Extra Credit - Additional Week at Ravenna Park

Temperature: 62°F, suunny weather

Date: May 4, 2015 at 1:15pm

Fortunately, the weather has been very nice for the past week and today was no exception. Compared to last week, the park was much busier with bikers, walkers, as well as children running around the trees. It was most likely due to this crowd of people that I heard and witnessed zero birds. 

Zoomed out view of main site

After having to look for mushrooms or lichens last week, it was much easier this time around to pay attention and notice them automatically. During the first five minutes of me arriving at my main site within Ravenna Park, I noticed patches of mushrooms on a huge log below a Douglas Fir tree. Since these mushrooms grew on a log, I knew these were bracket mushrooms which are usually unstalked or short-stalked. However, in this case, they had pretty lengthy stalks with umbrella shaped caps. A majority of the caps overlapped each other, most closely resembling the honey mushrooms shown in the guide book. 

Left cluster of mushrooms

Right cluster of mushrooms

Zoomed out view of log and mushrooms

After having spent some time observing the potential honey mushrooms, I began observing the other parts of nature around me. Most of the plants and trees I looked at were those I have already identified in the past, but it was nice to familiarize myself with them again. One of the flowers that I stumbled upon about eight feet from my site were white flowers with five somewhat wrinkly petals. Although they somewhat resembled flowers such as the Pacific Crabapple and the Black Hawthorne, it resembled most like the Thimbleberry since both the petals and the shape of the leaves matched the guidebook.

Thimbleberry

Furthermore, I also noticed a yellow flower with five petals along with streaks of brownish black on the insides of the petals. I was able to identify these as Stream Violets - part of the Violet family. 

Stream Violet

 As I walked along the path, I noticed more shrubs of salmonberries but this time, I was able to spot some unripe berries along with the usual flowers. I'm not sure how long it would take for the berries to ripen but it would be neat if during my next visit to Ravenna Park, I was able to observe these salmonberries after its berries ripens.

Unripe salmonberries

Salmonberry flowers

Zoomed out view of salmonberries

Along with the salmonberries, I also spotted more clusters of bracken along with a red winged bug resting on top of its fronds.

Bracken

Bracken

In addition to the bracken, I also saw more Bigleaf Maples along the way.

Bigleaf Maple

One of the last identifications I did for the day was the Western Red Cedar, of which I believe I have never actually posted a picture of on this blog before. What caught my attention of this particular W. Red Cedar was the lichen forming all over its leaves.

Western Red Cedar with lichen