Daily Account #10- Skykomish River E of Goldbar

5/12- today we took our second field trip to 4 different locations between campus and leavenworth. our first stop was at a site adjacent to the skykomish river, east of goldbar.

Lat: 47.8547625, Lon: -121.6773553

the weather was great- very sunny with little wind and no cloud cover. however, it was still morning when we arrived here so it was still probably in the low 50s F. there was great sunlight all around nonetheless.

this was a riparian area, which meant that it is by a river- in this case the skykomish river. the forest was fairly dense, and mostly deciduous, characterized by black cottonwoods (which are common in riparian areas) and bigleaf maples, but also some red alders, and beaked hazelnut trees that looked like red alders (similarly displaying catkins and having similar leaves) but were distinct, which we could tell from the leaves being more toothed than alders, paler below than above, and less tough than alder leaves. other trees we spotted included vine maple and flowering dogwood (closer to the parking lot).

there were both native and non-native species in this forest. much of the understory in this forest included thimbleberry (which was flowering), salmon berry (which was starting to fruit here!), stinky bob (which was also flowering), snow berry, and trailing blackberry. we also saw some wild strawberry plants, japanese knotweed, indian plum (which was fruiting now as well), scotch broom, sweet vernal grass, and in the parking lot we found some sheep sorrel.

closer to the actual river, the ground was mostly sandy. there we saw a number of cottonwood trees with roots growing out of the trunks, which we learned indicated that the area would flood and soil levels would rise during certain times of the year. that was very interesting to see, and something i don't recall noticing before though i'm sure i've seen.

species list:
Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum)
Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius)
Sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum)
Sheep's Sorrel (Rumex acetosella)
Vine maple (Acer circinatum)
Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa)
Herb robert (Geranium robertianum)
Beaked Hazel (Corylus cornuta)
Wild strawberry (Fragaria vesca)
Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida)
Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus)
Salmonberry (Rubus ursinus)
Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus)

Posted on June 3, 2012 07:53 AM by akumar