Natural History : 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!