#Red Cedar

[summerwages]

sharpen your claws...

[pickleweed2]

Beautiful cascading structural roots of a large multi-stem Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata, growing atop a boulder.

Olympic National Park| 11-30-2023

[wenbochenphoto]

Just when I thought all the old Red Cedar trees had been logged long ago, today we found a remnant one. I guess it survived because of the remoteness and rugged topography. So happy to see such a giant still exists in Gondwana Tea Mountain.

[alcnfr]

Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) in an Eastern Redcedar (Juniperus virginiana).

[uxbridge]

Many old conifers on this trail through the glade

[kindheart525]

What if some of the Dottieverse cast met my pony next gens?

Don’t worry Ell gets to meet someone she actually likes

Let me know who else from the Dottieverse and Auraverse or Thirdverse you’d like to see interact and I’ll add to this!

[jadeseadragon]

Red Cedars on the Move, Eating Up Grasslands. 

One of the biggest threats to Great Plains grassland ecosystems today is woody encroachment by invasive redcedars. Once grasslands are converted into woodlands, prairie wildlife species are lost, along with grassy areas for livestock grazing. As new woodland bird and wildlife species move in, they eat and expel the powder-blue cedar berries—and seed the advancing wave of cedars across the prairie. From left to right: pronghorns, Bobolinks, Eastern Meadowlark, cows, Burrowing Owls, Greater Prairie-Chicken, American Robin, Cedar Waxwings. 

Illustration by 2023 Bartels Science Illustrator Maria Klos.

[wolfnowl]

#SilentSunday

[stonedntired]

[tsyllaes]

LEAF DRAGONS! I've been really looking forward to drawing these little guys <3 They can grow to be huge, with the oldest, Oak, the size of a small forest, but these ones are just little, the thickness of your index finger. Llayan dragons all share their appearance with the trees around them.

I always associate Llayad with golden colours, therefore autumn, but deciduous trees from Australia are thin on the ground (there are two, one of which is subtropical) and I've not found one at all in South Africa. The single temperate deciduous tree I've got is the tanglefoot fagus, represented by the middle dragon here. Llayans therefore refer to autumn as the 'turning of the fagus.' There are three other related faguses (fagi? idk), all of which are evergreen and one of which is actually Kiwi, but screw you I'm bringing them into Llayad and making them deciduous: the myrtle fagus, flat-leafed fagus and the silver fagus.

Red moulmein cedar, represented by the top dragon, is the one that's technically subtropical but I'm stretching it into the Llayan mountains so it can also be temperate. Ditto the white lilac, which is more of a tropical tree that goes gold when it feels like it (so far as I can tell). There's one next to the cafe I often have lunch at and I had no idea it was Australian. Definitely not native to my area but there you go, Llayad can have them.

Finally the, almond of flame, represented by the bottom dragon, is again a straight up tropical tree I'm making temperate, native to south-east Asia so y'know what it counts. That's as native 'deciduous' as I've managed to get.

This is all relevant to the dragons, because the deciduous ones will turn to autumn colours and subsequently lose their leaves in winter, so they can no longer fly until they get new bright green growth in spring. They have seedpods which grow at the tip of their tails, which they'll then drop in the ground and let it grow into a tiny new sapling of a new dragon!

Dragons are very much creatures of magic, nothing to do with fire (though, idk, maybe those which do well with fire and need it to germinate seeds do make fire) but they have some connection with the wind and the weather. I know exactly what that connection is but that's spoilers, so shh. They communicate with twists of wind around the ankles, an uncomfortable breeze up the back of the neck or a soft waft through the hair, up to destructive gales and dark clouds full of lightning.

They may or may not be related to the sea dragons of Tsayth, who can tell?

[florenrune]

Plant Appreciation Post! (These lovelies were all photographed in Ohio by me on Monday)

[summerwages]

sometimes there are flowers...

[senome]

June 2: Red Cedar and Senome

Small update-

THIS IS NOT MY NEW CONLANG, THIS IS SENOME, THE NEW ONE IS SENOM

I’m currently working on incorporating the many ideas I have for it into a nature collection and how Senumians use them, as well to showcase the logographs I’ve been working on

This is a prototype to a digital version, so it looks weird. Also, I’m also working on the logographs and how to make pictograms of abstract ideals, but there is a preview in this prototype here!

[intune-with-nature]

Eastern Red Cedar

[alcnfr]

Northern Cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) always look particular good in sunlit Eastern Red Cedar trees (Juniperus virginiana).

[uxbridge]

Cedars in the snow🌲❄️