6.2.12 Carkeek Park, Eddie McAbee Entrance, Seattle WA

Date: 6.2.12
Location: Carkeek Park, Eddie McAbee Entrance. Piper’s Creek Trail
Longitude: -122.36450200000 Latitude: 47.70336600000
Time: about 14-15:00
Weather: The day was mostly clear. The sun was bright and filtered through the trees. A few fluffy cloudy drifted overhead. In the shade of the forested park, it was about 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit.

Observations/Questions/Synthesis:

Though the day was clear and sunny, the ground and the rock I sat on are wet. It must have been raining earlier that day or the day or days before. I sit next to the stream, in a valley, on a gravel path. The gravel of the trail goes all the way down to the stream. The only plants able to grow in this gravel are the Giant Horsetails (Equisetum telmatiea) (more about these later). Along the trail grew what I identified as Large Leaved Avens (Geum macrophyllum) (more on this later) and Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens). The bank/hill without the trail is the steepest (probably 70-80 degree angle). That slope and directly along the trail grew a ton of salmonberries. The whole slope was almost completely dominated by them. I noticed that some of the berries were yellow while others were red. Why do they have differences in color? I noticed that the color of berries was consistent on any singular bush. The color variation only occurred from bush to bush.
Other plants that grow on either slope were Himalayan Blackberries (Rubus discolor), Bracken Fern (Pteridiun aquilinum), Sword Fern (Polystichum munitum), and various kinds of grasses, though these were much less prominent than the ones previously mentioned.

The forest is not hugely shaded by trees; the trees are fairly widespread and/or grow in clumps of about 5-10. The over canopy is composed mostly of Alders (Alnus) (I do not know whether these were white or red, but I would presume probably red since these are most common in our Seattle area generally). I only saw female catkins. If there were any male catkins there were very few. Most of the alders, especially the older ones, did not have white on the trunk. Why is this? What is it that makes the trunk of alders white? Perhaps the white I normally see on Alders is a type of lichen. I did not see any formidable signs of lichen anywhere in the forest. I would guess that the park is too polluted. This corner of the park is very closely surrounded by roads (and is just in the middle of the city anyway), so the algae/fungus relationship cannot survive. The alders grew from about 50-80 feet tall and the trunks were either about 2 feet or 1 foot in diameter (there were few in between). I saw a few other types of trees, Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata), Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum), and Douglass Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii ssp. menziesii), but they were all very small compared to the alders. They were generally no taller than 15 feet tall. The conifers had light green tips, new growth. I saw that from the trunk of a Bigleaf Maple that had been chopped down or broken new branches grew. These young branches were red. Old branches are not red like this. These branches did not produce the seeds that littered the ground and the branches of the older trees. Bigleaf Maples must need to be a certain age before it can start producing seeds (more about seeds later). It is amazing that from such a worn looking old stump fresh, healthy branches of the tree grew!
I heard quite a few different types of birds, and was only able to identify one: an American robin (Turdus migratorius). Most sang high in the trees. I think I also heard what may have been a woodpecker. There were too many walkers with dogs for the birds to venture much to the understory.
There were some plants along the bank and on the steep slope that were marked with orange tape. I was not quite sure what type of plant they were, or if they were even all the same (I took a picture of one. I did not look to see if all the marked plants were the same type because that would have required me getting wet and dirty, and I was studying at a friend’s house directly after this little escapade).

New Species: