Week 10: Reflections

Part I:

Ode to the Douglas Fir:

Without arms, it reaches
Without voice, it teaches
That our lives are but a brief moment in time
Without skin, it feels
Without a word, it heals
Reminding us never give up on our climb

Turning the sunlight into all the colors of life

Ode to a Hummingbird:

Flurry, flurry!
Hurry, hurry!
Buzz, buzz!
Squeak, squeak!
“If I hover here,
Blackberry,
Give up to me your secret.
Make this worth my time,
For my time is fleeting!”

Ode to a Mushroom:

Covered shyly under your little hat
Do you not want me to take a peek?
I’m so sorry--
You just look good enough to eat

But I know what you’ll do
You’ll try to make me trust you
And somehow I want to
You’re a sneaky one, you

You think you’re so cool, hanging out in the shade
How long will you stay this time?
“I’ll show you what!” and I plucked you up
But even tucked away in my bag, you are still not mine

And I know what you’ll do
You’ll try to make me trust you
And somehow I want to
You’re a sneaky one, you

Part II: 

1) I think that at the beginning of the quarter, I chose Discovery Park thinking that it would be the only urban natural area big enough, with enough flora and fauna, to hold my interest for an entire quarter. But after we spent a few days revisiting only one area of the park, and I realized how fascinating things were on a micro-scale, the park's scope actually began to feel overwhelming. 

2) What I think is interesting is that my curiosity for Natural History began while studying biology in the tropics. But since there is no seasonality there, when I began to study Natural History here in the Pacific Northwest Springtime, I was almost more amazed to see the changes in phenology. Everything here seems perfectly timed to flower and fruit at the right to time to ease competition over resources, pollinators, etc. Learning how our climate, glacial history, and geological features in Washington create such different zones of vegetation made our area's biology seem so much more exotic than I had ever imagined it to be.

3) To intimately know a place means to me to know it as you would a person. You get to know it, what are its habits, its pretty parts, its ugly parts--you get emotionally involved. I get so excited when I go there now because I can go look and see if I will find a Spotted Towhee in the same place I saw it last week. And usually what happens is I see or find something completely new and wonderful instead. It makes me feel that learning in nature can be a never-ending process when you feel passionately for it.

Week 9: Phenology

Date: June 2, 2013
Weather: sunny, few light clouds
Temp: 70 F
Time: 3:30pm-5:30pm
Location: Discovery Park

This week we reflect on how things have changed at Discovery Park from Week 1 back at the beginning of April to now (other than the lighting and now perfect temperature). At our first spot, we encountered and identified many plants.

April

June

 Our milk thistle thicket has grown much thicker and taller!

April

June

 Our Alaskan Yellow Cedar is much the same (it is an evergreen, after all), with a few new developments:

Some of the older growth is dying to make way for the new

Development of female cones!

 Next, our Red-Flowering Currant is now neither red nor flowering...

April

June

The little Sword Fern fronds have unfurled and a thicket has developed.

April

June

Our Oregon Grape is now past its prime.

June

April

Our Galium aparine is flowering!

April

June

The English Holly has not seen much change, as an evergreen species, but the light green leaves indicate new growth

April

June

The Indian Plum that was flowering is now developing fruit. These fruits have been yellow and hard for weeks now that we've seen, and according to the book they are supposed to turn purple and, I assume, ripen as well. So I wonder if it is a slow-ripening fruit of some kind...

April

June

Probably the most marked change is in the Big Leaf Maple, that is now lush with giant leaves and fully developed fruit.

April

June

April

June

April

June

A clover path through the blackberry thickets has now become an uninviting mass of Himalayan Blackberry.

April

June

The young Lodgepole Pine has developed small female cones and males pollen structures

April

June

Male pollen structures

Immature female cone

The Western Red Cedar is, like the Yellow Cedar, experiencing some new growth (the lighter green tips) and developing female cones.

April

June

Female cones developing

Our Lupines are late in their beautiful flowering phase and are now also fruiting.

April

June

A tell-tale sign that Lupines are in the Legume family!

And lastly, and also predictably, our Amanita (genus) mushroom has vanished. Mushrooms are usually quite ephemeral, so not much ever much phenotype change to observe!

April

June

It has been quite an eventful season, full of plants, birds, animals, fungi, and arthropods (oh my!). We will be writing one last blog as well as summarizing our species into a Walking Tour of Discovery Park, coming soon!

Week 7: Fungi

Date: May 19, 2013
Weather: sunny, light wind, few light clouds
Temp: 60 F
Time: 5:30pm-6:30pm
Location: Discovery Park

This week, we set off into the forest as foragers of fungi. We were a little skeptical of finding mushrooms a) this late into Spring and b) because you seem to stumble across them accidentally when you are not looking for them! However, the Kingdom Fungus includes yeasts, molds, and lichen as well as mushrooms (since these are mere the fruiting bodies of underground mycelium fungus organisms), and we knew lichens would be abundant. We brought a paper bag along for collecting specimens, since in class this was recommended as on of the better ways to store mushrooms short term... putting them in plastic bags or Tupperware makes them slimy fast. Here are some of the few mushrooms we've already seen in the past 6 weeks:

Hare's-foot Inkcap

Marasmius (genus) growing in grass

Amanita (genus), likely Panther Amanita, growing in
woody material in the shade of some tress 

Oyster Mushroom, growing on a dead tree snag

I include the locations of the mushrooms, since this, and really any possible information about the mushroom can aid in the painstakingly specific process of identifying mushrooms. The major mushroom forms are
-Gills
-Pores
-Teeth
-Jelly
-Wrinkles
-Puffballs
-Oddballs
-Cup
and these can be helpful in narrowing down the mushroom to at least a family. Wandering through the woods this evening, we found several lichens growing on trees.

Here is an interesting lichen growth under a tree branch

Most of these lichens we were able to grab and put in our "goodie bag." We searched high and low (but mostly low) for our mushroom friends. After about an hour, the only ground dweller that greeted us was a slug startled by the upturned leaf litter as we searched around.

Looks like it didn't find any mushrooms either

So we turned around after collecting some lichens and headed back. Upon stopping to observe some Siberian Miner's Lettuce that I spotted part way into a wooded area, lo and behold! My theory was correct: you find mushrooms the minute you stop looking! From a distance, we were able to see some large bulbous mushrooms poking their heads out of the ground!

Success!

We saw four of them, and two were already strangely perfectly uprooted and ready for me to throw into our paper bag. They were all gathered around a dying Alaskan Yellow Cedar. Based on our first glance and the little we had learned in class, we guessed it was some kind of Puffball. We continued the rest of the way home, pleased with our find.
That night however, I decided to ditch one of the samples. As I pulled it out of the bag to inspect it, I found we had an unexpected hitchhiker

Apparently I brought home the home of an
unsuspecting millipede!

Looking into our bag, this is what we came up with:

Our loot

Oak Moss Lichen

Methuselah's Beard Lichen

Hammered Shield Lichen

A dried up fungus?

Our scaly mushroom

Top view of mushroom reveals a brown cap

So originally, like I said, we assumed this was some kind of puffball mushroom. However, upon looking through our guide, we realized the puffballs are much more stemless and less scaly. Another distinguishing feature is that on the inside, they are white and meaty like a button mushroom when immature, but, when they mature, the entire inside turns into a huge spore vessel, that will actually "puff" spores when disturbed.

A true puffball

There was one way to find out:

Cross-Section!

 The mushroom dissection proved to be entirely useful! This was definitely not a puffball. In fact, it had very distinct gills:

Free, veiled gills

The terminology we eventually determined was correct to describe this was "free, veiled gills" meaning the gills do not attach to the stem and the cap provides a veil underneath the cap. We finally decided this to be a Shaggy Parasol, even though the book describes their season as Sept-Oct...

Shaggy Parasols, genus Lepiota

However, this has at least three look-alikes described in the book, one of which, the Reddening Lepiota (L. americana) maybe the more likely choice as its season is late June-Oct. However, this one is usually found in close clusters, and we found ours at least a several feet away from each other...

Reddening Lepiota (Lepiota americana)

What do YOU think...? Seems like this mushroom hunting and IDing business is just as hard as it looks!