Blog Post 5 by: Katherine, Shannon, Elijah

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We went to Gold Park. Since Shannon and Katherine did their ecological survey’s here, we had already scoped out this park. This time we made a more concentrated effort to view and recognize more plants. Our experience was generally good. It is a nice local park, but because we had already explored here, it lost some of its appeal. Going outside and identify organisms is a great way to learn Western Washington Ecology.  I think the best thing about this trip was working as a group and using the key to identify local plants. I’ll admit it was difficult at first, but with the help of Shannon and Elijah we identified many plants in the park. 

1.     Douglas Firs are very large trees. Their bark is not very attractive. They have  many dead broken branches with small, reddish brown cones.  It was easy to identify once we found the cones.

2.     Tall Oregon grape has spiky looking leaves that are yellowish green. There leaves are very distinctive. It is a little over two meters tall. 

3.     Western hemlocks are tall trees with flat needles and seed cones. It had a broken branch and looked fairly young, but still very tall.

4.     Maidenfern have spread out leaves fanned out. It has black stems and very green leaves. It fans out in 5 or 7.

Questions: What animals are native to this park? Which plants are invasive? How can citizens, like us, protect this park for future generations?

Picture of Gwen