Week 3: Plant Species ID

Date: April 21, 2013
Weather: cloudy, interspersed rain to sunny with clouds
Temp: 55 F
Time: 2:30pm-4:00pm
Location: Discovery Park

We set out again for our third week, cameras ready on macro setting, to continue observing phenotype changes in the species in our spot, as well as wander deeper into the park to find more species and natural areas. Coming out of the parking lot, we looked around for our old faithfuls.

The red-flowering currant has started to develop fruits!

Cones developing on the Nootka cypress

 The knobby, segmented female cones distinctive of Alaskan yellow cedar (nootka cypress) can be seen here dominating the picture while the little male strobili stay timidly far away on the tips of the branches. These branches also provided a quick resting spot for a fly.

"Maybe I should pick a less poky tree next time..."

Looking around on the ground again, we spotted a new piece of vegetation hiding close to the ground, but with the nice, distinctive palmately lobed, rounded leaves of the genus Geranium. 

Dovefoot Geranium

Based on its small size and proximity to the ground, we identified it as Dovefoot Geranium. It is native to the Mediterranean and sub-Mediterranean areas, but is now naturalized in other parts of Europe, in southwestern and central Asia and in North Africa. It is an introduced species in North America, where it is known as Dovefoot Geranium or Awnless Geranium. While we normally think of geranium as a harmless, aesthetically pleasing flower, the plant is actually a noxious weed in the Pacific Northwest and quickly forms groundcover on open areas, among grasses, and in planting beds.

Moving back to the Bigleaf Maple, we noted the leaves appeared to be getting bigger and the catkins opening up more, preparing to fruit.

Bigleaf Maple catkin flower opens to reveal a quite whimsical pistil!

...And displaying its stamens/anthers in full force!

 The Elderberry flowers were also developing a nice white color and fully spreading open. They kind of make me think of tiny pieces of popcorn being popped...

Elderberry

Next, we found a new species called Hawthorn, in the Rosaceae family.

Note the rose hips of the Hawthorn, distinguishing it as in the Rose family!

 It was helpful that I finally learned what rose hips are this week, so I knew what to look for (they are the round, reddish to brownish balls with the sepals fringed on top). Rose hips are the fruit of the rose plant. They begin to form after successful pollination of flowers in spring or early summer, and ripen in late summer through autumn. Rose hips are used for jelly, syrup, soup, beverages, pies, bread, wine, and in teas. They can also be eaten raw, like a berry, if care is used to avoid the hairs inside the fruit. They have grown in popularity due to their high vitamin-C content, and thus rose hip tea is a common cold remedy.

This week we learned about the two common species of rose in the Pacific Northwest: Nootka rose and baldhip rose. We kept a lookout for those as well, and--fancy that!--we stumbled upon some Nootka rose, distinguished by the pinnate, compound leaves, with leaflets in 5-9 bunches and BIG curved thorns.

Nootka rose-those are the thorns your mother warned you about

Next, we saw what we can only guess was a very old mushroom. It looked a bit Dr. Suess-esque, but showed no signs of leaf growth or remnants of any reproductive structures...

Fungus...or remnant of an ancient Truffula forest?! (see below)

Maybe Dr. Suess was onto something

Then, we found some Indian Plum, which we had to check twice, since the flowers were beginning to heavily fruit.

Indian plum fruiting

On the Douglas fir, the cones were maturing. Here you can see the distinct range of phenotype between the male and female cones...

Small male cones. You know they're male when you flick them and pollen falls

Female cones (see below for distinguishing feature of the female cones)

Douglas fir female cones have wing-like structures that
appear to dangle out of the cone

Next we saw Snowberry, also known as "corpse berry" (hope I don't have to explain the reason behind that one). It looks somewhat like Huckleberry, but while huckleberry has alternate leaves, snowberry's are opposite, and usually tinged with a little bit of red. Of course the white snowberries are usually a pretty good indicator when they are around...

Common Snowberry

 From far away, the peeling bark calls...and we find a Pacific Madrone.

Pacific Madrone

Peeling bark of the madrone

Distinct, bell-shaped flowers...must be Ericaceae!
(same family as blueberries)

We also found a plant that looked exactly like red-flowering currant, but the leaves were white. Some id-ing leads us to believe it is Sticky currant.

Sticky Currant

As we ventured further into the natural, wooded areas of the park. We found many alders lining the path, which later turned to deeply shaded evergreen areas. Where the alders abounded, many small birds could be heard flittering around in them. I tried in vain to get a picture of a chesnut-backed chickadee we saw. I managed only to snap yet another picture of the much bolder robin. He looked slightly perturbed at my presence, possibly because we tried to sneak up on him while he was bathing in a nearby puddle...

"Seriously...stop following me around"

 On the way into the wooded areas we also noted many mangled looked, warty-barked trees. The strange structure and texture of the trunks both interested and perplexed us. We spotted many that had the same strange "warts" so it was hard to determine if these were some kind of nodule growth. We will try to id them at some point. Note: we have PROOF that the sun came out for awhile in these pictures (a rare treat for the Pacific Northwest naturalist!)

Warty trees?

In this same area, we found Vinca vine growing in the alders' shade

Vinca

 A beetle resting on an alder leaf

As well as what was likely a House fly resting on some unknown shrub. We also found what we later identified as Fringecup

Fringecup

We wandered down the path into the evergreen wooded area. Within the woods we did not identify many new species, except some very conspicuous licorice ferns

Licorice ferns just hanging out

and many more sword ferns amongst the underbrush

On the way back out, I noticed a new pine with giant needles. As I came closer I noticed its needles were in bundles of 3...Ponderosa pine!

Ponderosa pine. Pom-pom shaped needle structure

A closer look revealed beautiful, majestic cone developing display.
Females on the edges and males in the middle.

We hope for Week 4 to bring us a bit more sun, as well as a chance to continue to see more change in our species phenotypes and behaviors!

Now, for a little exercise in species identification using some of the species we have found at Discovery Park:

1. Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum): Large tree species. Deciduous. Opposite light green 5-lobed palmate leaves (claw-like, hanging). Flowers form in hanging catkins and are greenish-yellow, about 3mm across. Fruits are golden-brown, paired winged seeds and the long wings that separate in a V-shape.

2. Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata): Large evergreen conifer tree species. Leaves form in non-pointy scales. Leaves in opposite pairs in four rows in overlapping shingle assortment resembling a flattened braid. Glossy green color on leaves. Bark is reddish when mature and stringy. Reddish male cones remain very tiny on tips of branches while female seed cones are green when immature, then grow to become brown, woody and turned upwards with winged seeds.

3. Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla): Large, up to 60 meters tall, evergreen tree species. Leaves in needles that are short, blunt, fat, irregularly spaced and usually unequal length (5-20mm long). Leaves are yellowish-green and top while underside is whitish with 2 fines lines of stomata. Male pollen cones numerous and small. Female cones are also quite small, 1-3cm in length.

4. Red-Flowering Currant (Ribes sanguineum): Grows in shrub form in tall, erect manner, 1-3m tall with crooked stems and reddish-brown bark. Deciduous. Leaves grow in alternate pattern and are regularly or irregularly 5-lobed and 2-6cm broad. The lower surface of the leaf is paler and hairier. Flowers are usually a deep magenta-pinkish color, though it appears the colorful petals are actually sepals, since there is a whitish rounded tubular structure that also protrudes out from the center that surrounds the stamens and pistil. The flower structure is tubular, with sepals separated into 5 parts and the flowers grow in drooping bundles of 10-20 flowers. Fruits are blue-black round berries 7-9mm and unpalatable.

5. Indian-Plum (Oemleria cerasiformis): Grows in large shrub or small tree form, 1.5-5m tall. One of the first plants to flower in the spring. Deciduous. Leaves alternate, pale green, soft and lance-shaped, 5-12 cm long. Non-serrated entire leaves that smell strongly of cucumber when crushed. Flowers are greenish-white bell-shaped and about 1 cm across. Male and female flowers grow on separate plants. Flowers have 5 petals, 15 stamens and hang in 5-10cm long clusters from leaf axils. Fruits are small and ripen from a peach to a bluish-black color with a whitish bloom and look like small plums about 1 cm long, edible but bitter with a large pit.

6. Cleavers (Galium aparine): Weak, herbaceous, tap-rooted annual. Grow low to ground, 20-100cm tall. Leaves in whorls of 6-8 linear, oblong, 1 veined structure. Have bristles on underside up leaf that will attach to fabric such as cotton and will stick to some clothing. Flowers are whitish or greenish and small, 1-2mm wide, with petals fused at the base into a very short tube that spreads into 4 lobes . Fruits are dry 2-lobed little burs covered with hooked bristles.

7. Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa): Large evergreen conifer tree species. Bark is scaly and cinnamon-colored. Leaves are distinctively long needles (compared to other pines), 10-20cm, and grow in bundles of 3 needles and branches can grow sloping downwards in mature trees. Cones grow in circular nest-like structure surrounded by a bunch of pines in a pom-pom structure. The cones grow with rows of female, oval cones on the outside and small, male cones in the center. Female cones mature from purple-brown color to brown and males become long and erect

8. Common Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus): Grow in shrub form, erect, from .5-2m tall. Opposite branching with young hairless stems and fine twigs. Deciduous. Opposite, elliptic to oval leaves 2-5 cm long and may be lobed on young stems. Edges smooth to wavy-toothed. Flowers are pink to white, bell-shaped and 5-7mm in short dense clusters of few flowers, mostly terminal. Fruits are in clusters of white berries, 6-15mm across and are inedible to humans, though palatable to other animals such as birds.

Week 2: Field Drawings

Date: April 13, 2013
Weather: cold, cloudy, interspersed rain, and a major hail storm!
Temp: 37 F
Time: 4:00pm-5:00pm
Location: Discovery Park

The weather over the weekend was a little colder than last week, close to freezing, due to a low pressure storm front on the eastern U.S. coast that was passing over the Pacific Northwest. Once again, we went out bundled in multiple layersand this time I grabbed some Ziploc bags--we knew we were definitely going to collect some specimens for more detailed field drawing later.
Upon entry into the park from the parking lot, an American Robin stood almost sentinel guarding the entrance.

"Password?"
(American Robin)

As we watched, though, we realized he was just keeping a firm eye on us while pecking for some worms in the fresh, wet grass. We walked back through our same pathways from before, checking for any notable phenotype changes in our species identified from last week. It may have been a difference in the quality of light, but the Bigleaf Maple appeared to have more and healthier looking catkins.

We observed the other species, including our unknown Rosaceae species, which appears to be getting closer to fruiting, as its flower petals are falling off. We are excited for the fruits to come out so it can aid in our identification! It is almost definitely non-native...

Also, I revisited the Alaskan Yellow Cedar (Nootka cypress) and the nearby thistle with the "larvae" on it to see if there had been any development in the larvae development. However, on a more careful observation, I matched the small, cone-like structures at the tips of the leaves of the tree...

To the "larvae" eggs resting on the milk thistle directly below...

Oops! I guess it wasn't larvae after all! In fact, they are actually the pollen-bearing structures. Alaskan cedar is monoecious, which means that it has both male and female parts (this is true for all trees with cones). The tiny inconspicuous yellow or reddish male pollen-bearing strobili and the green female cones are born on the tips of branchlets.
We had to look a little harder, but we did find some new plant species on this trip!

Common yarrow

The common yarrow, in the same family as the carrot, was almost missed amongst the thicket of grass in the park.

Cherry laurel

The common name of this plant is somewhat ironic. They refer to the similarity of foliage and appearance to bay laurel (Laurus nobilis, the true laurel, in the Lauraceae family); however, the two plants are unrelated. This plant is in the Rosaceae family.

Rowan tree, sometimes mistaken for Mountain Ash

The leaves almost look as if they were cookie-cuttered.
Plump with deep serrated edges and central vein.

Elderberry, also identified at Ravenna Park (see iNaturalist)
Note distinctive 5 compound leaves in opposite pinnate pattern.

Thimbleberry, also identified at Ravenna Park

The last new plant identified was a Douglas fir. It was helpful to have had the field class in Ravenna Park the previous Thursday where we looked at the differences between the major types of trees in the Pacific Northwest: fir, cedar, hemlock, alder, spruce, and maple. I actually had to return and fix my previous blog entry that had claimed lodgepole pine was distinctive by its pointed growth tips...after seeing the Douglas fir, I realized I had posted a picture of a Douglas fir! This was confirmed by the fact that the needles were not in bundles, as the needles in pine trees always are. For pines, the number of needles in a bundle is what determines the species of pine (lodgepole pine has two per bundle).

Pointed growth tips of the Douglas fir

Cones forming on the Douglas fir!

Then we focused our search of species towards the other kingdoms.
Once again, the birds were elusive--it seemed the brazen robin from before was an exception. A variety could be heard. Some birds seemed to stay in groups and would be seen quickly flitting between one thick evergreen tree and another; usually only a bird or two would fly at a time every few seconds. Likely a well-rehearsed defense mechanism.
However, other small birds could be seen on their own foraging and calling from within shrubs and small trees low to the ground. They would jump around on the branches in some kind of searching manner. Some shrubs had little enough foliage that I could snap a quick picture!

The black-capped chickadee. If only it turned its head a little more to the left...

Then I felt we needed to take our search to the ground and start noticing the minute life we were likely missing. Immediately I noticed a few tiny, cricket-looking insects hopping amongst the grass tips--cricket-looking based on the bounce and great length it could cover in one move. It looked closer to a Caddisfly actually rather than a cricket, from a look inside the field guide. However, I have a feeling they were neither.

Teeny insects beneath our feet!

I sat on the ground for a bit, and also saw a spider about 3/4 inch in diameter scurrying under the grass. I tried hard to get a picture, but those guys are quite good at getting in a place where they will not be seen. Especially since I didn't have enough desire to remove all of the grass it burrowed down into. I probably would have gotten a picture, if I hadn't taken a moment to look back at the hem of my pants, where another one of the black spiders was attempting to crawl up inside. I quickly abandoned my picture efforts at that location...
Next, we almost breezed by a new mushroom! Not really our fault though; it was probably only about 1and1/2 to 2 inches tall.

Some kind of tiny morel?

Then, when we were almost about to go, an apocalyptic (for the Pacific Northwest at least) rogue hail storm appeared! We had to take shelter under the Douglas fir for about 10 minutes. The hail was the size of small gravel and was actually stinging our hands and faces to stand in.

The aftermath

We also collected five specimens in Ziplocs for field sketching.
The next day, after reading some of the guide for field sketching by Claire Walker Leslie, a well-known nature artist, we attempted 6 of the different prescribed exercises:
1. Memory sketch--examine the specimen carefully, then put it away and draw as much detail as you can remember.
2. Contour--without looking at the paper, continuous trace the outline of the specimen as you follow the outline with your eyes.
3. Gesture--quick sketches. We limited out sketches to 5 seconds, 30 seconds, and then 1 minute.
4. Diagrammatic--No more than 5 minutes drawing the plant, focusing on and labeling the distinguishing features.
5. Experimenting with pencil line.
6. Study--Finally, spending about 15-20 minutes creating a detailed, labeled drawing.
See my results below, for European Holly, our unknown Rosaceae, Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Elderberry, and Bigleaf Maple.

From this exercise, I feel I learned to be a much better observer of plants for field identification purposes. In order to make an accurate drawing, I eventually had to create a mental checklist of all the tiny features I needed to look for--all the parts of the flower, how the buds and growths are connected, and the different types of leaf patterns and organization.
More next week!