Philip Knouf Photography

Indian Plum

Indian Plum with pendant white blossoms in early Spring in the Carter Bridge Campground along the Wild and Scenic Clackamas River. (Philip A. Knouf)

The Indian Plum is often the first deciduous native shrub to flower in late winter in the Pacific Northwest.  The Indian Plum is an important early season nectar source for hummingbirds, moths and butterflies, native bees and other pollinator species.  Fragrant 1/2 inch greenish white flowers usually appear by late winter in loose hanging clusters of 10 to 20 flowers each.  The fruit is edible for humans but is often bitter, even when fully ripe. Native Americans ate the fruit fresh, dried, or cooked. The bark was used as a tuberculosis remedy and a mild laxative. Strips of bark were used to bind harpoon tips.

This image was found in the Carter Bridge Campground along the Wild and Scenic Clackamas River.  I isolated this single branch to more effectively illustrate the beauty of these early spring blooms.  I used my EF10omm f/2.8 Macro IS USM lense at 1/50 sec and f/4.0 with an ISO of 100 to separate the flowers from the busy background.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2012 at 9:36 pm. It is filed under Blog, Flowers, Forests and tagged with Flowers, Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.