April 22, 4-5:15 Sunny as can be! 57 degrees

I finished this before class but it didn't publish, I am not sure why!

My natural spot seems to be more damp and muddier than it was last week. It was hard to find a place where I could really even sit and draw. I decided it would be easier to take some specimens with me and also take pictures as you will see below. Some of the flowering plants like the Red Flowering currant are still present and flower, but there are new plants flowering like the Bleeding heart you will see below. I also noticed there were more insects, the weather has be warming up so the bugs seemed more present this trip to Ravena. It is very green and lush of course and seems to be much wetter. 

Pacific Bleeding Heart- Dicentra Formosa part of the poppy family. These beautiful flowers just bloomed. Last week I saw this but was not sure what it was because it was yet to bloom. It so beautiful! I found it a hillside and there was very few of them. They grow in damp shaded ares and can grow in gravely soil which is exactly what Ravena Park is like. The leaves were finely divided kind of a like a ferns, the flowers grew in clusters as you can see above, at the base of the stem there were four petals, often times it blooms in the spring is dormant in the summer and blooms again in the fall!

Long Leafed Oregon Grape - Berberis aquifolium this plant is suppose to have yellow flowers but I have not see any change in this plant. it has evergreen thick leathery quite shiny compound leaves. they are a pointed oval shape and have one very prominent vein with holly like spins. I find this plant more often on the a incline or at the bottom of the incline than in the really damp area near a small creek. So I am assuming it needs a slightly drier area to grow in. 

Bracken Fern-  This fern is one of the most successful it can be found on six continents and is one of the oldest ferns, there are fossils dating back to 55 million years. I see this fern through out my site- which is very moist and wet, in the picture above it was practically growing in the water. My site is very brushy and shady, they seem to thrive here very well. 

Bracken Fern is part of the Pteridium genus it is a vascular plant meaning it grows in alternating generation. It has fronds that are very spread out and small pinnae. The fronds are shaped like triangles and each frond has a few leaflets. I pulled one to find a very long root system, this is called rhizomes and I found out they can grow up to SIX feet long! 

Red Alder- Alnus Rubra- I have a very hard time identifying all the different leaves found at my sight. One way to identify a Red Alder: the undersides of the leaves have very finely hairs and are oval with small teeth upon larger teeth. The edges of the leaf are wavy and the bark is very smooth with small white patches which I believe is some kind of lichen! Alders are a pioneering species in areas where the ground soil has a lot of gravel in it, which was left over from the receding glacier. They improve the soil and the fertility of the areas they grow in! Alders are good, Alders are great!

Salmon Berry- Rubus Spectabilis - Rose family. 

This plant will eventually have red/pink flowers, but right now I still see no sign of any flowers. The leaves alternate and are a very pointy oval shape, finely toothed and slightly loved. They do no have prickles like other plants in the rose family. We always associate plants in the rose family to have prickles but not this one! Salmonberry grows well in soggy spots and that is exactly where I find it. It looks just like it did last week! 

This snowberry-Symphoricarpos can be very hard to identify because the leaves can change shapes and sizes. But around my site they all seem to look relatively similar. this is a erect deciduous shrub and are around 3 feet at the most in my spot. they have round oval small leaves, and are thin and light green with a little tint of brown or yellow. The leaves are wavy toothed but these are very small toothed, I still see no sign of possible flowers and have watched this plant the last few weeks and it continues to look the same. 

Indian Plum- Oemleria Cerasiformis is a shrub the genus is Oemleria. It is native to this region. The past few weeks there has still be no sign of any flowers, and the leaved are around 1-3 inches long. they have leathery simple leaves. The flowers will bloom and I expect them to be a white-ish color and bell shaped. The bark is smooth and slightly reddish. 

Bitter Cherry is a species of the Prunus genus- Prunus Emarginata. It is a deciduous shrub/tree that has a slender oval trunk and gray/brown bark. The leaves are long thin and oval shaped with a yellowish green coloring. The leaves also have unevenly sized theeth on either side, the flowers are small and white with five metals. The flowers have hairlike stamens and are in clusters which you can see below in my pictures. 

Previous nature experience!

When I was 17 my parents sent me out into the Olympics on a month long guided trip, we hiked around 12-15 miles a day with big packs. By the end of the trip I was eating edible plants and really enjoying every part of nature that I was experiencing. I then had a two day solo vigil on the coast, and a huge rain storm hit. I kept my fire burning through the rain storm for 48 hours without food or water, and without any protection from the storm. In many ways this was an extremely eye opening experience, I had spent a rough 48 hours with just nature, myself and without any distractions. It was a profound experience and I want to have more like that one. I learned a lot about myself, and there is nothing better than being alone with oneself in nature.

Eastern Washington Saturday April 13, 2013 46 F.

I spent the weekend in Eastern Washington. We own close to 100 acres on a lake North of Spokane near Elk, Washington. The lake is called Chain Lake, and there are very few people who live near and around the lake so it is a great place to escape to! I spent the day up there saturday and went on a hike. My dad raises bees, so we bought 3,000 bees and a queen bee and I learned how to set up the beehive!

The picture above is the 3,000 bees after we poured them into the hive.

One main difference I found from western to Eastern Washington is how much drier it is. The average rain fall around Spokane is only 16 inches while it is 37 inches in Seattle. The elevation is less then 500 feet in elevation while Spokane is closer to 2000 feet.  It is also colder in Eastern Washington so less things are blooming than in Spokane. The plants seem to be a little bit behind and there is less growth. One extremely common tree in Eastern Washington that I saw everywhere was the Ponderosa Pine. Below I drew an example of the needles, bark and Pinecone! Pinus Ponderosa is the latin name!

I saw a few Western Redcedar in the damp areas on the Eastern side of Washington but they were not as common as in Seattle. 

I had a very hard time identifying this flower and looked through many of my dad's flower books but I finally figured it out! I loved the color and the center of the flower was white so that is why in the picture below I did not color in the center part. It was a pretty blue-ish, purple color called a Small Blue Eyed Mary. It grows in below treeline in rocky places and dry meadows, I found it a rock face and was blooming. It is part of the Penstemon family and there are around 200 species in this family. 

Another common plant I keep seeing that was prevalent in both areas was the Yellow Skunk Cabbage:

The other tree that was common near my lake place was the Western Larch, it is a deciduous conifer- they essentially only found east of the Cascade crest.  They are abundant on moist at lower and middle elevations. the needles are very soft and they turn golden yellow in the fall and fall off. 

Another tree that I saw all around Eastern Washington was Red Osier Dogwood, and it is starting to bloom, and the bark was very red. 

The common tansy is extremely invasive in Eastern Washington and I have yet to see the plant in Seattle, in the picture below I was surrounded by Tansies on all sides!

It is a flowering yellow plant that is native to Europe and Asia. This common Tansy is a yellow flowering herbaceous plant that is finely divided leaves and button-like flowers. It has a somewhat red colored stem. As you can see in the picture above this area is much dried than Western Washington. It was not as green, and very few flowers had blossomed and many of the plants were dead from the winter. It is amazing how much greener it is on the western side of the state. This lead to my findings of many plants and trees that reside in dryer environments- the Ponderosa Pine being a perfect example. Ponderosa Pines highly populate this area because they can withstand fires as well as long droughts. 

I cant seem to figure out what plant this is: let me know if you have any thoughts!

The picture below a hole created from an Pileated Woodpecker- they are almost crow sized and they eat insects, we heard one while we were walking on our hike!

Quacking Aspen I have seen in both Eastern and Western Washington and seem to grow well in both climates!

I am unsure of what the fern is below, maybe you can help!

Drawing exercise!

Finding my special natural spot- Ravena Park April 9th 430-6 pm 41 degrees

I went to a few of the different parks in Seattle over the weekend. Ravena Park was the last one that I visited, and I just loved it. It is placed in this ravine, next to a park, and under a bridge. I have walked and driven past this area many times and never knew how much life was so close by. I live in the U-District so this will be a great opportunity for me to walk to my natural location. I spent about two hours  here looking for a spot that would have a lot of different species in close range. I eventually found one, it is across the small stream, and was near another small stream. I thought this was the perfect locations because there seemed to be a lot of different kinds of vegetation near the outlet of water. Also in my spot there are fallen trees, as well as standing trees, this will give me the chance to see the different species that are growing on each. Below I have a picture of the small stream running through my area, as well as a close up picture of the tree which has fallen over the stream.

I identified Skunk Cabbage within my spot. Yellow Skunk Cabbage, Lysichiton Americanus is a native plant to this region and the to the Northwest. It is found in streams and swamps which is where I found it, in a very muddy area. It has a "skunky" odor that attracts pollinators. I found it very interesting that after bears come out of hibernating they use this plant as a laxative! Picture can be found below:

I was surrounded by many plants I was unaware of the names, I have started drawing some of the plants and will upload those later this week. There was a lot of vegetation growing from the stream,ground as well as the fallen trees. It is a very moist damp area so it was interesting to see how densely covered my 50 m. Area is. I am thinking of covering one section at a time and photographing as well as drawing and later identifying the plants. I heard a few different birds but did not see any. I want to find a time of day where the least amount of people will be using the park so I can have more awareness of sounds and hopefully be less distracted by the people as well as my densely covered spot. I also noticed a lot of vines coving some of the fallen trees, it looked as if they were feeding off the fallen trees nutrients and almost suffocating them. I want to turn more about that, as well as identify more plants after my guide book comes in the mail! I plan to go back to my site this Friday!