Temperature: 55°F, chilly weather
Date: April 29, 2015 - 9:00AM
One of our tasks for this week was to find at least six mushrooms and/or lichens. Although I was a bit wary of this part of the assignment at first, it really helped me pay more attention to my surroundings and forced me to stray farther from my one default location.
Since I arrived to my site in the morning, I ran into fewer joggers and bikers than I usually do. This may have been why I heard more birds chirping than usual, even if I wasn't able to see them myself. Luckily the weather was fairly warm, it was a good day to be outside.
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| Zoomed out view of the site |
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| Lichen |
One of the first lichens I was able to find was found all over one of the branches of a Western Red Cedar tree. Since it was found on the twigs, the lichen is considered ramicolous.
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| Lichen |
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| Mushroom |
As I walked deeper into the forest past a bunch of Douglas Fir trees, I eventually found two small patches of small bracket mushrooms growing out of a huge log. The log itself was covered with dead leaves and twigs. The mushroom caps were fairly flat for the section on the left but were more bulbous and irregularly shaped for the section on the right side. It seemed the mushrooms on the left section were younger than the ones on the right section.
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| Zoomed in view of the mushrooms on the right section |
Below are two pictures of another type of lichen I found on twigs and branches.
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| Lichen |
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| Lichen |
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| Mushroom |
As I walked further down the path uphill towards wetter ground, I found another type of mushroom. This mushroom's base was nestled within the wet soil and I was able to capture a picture of a small bug underneath the mushroom cap with its long stalk. The mushroom cap is smooth with a slightly uneven umbrella shape.
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| Mushroom |
After I moved on from the umbrella shaped mushroom, I discovered more evidence of lichen on the branches of a cedar tree. Since lichens tends to grow very slowly and noticing the fact that it didn't cover gigantic areas, this particular lichen is probably more recent than the previous lichens mentioned.
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| Lichen |
As for my sixth lichen/mushroom find of today (more specifically the fourth lichen), it was found on the bark and upper trunk of a tree that also had all types of moss running over it. This particular lichen in my opinion was the most interesting I found today as it varied in shape and size.
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| Lichen |
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| Lichen |
Overall, I encountered a few of the same plants around my site such as the lady ferns, salmonberries, horsetails, and western sword ferns. One of the flowers I encountered that I had not previously seen before at Ravenna Park was the Western bleedingheart. The first time I identified and saw this flower species in person was during our last class trip to the Olympic Peninsula.
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| Lady Fern |
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| Western Bleedingheart |
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| Western Bleedingheart |
Another observation I made during my scavenger hunt for lichens/mushrooms was seeing what seemed like small Big Leaf Maples starting to sprout on top of a trunk of another Big Leaf Maple. I thought this was really interesting as I had never seen it before. I was also able to capture a small bug on one of the leaves in the left picture.
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| Bug on Big Leaf Maple |
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| Big Leaf Maple |
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