I enjoy growing native plants from seeds. It can be pretty slow, though. Cuttings are a faster way. July is usually a good month to take shrub and perennial cuttings.
Today, I took a tray full of red-flowered currant cuttings. In addition, I took cuttings of my osoberry and the salmonberry plants in the native plant garden. Lastly, I decided to see if Douglas aster cuttings will strike this time of year.
There are other opportunities for propagation in the native plant garden–the large-leaved avens has a lot of seed heads on it and will produce thousands of seeds this year. The thimbleberry and native roses are spreading all over the place and I can pot up the suckers in the autumn. The roses are putting on quite a show right now and the thimbleberry has some berries coming for the first time.
I added the iNaturalist Seek app to my phone this week and started using it to identify insects and plants and it is AMAZING! If the photo is good enough, the app seems very capable of identifying all the insects and plants.
Here was a tough one that I never thought the app would recognize. But Seek rose to the challenge! Meet the diminutive Black-smudged Chionodes Moth!
