom Bell who helped spark these interests
in me and his many students, will this spring
be presented an honorary doctorate from our
alma mater, in company with similarly inspi-
rational science writer John McPhee.)
— MSW
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal.
Open forum
Disastrous lawsuit
his past month Oregon suffered
the ignominy of being the only
state to lose federal grant money to
the tune of $1.2 million for failure to
confront coastal water pollution, pri-
marily from logging. Although the
law regulating clean water went into
effect over 25 years ago, the response
to warnings from the feds by the Ore-
gon Board of Forestry this past year
was, “:e’re working on it.”
That was followed by a let-
ter in February from Richard :hit-
man, Gov. Brown’s natural resource
adviser, indicating that the remain-
ing problems would be addressed
through voluntary measures. That’s
a lot like letting the fox oversee the
welfare of the hens in the chicken
coop.
The lost grant money would
have gone to coastal counties for
water quality improvement proj-
ects. That money could certainly be
well used in places like Rockaway
Beach, where clear cutting and aerial
spraying of herbicides have fouled
the local water supply; or in Siletz,
where massive clear cutting has pol-
luted ¿ sh bearing streams; or Curry
County, where aerial over-spray
sickened numerous people and left
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doubts about the safety of water.
The Oregon Board of Forestry,
appointed by the governor, is ulti-
mately responsible for interpret-
ing the Oregon Forestry Practices
Act (OFPA), which controls log-
ging on state and private property.
The problem is that the three of the
seven members of the current board
are from the timber industry. Is it any
wonder that a reading of the OFPA
reveals many industry-favoring
regulations?
For example, the regulation that
stipulates that there must be two
trees left on every clear cut acre to
accommodate indigenous “birds,
bats, squirrels and many other ani-
mals.” That’s a very crowded tree.
Less laughable are the rules to
protect wetlands. In practice it is
now permitted to clear cut a wetland
on private property. So much for
sensitive species habitat. Given the
instances of water pollution, and the
federal ¿ ne, it’s obvious that the reg-
ulations concerning streams are not
adequate, and those in place are not
being enforced.
The misguided lawsuit being
brought by Linn County, which
is being ¿ nancially backed by the
Koch brothers and the timber indus-
try, will bring increased clear cutting
and aerial spraying in a poorly reg-
ulated and under-supervised theater
of logging operations that will ulti-
mately be disastrous for Oregon.
Citizens need to tell our local
county commissioners to opt out of
the lawsuit, and demand compre-
hensive reform of the Oregon Forest
Practices Act.
ROGER DORBAND
Astoria
Dropped
hen I approached Medicare
age three years ago, I called
my doctor of many years and asked
the receptionist, “Are you going to
drop me, now that I’ll be going on
Medicare?”
She replied, “Oh no; because you
have been one of our patients, we’ll
keep you.”
A couple of months ago, my wife
was on the phone to make an appoint-
ment. The receptionist informed her
that I had been dropped as a patient
because I was over the age of 60, and
hadn’t been in for over three years.
My wife asked, “:hy didn’t you
inform us?”
The receptionist responded, “:e
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just don’t have time for that.”
It did occur to me that my vet
has the time to remind me, twice a
year, to bring my cats in for their
vaccinations.
DALE FLO:ERS
:arrenton
Vote for Goldthorpe
am proud to support David
Goldthorpe for Clatsop County
Circuit Court Judge. David guides
the district attorney’s participa-
tion in retiring Judge Phil Nelson’s
drug court, assists in child support
enforcement, and is a skilled trial
lawyer for a wide variety of cases,
from impaired driving to armed
assaults.
In all these areas, David has
exhibited some of the strongest qual-
ities attributed to “judicial temper-
ament” that I have witnessed in the
many ¿ ne lawyers whom I have
hired as deputies — compassion,
fairness, commitment to equal jus-
tice, decisiveness. It is an elusive but
critical quality for a judge.
Judges run for election every
six years on a non-partisan basis.
Even the most dedicated voter may
not mark the ballot for a judgeship,
I
because it can be hard for those
who haven’t worked with a particu-
lar lawyer to assess their skills as a
judge.
I have a unique view of all three
of the current candidates, since all
three applied for and were hired as
deputy district attorneys. I admire
them all, and respect their differing
strengths.
Those concerned about whether a
former deputy district attorney might
not be even-handed when dealing
with the district attorney’s of¿ ce
don’t give the candidates enough
credit for separating personal feel-
ings from professional ones, some-
thing that the women and men of law
enforcement and the justice system
do several times every day.
David is endorsed by treatment
providers, his co-workers, the Sea-
side Police Association, Sheriff Tom
Bergin and many others who have
worked with him or know him and
his family. All point to the belief that
“Dave” will make a fair and unbi-
ased judge for the people of Clatsop
County.
I urge you to vote for David
Goldthorpe.
JOSHUA MARQUIS
Clatsop County District Attorney
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