Blog post #5 Gold park by Selena and Samar

We walked to Gold Park, which is down the street from Edmonds Community College. We first walked through the park and then identified two trees, a shrub, and a fern. One of the trees was a Douglas Fir (shown in picture #1), which had a large trunk and were able to identify it by the mice looking feet/tail going into the pine cones of the tree. Next we saw a Shore Pine (shown in picture #2), which we were able to identify by the pollen cones at the tips of the branches. It was just starting to grow so it was still very small, thin, and short. For the shrub we identified the Red Huckleberry (shown in picture #3). It had a few very small berries that were dried out. Most of these shrubs at the park did not have the berries on them because of the cold weather, but we were able to identify it by some little berries that were left on it as well as the leaves. The fern we identified was the Deer Fern (shown in picture #4). We were able to identify this because it had narrower leafs then the other ferns in our textbook. At first we thought we were wrong, but upon further research we realized that it definitely was a deer fern. We decided to identify these ones because there seemed to be many of them throughout the park.We have never been to Gold Park, but we had a pretty good experience. It was nice to see and be able to identify organisms at a local park that was just right next to us. It was a good way to learn about Western Washington ecology because it allowed us to see that the organisms that are in and around us are all in our common communities.It was an interesting place to go for a short field trip because it showed us that we don’t need to go far or to a large park to be able to see the organisms here in Western Washington which slightly changed our perspective. One of the most interesting things we sae was the young Shore Pine because we were able to compare it to the picture in the book of what it would eventually grow to look like. One question that came up on our visit to Gold Park was how does the nearby road effect the plants and trees? Next, we also wondered how many of the plants and trees were intoduced to the park?

Picure #1 Douglas Fir

Picure #2 Shore Pine

Picture #3 Red Huckleberry

Picture #4 Deer Fern