This wild cat, also called Pallas’ cat after the man who officially discovered it, is a creature of the brushy mountain slopes of continental Asia.  Found in Mongolia and China, Nepal and Tibet, Russia and Afghanistan, the Pallas’ cat is a secretive, solitary animal.  The manul is about the size of a domestic cat, but is much furrier.  It has a long, dense coat with a thick undercoat that comes in a range of shades from russet to gray, with white guard hairs.  The tail is ringed and tipped with black, and the animal has white circles around its eyes.  The eyes themselves are unusual, in that, unlike other cats’, the pupils are round instead of slitted.  The ears of the Pallas’ cat are set low and wide on its head, reducing its visibility in treeless brushlands.  All of these features make it an excellent ambush hunter in rocky and brushy terrain; insulated from the cold, it can wait for its prey or stalk it unseen.

Manuls prefer treeless habitats that are cold but not snowy, and which have rocky outcrops in which they can hide and hunt their prey.  They are poor runners, preferring to shelter in hiding places rather than flee from predators.  They yelp and growl rather than hiss and meow, but they can and do purr.  In captivity they are aggressive and unafraid of humans - though perhaps they should be, as human hunters in search of Pallas’ cat furs are one of their primary predators.  Although the international trade in Pallas’ cat pelts has declined due to restrictions prohibiting the taking of this species, illegal hunting persists.  Their fur is beautiful, luxurious and warm, and funding for enforcing the ban is inadequate.

The only member of its genus (Thuja) native to North America, the Western redcedar is not a true cedar.  Belonging to the Cypress family, the redcedar probably gets its name from its similarity to Old World cedars.  A graceful and impressive tree, the redcedar can grow as high as 70 meters and may have a trunk up to five meters wide at the base.  It is hard to gauge the age of redcedars accurately, because they have a tendency to grow buttresses and to develop multiple tops, but one sample of a tree in Washington suggests that they can reach at least 1460 years of age.  The bark of redcedars is greyish or reddish brown, fissured, fibrous and peeling.  The branches are arching.  Its foliage is a glossy green with a lighter, striped underside, arranged in flattened sprays like fans.  Its leaves are evergreen and scaled, and have a pleasant, spicy scent when crushed or chewed.  Wild redcedar populations do not show much genetic variation, but a number of cultivars have been bred by human beings, primarily to produce ornamental plants.

Western redcedars reproduce by seed, by branches that fall and take root, and by branches on fallen trees growing into trees themselves.  These trees have both male and female cones; the reddish male cones are close in to the trunk, while the greenish female cones are distributed farther out on the branches and higher up the tree.  Although individual cones may only contain three to six seeds, the great number of cones on a given tree means that seedfall can be quite large.  Typically redcedars begin to produce cones after a decade or two, reaching peak cone production at an age of seventy or eighty years.  Cone production can continue for several centuries, with strong seed crops produced in two to three year intervals.  The trees produce pollen in the spring, from April to June depending on location, and seedfall happens in autumn in October and November. 

The seeds that fall on disturbed soil in sheltered locations, or on rotted wood in contact with the soil, stand the highest chance of germinating.  Germination usually occurs in the fall, winter and spring, if conditions are right (if not, seeds generally will not germinate the next year, unless they are stored, in which case they will keep up to seven years).  Seedlings are intolerant of temperature extremes, and are vulnerable to sunburn; they prefer shaded, moist areas, making them competitive in brushy areas and in mature forests.  Redcedars tend to lack taproots, growing instead a dense network of smaller roots that generally outmasses the root formation of associated species in mixed forests.  The lack of a taproot makes them vulnerable to windfall; the fallen trees become nursebeds for many species besides their own (indeed, mature redcedars may be festooned with seedlings of other species even while standing).

The range of the Western redcedar is limited by precipitation and temperature; they are not resistant to frost or freezing temperatures and prefer moist locations and acidic, well-drained soil.  Ravines, depressions, and swamps are common habitats for redcedars, as are stream valleys, although they may also be found on rocky slopes.  They tend to grow in mixed coniferous forests rather than in pure stands, with douglas-fir and Western hemlock being the primary associated species.  (Pacific rhododendron and salal are frequent associates in coastal areas.)  There are two main clusters of Western redcedar.  One is a coastal arc stretching from northwestern California up to southeastern Alaska along the Cascades and Coast Range; the other is centered on the Rocky Mountains from Idaho and Montana up into British Columbia.  Canada has the greatest volume of Western redcedar, about 824 million m3 compared to 228 million m3 in the United States.

Sources:

EOL
Wikipedia
Check out a digitized mara skull
More photographs of Patagonian maras
MaraMania provides information on keeping maras in captivity (but watch out for some truly eye-watering graphics)

Some of the more distinctive inhabitants of the Pacific coastal rainforest are the slugs of the genus Ariolomax, more commonly known as banana slugs.  Banana slugs get their name because these large slugs resemble bananas, at least the yellow variants.  They also come in brown, green (a variant I and my friends have dubbed “pickle slugs”), black and even white.  Many of them are spotted as well, which further adds to the banana-like appearance.  Reaching lengths of nearly 10 inches (25 centimeters), banana slugs are the second-largest land slug in the world, second only to the slugs of the Limax genus in Europe, who top out at 30 centimeters.  They live in habitats ranging from southeastern Alaska down the central California coast.  There are also a few relict populations stranded since the moister, cooler Pleistocene on Mount Palomar in San Diego county, in the Sierra Nevada north of Yosemite and in the Columbia Mountains of inland British Columbia.

Banana slugs are found primarily in coastal rainforests, where the damp environs and abundance of decaying leaves and mushrooms provide ideal habitats for slugs.  Slugs breathe through their skin and a single lung, and both organs must be damp in order to function.  The lung rests under the slug’s mantle along with their digestive and reproductive parts.  Air moves through a hole in the mantle called a pneumostome.  It opens and closes at a rate that is affected by the moisture in the slug’s environs; when the environment is drier, it opens and closes more slowly, in order to keep the slug from dehydrating.  If conditions become too dry, a slug can cover itself in mucus, leaves and soil, and estivate until moister conditions return.

This movement, and their powerful leaping ability, is a result of having hind legs that are longer than the front ones.  They are larger than house cats and smaller than lynxes. Like lynxes, they have tufted ears.  Though they basically light brown with darker speckles, bobcat coloration varies with the animals’ habitats, with mountain and forest cats being darker than those of desert and semi-desert regions.

For the most part they are solitary animals, meeting only to court and mate.  Male bobcats’ territories - which they mark with shit, piss, anal secretions and clawmarks - overlap with those of several females.  The smaller female territories do not overlap at all.  Within these territories they mostly prey on birds and other small animals, although there have been reports of some bobcats managing to take down a deer, and they have at times attacked and eaten small livestock like goats and sheep.  For their part, bobcats are not a major part of other predators’ diets, except as kittens.  Then they are occasional prey for red foxes, coyotes, and owls.  Adults may come into conflict with wolves and cougars over prey, and they are sought by human hunters for their fur in areas where they are numerous enough to permit hunting.  In Mexico, they are endangered due to habitat loss.

For younger bobcats, the main causes of death are automobiles accidents, other accidents, and starvation - in other words, the dangers of inexperience.  Young cats (such as the one in the picture above) typically stay with their mothers for at least eight months, learning the skills needed to fend for themselves.  The kittens are born in early spring and follow their mother through her rounds until the end of the following winter.  If they manage to survive their youth, bobcats have lifespans of about ten to twelve years.

Bobcats are widespread, as they are capable of living in a variety of habitats - woods, brushlands, deserts, semi-deserts, mountains - limited only by space, prey, and deep snow (they cede the northern territories to the lynxes, who are larger and better adapted to it).  Within their territories they are not frequently seen, as they are quiet, reclusive animals.  They den in a variety of hidden places - tree hollows, piles of brush, thickets, among rocks and under ledges - and tend to be creatures of the night and dusk.  In some areas they have spread into urban and suburban zones, occupying a similar niche as the bolder coyote.  Indeed, in indigenous mythology, the bobcat is sometimes presented as a balancing counterpart to Coyote, a quiet observer and maintainer of order rather than a playful trickster and questioner of the status quo. 

Sources:

EOL
Wikipedia
Desert USA (site includes video)
Defenders of Wildlife
National Geographic

(You can tell we’re dealing with a “charismatic” animal here - there are a lot more top-level sites weighing in than there were for the more obscure or less attractive species.

On symbology (watch out for low-hanging Native American mysticism):

Mammal Symbology (ignore the Potter-fied header and scroll down)
Native Online
Raven Dreamer

A member of the honeysuckle family, the twinflower is the only species in its genus.  There are three subspecies: Linnaea borealis borealis, Linnaea borealis americana, and Linnaea borealis longiflora.  The first is found in northern Europe, the second in eastern North America, and the last in Asia and western North America.  It prefers cool forests and bogs, where it grows in moist, acidic soils.  In the UK, where it is now considered “nationally scarce,”  it is an indicator species of ancient woodlands.

Twinflowers get their name from the two bell-like flowers that hang from a shared stem.  They are white to pink, with darker pink or red stripes, and have a scent that is sweet but not strong.  Flowers are pollinated by syrphid wasps and native bees, producing little dry fruits that hold but a single seed.  The plant itself is a low-lying perennial creeper, with small, evergreen leaves and thin hairy stems.  It spreads by runners (after the plant is about five years old) and via seeds carried on the feathers and fur of animals.  It is vulnerable to fire, drought, and soil disturbance, putting it at risk from forestry and overgrazing.  Once common throughout the United States, it is now threatened, endangered, or “extirpated” (in the words of the USDA) in many states. 

It has been used in teas by native peoples (what hasn’t, one sometimes wonders) and you can buy twinflower essence on the internet that is supposed to “calm the sense of being overwhelmed from sensory overload.”  The charming quality of the twin bells has led a number of writers and poets to include it in their work, where it frequently evokes courting couples and young love.  It was also adopted by Carl von Linné (the father of taxonomic system we still use today); in an oft-quoted passage he explained that it “was named by the celebrated Gronovius and is a plant of Lapland, lowly, insignificant and disregarded, flowering but for a brief space - from Linnaeus who resembles it.” 

Sources:

EOL
Wikipedia
USDA
Connecticut Botanical Society
ARKive
Nearctica
Wildflower Center
Natural History of the North Woods
Britannica

Tree Frog Farms (source for twinflower essence)

Poetry and Literature:

Excerpt and analysis of Lorine Niedecker’s poem, “Wintergreen Ridge”  (The rest of her poetry is worth seeking out, by the way.)
Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness by Henry Van Dyke (1880s-1890s) (mentioned in “Sign of the Balsam Bow, Part III: The Island Pool”)