Daily Account #13- Money Creek, WA

5/12- our third stop on the field trip was called Money Creek Campground.

Lat: 47.729146, Lon: -121.409709

the weather was significantly warmer by this time, probably at least 60 F. it was sunny, warm, still no rain or cloud cover.

this spot was not that far from the forest at Index that we had just walked through, so the habitat was not all that different. there was also a river running through further into the campground, which i assume is still the skykomish river. the same tree species, bigleaf maples and western red cedars, dominated here, although i also saw a number of douglas firs and some hemlocks. in fact, there were some particularly huge douglas fir trees at this site. later we saw some large stumps that were cedars, where you could see springboards chopped in as evidence of logging.

the understory similarly had a number of ferns, but also a large patch of yellow violets and some unique plants, like wild ginger. the wild ginger smelled like lemon balm and had flowers that were hiding under their large leaves. i didn't catch why that was so- are their pollinators on the ground? ants? i also found a number of interesting fungi here, but could not get passed the genus in identifying them. among them were a cup fungus, a fungus that looked like it was oozing down the side of a dead stump, and Mycena haematopus which was found on a dead log and leaked red "blood" when the cap was pulled off.

another interesting thing i found was that while observing the trunk of a doug fir, i found (rather creepy looking) exoskeletons of stone flies hanging onto the mosses and lichens on the trunk. there were very large ones, and ones probably an eighth that size, all bunched up in one area of the trunk. it would have been interesting to see them alive as well.

we also saw forget-me-nots and devil's club on the way back to the car. the forget-me-nots looked very pale blue in comparison to the wild ones i've even seen in my backyard- i wondered if that was a difference in species or if they had just been bleached by the sun.

species list:
Stoneflies (Plecoptera)
Cup Fungus- Family Pezizaceae
Western wild ginger (Asarum caudatum)
Western red cedar (Thuja plicata)
Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum)
Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)
Bleeding fairy helmut (Mycena haematopus)
Forget-me-not (Myosotis)

Posted on June 3, 2012 04:49 PM by akumar