Blog post #6 Pine-Ridge
Sara Leeman & Brandon Chapdelaine
Date: October 27th, around 11:00 AM
Location: 20330 83rd Ave W, Edmonds
Weather: Partly sunny, few clouds in sight.
Red Alder (Alnus rubra)
One of the most distinctive features of the Red alder is its bark; it does not peel and looks like it has eyes. Another aspect of them are their very simple leaves. They are oval with toothed edges. The cones were very small and oval with tiny “wings”.
Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast
Bolton Gray (Lactarius acris) *I think*
The reason why I say “I think” is because the mushroom is kind of… dying… I think. It looks like it has lots of bruising and parts of it have been torn/fallen off. But there are a couple of features that can help me identify it. The cap is fairly flat with some divite between the rim and center of the cap. The lamellae has a decurrent type for the gills. Also the coloration is fairly simple but I wouldn't put money on this conclusion.
English Holly (Ilex aquifolium)
The leaves on the English Holly are spiked at every single point. The most defining factor of these shrubs is how their leaves bend. The points on the leaves alternate up and down and have very dark tops on the leaves.
Personally I have never been to Pine Ridge Park before but i thought it was a fun little area to walk around. One interesting thing I learned about fungi on the trip is certain fungi only grow on specific debris and nothing else. The only question i have is how far does the fungi’s underground network spread for this forest. ~Brandon
Artists Conk
After doing a little research, I believe the fungi I found growing on the fallen log is a Ganoderma
Applanatum, part of the Lacquered Bracket Family. The mushroom is “shelf-like”, and hard on top. What helped me identify this mushroom was the concentric rings on the brown top. This mushroom is most often found growing off of dead wood. (Field Guide to the Olympics and Cascades).
Douglas Fir
I learned a lot about the Douglas Fir and how to identify it on this field trip. (Pseudotsuga meniesii). The needles are flat, but the needles are spiraled around the twig. The pine cones are small and oval, with paper like scales. These pine cones are easily identifiable if you know what you’re looking for. The bark is usually very thick compared to other species of trees, and grey or brown on color. (Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast).
Black Huckleberry
I used the dichotomous key in my Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast to try and find this shrub, and I believe it is the black huckleberry (vaccinium membranaceum). I based this mostly on the leaves, which are alternate and pointed at the tip of the leaf, and paler on the bottom of the leaf. The leaves are also finely toothed. Though this is the closest I could find, black huckleberry leaves are reddish purple in the fall, and these leaves were not.
Conclusion
I had never been to pine ridge park before, and it was awesome to learn so much about fungi. Something cool I learned that Korena talked about was how the “underground fungi internet” is so complex it will probably never be replicated by humans! One question that I had was how does the pond effect the types of animals that inhabit the forest? Can we use open areas of land to “re-wild” types of fungi?
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