Daily Account #15- 145th St NW and NW 1st Ave

6/3- today i decided to walk around my parent's backyard, which is very large and has a number of unkempt areas, to see what wild or invasive things i could find. our neighborhood used to be fairly densely populated with trees as far as residential areas go- but i've seen in the last 10 years large colonies of trees, both across from us and kitty corner to us, be chopped down and replaced by houses. we still have a number of large douglas firs and western red cedars around our house, as well as several plum trees and many species of rhododendrons.

it was 10am when i went outside, with a decent cloud cover above but no wind. i would say it was 50 F, though sun was streaming through and it was definitely set to warm up over the day.

the first wild species i recognized was pacific bleeding heart, which was growing next to a large swordfern and interspersed with some other flowering plants. they were a very pale pink- nothing compared to the vibrant horticultural species that we also had in our yard. i also found several creeping buttercups, which were usually in close proximity to other species, such as grasses or herb robert/poppies/other flowering plants. there would often be a few plants together, but rarely did they take over patches of grass. one species that seemed much more to take over patches of the garden are wild violets, which i identified as the garden violet Viola odorata. these weren't flowering at the time so i can't be 100% sure of the identification, but as i've seen them many years before, they closely resembled the flowers in this species.

i also caught a bumblebee on a rhododendron, which many bees were busy pollinating/collecting nectar from this morning. i wasn't sure how to identify it, but it has a very distinctive bright orange bottom that i tried to use to find an identification that matched this region, which was Bombus rufocinctus.

i also found some other invasives, including horsetail (though i don't know which species), english ivy (which was especially fond of areas along/below a wooden fence we have), foxglove (i don't know if this is technically an invasive, but we never planted any and always have tens come up every year), and lemon balm (which might also not be invasive but i have certainly see it spread like wildfire in unwanted areas).

we also put some food (english muffins) out to see what might come out to get it- and i caught an eastern gray squirrel and a crow snatching the food up. the squirrel was quite content to sit there eating while i took a picture, while the crow was only comfortable flying away with the food and consuming it elsewhere.

species list:
Creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens)
Bumblebee (Bombus rufocinctus)
Garden violet (Viola odorata)
Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)
Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)
Rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum)
Pacific bleeding heart (Dicentra formosa)
Alyssum (Lobularia maritima)
Horsetail (Equisetum)
Common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)
English ivy (Hedera helix)

Posted on June 4, 2012 03:04 AM by akumar