Land Use History: Ravenna Park is widely known for its history and how not to care for natural areas. Somehow Ravenna Park escaped the logging operations in the late 1800s, and was adopted and privately owned by the couple William and Louise Beck (Blecha, P). For many years the couple preserved the momentous and beautiful Douglas Fir trees and flaunted the mineral springs and their supposed health qualities. The couple was known for changing the name of the park every couple of years. From Big Tree Park, Twin Maples Lane, Ravenna Natural Park, and finally landing on Ravenna Park. Unfortunately, in 1911 the city of Seattle bought the park from the Beck’s destroying quite a bit of its beauty. The city cut down the well-known Douglas Firs and lowered the lake that fed into the stream, slowing down the pace and displacing many aquatic invertebrates. 

            Since then a group named Ravenna Creek Alliance has taken it upon themselves to restore the natural area as best as they can. Although some of the damage done to the park is irreparable, the group insures that the park is protected from any further damage and does restoration in the greater area. For more information on the history of Ravenna Park go to http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9559 and for more information on the group Ravenna Creek Alliance go to http://home.earthlink.net/~ravennacreek/

Plants: Identifying plants was easily my favorite aspect of this course. Not only because I found it to be the easiest, but because it gives you a whole new idea of “being aware of your surroundings.” I highly recommend not only being able to identify the plants around you, but to also be able to state their uses. For example, before the class I would have never known that sword fern helps relieve the pain from stinging nettle. A remedy that certainly came in handy when I found myself surrounded by stinging nettle on my trip to Whidbey Island. You should also be able to tell the history of that plant. For example, the Western Red Cedar was called “The Tree Of Life” because it was used to produce just about everything from canoes to clothing. Cattails were used to weave baskets and make brushes.

            While identifying trees, you should always look at the pines. Ponderosa Pines have three needles per bundle while Western White Pines have five per bundle. Another key feature to observe is the leaves of the trees. For example, the Red Alder has alternate branching leaves, while Big Leaf Maple has opposite branching leaves. You can also look at the lobes of the leaves. Big leaf maple typically has five lobes on each leaf. For pine trees, which often look similar to the amateur eye can be differentiated by the way the pines lay on the branches.  

            You can find all of these plants and trees all over Ravenna Park but you can a particularly large patch of Horsetails at Station 1. Horsetails typically grow near watery areas such as rivers, marshes, and streams, which is why you’ll find station 3 less than one meter away from the Ravenna stream. The horsetail has no leaves or flowers. When it’s in its first stage of growth the horsetail appears as a hollow stem, resembling an asparagus. In the second stage of growth thin green barren stems branch out of the plant. Horsetails are commonly used by herbalists to treat kidney and bladder problems. For more information on horsetails go to http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/horsetail.aspx

Horsetails

EDIBLE AREAS (choice station): At station four you’ll find my favorite shrub, Salmonberry. With it’s five leaflets per branch and bright pink flower, it’s almost impossible to miss in Ravenna’s sea of green shrubs. You’ll find Salmonberry at station 2, about 2.5 meters from the horsetails at station 1.

            One of my favorite aspects of the Salmonberry is its native history. According to storytellers in the Chinook First Nation the coyote was “instructed to place these berries in the mouth of each salmon he caught in order to ensure continued good fishing” and for that reason this berry came to be known as the Salmonberry (Pena, D). Others argue that the name comes from the fact that the salmonberry closely resembles the salmon egg. Because the salmonberry is native to the Pacific Northwest it has certain political restrictions around its harvesting, cultivating, and processing. Among the Coast Salish peoples, certain families have rights and reservations to the first and second rounds of harvesting.

            Besides consumption, the salmonberry is known for it’s medicinal and material uses. If you make the bark and leaves into tea, the tea can help with digestive issues such as diarrhea and dysentery. The Makah are known to use the salmonberry brambles to make tobacco pipes. The Kaigani Haida people are known to line baskets with the salmonberry plant.

For more information on the salmonberry plant go to 

http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2012/12/salmonberry-food-medicine-culture/

Dust lichen

Lichen/Fungi: At station 3, about 4 meters across the trail from station 2 you’ll find a Western Red Cedar with Dust Lichen. You will most commonly find dust lichen on shaded and sheltered bark, or sometimes on vertical rock outcrops in humid sites. Although they’re easy to identify as a group, dust lichen have many different sub species that almost impossible to identify with the naked, untrained eye (Pojar, J., MacKinnon, A., & Alaback, P. B.).

            There are seven different growth forms of lichen: dust, crust, scale, leaf, club, shrub, and hair. When telling the difference between a crust and a dust lichen you’ll notice that they’re both closely attached but dust lichen is composed of tiny, powdery balls, while crust lichen has a clear upper surface and no visible lower surface.

            Some say lichen are like the fungi that discovered agriculture (Pojar, J., MacKinnon, A., & Alaback, P. B.). Instead of invading and scavenging like other fungi, lichen cultivate within themselves. A lichen is the physical manifestation of a fungus providing protection to the alga from the elements of nature.

Invertebrates: Searching and observing for invertebrates requires the patience and dedication of bird watching, but with the added necessity of getting down into the dirt and sometimes getting your feet wet. While looking for invertebrates I was required to really test my patience and willingness to face my fear of bugs. I went crawling through bushes, digging around soil, and picking up rocks in the stream. The strategy I found the most rewarding was picking up rocks in the stream, not because it’s the easiest, because it by far isn’t, but because I find the water invertebrates to be the most interesting.

The invertebrates I had the most fun searching for at station 4 were surprisingly the stream invertebrates. Stream invertebrates are commonly used to indicate the quality of water. The steam invertebrates can be divided into three different taxa based on the quality of water. You will find taxa one strictly in good quality water due to the fact that they are not pollution tolerant invertebrates. The faster the stream is going, the cleaner the water will be. The slower the stream is going, the more polluted the water will be. Group two taxa is tolerant of polluted waters, but can also live in cleaner areas of the stream. You can find group two taxa in moderately polluted water. Group three taxa is completely tolerate of polluted waters so you will find them in the slower, more polluted parts of the stream.

While searching around the stream, it is important to be very gentle with everything you do so you can disrupt the ecosystem as little as possible. When you pick up a rock make sure to very gently replace it exactly where you found it. After turning over many rocks, I was able to find a Midge Fly Larva and a leech. Both are part of group three taxa and I was in a slower part of the stream, indicating that I was in a more polluted part of the stream.

Drawing of the crane fly I found at another station

Birds: If you’re anything like me, bird watching will not be your strong suit. You won’t be able to effectively or efficiently find birds by tasting, smelling or touching. That leaves you with seeing and hearing, and when you’re looking for small birds in a very large area, your sight won’t be all that helpful. Bird watching isn’t actually so much about the watching, but about the listening. While in my sight I found it easiest to just sit, close my eyes, and listen for anything that could hint to a bird nearby. This doesn’t necessarily mean listening for birdcalls. If you decide to just listen for the calls most calls are too difficult to hear over the sound of the city or as I quickly found out, the crows. So while you’re sitting, try to ignore the honking of cars and the “Cawing” of crows and listen for things like movement in the bushes and trees nearby.

Red Winged Blackbird

Most of the identifications I made were within 5-10 meters away. From station 5 I was able to hear the brushing of a Song Sparrow in a nearby bush. If you’re having trouble identifying the bird by it’s song, try looking at it’s features. For example, I was able to identify the Bewick’s Wren because of its upright tail feathers. Also pay close attention to the coloring and markings of the bird, I’m fairly new at bird watching so at first I got the Pacific Slope Flycatcher confused with the Wilson’s Warbler because they’re both green. I was soon able to figure out that the Pacific Slope Flycatcher was more of a greenish/grey and the Wilson’s Warbler has a black mark on it’s head.

Animal Behavior (Station 6): After bird siting I went down the trail to the right and found almost half of a dozen American Crows bathing in the stream. Although I normally despise crows, it was nice to see them calm and sitting still instead of hopping around and cawing. The crows were all bundled together within about 3-4 meters of each other. Some of the crows weren’t even bathing; they were just watching the other crows from the branches above.

Crow Bathing

            While I was watching the crows, I heard a song sparrow’s high trills and buzzes in a nearby tree. I searched the surrounding area to find the song sparrow and after what felt like forever of frantically looking in nearby branches I found the song sparrow on a higher up branch about 3 meters away. Because the song sparrow didn’t want to give the location of it’s nest away. Song sparrows are known for being territorial, something that I learned quickly while in this class. Again, bird watching takes a lot of patience so even though this sounds like a quick interaction it really took approximately 15-20 minutes.  

Geology/Geomorphology:  While I was watching the crows bathe in the stream, I could see an erratic off in the distance. Erratics are basically large boulders that could have only been moved by something as heavy and strong as a glacier. The erratic I found at station station 7 was moved there by the Vashon glacier, also known as the Cordellion Ice Sheet. The Vashon glacier retreated about 15,000 years ago and while it was retreating it had the power to push boulders so large that it’s almost impossible to move them any other way.

Vashon Glacier Erratic

            The glacier that moved this rock and many others in the Puget Sound area, was the last of seven glaciers to retreat in the region. It extended as far south as the Olympia in the west, and Spokane in the east. It took the longest to retreat because out of the seven the Cordellion Ice Sheet was the thickest. In comparison to some skyscrapers we know, the Vashon Glacier was 3,000 feet tall while Seattle’s Columbia Tower is only 997 feet tall. For more information on the Vashon Glacier go to http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5087 and for more information on erratics in the Seattle area go to https://nwgeology.wordpress.com/the-fieldtrips/glacial-erratic-field-trips/seattle-area-glacial-erratics/

Visible Ecological Interaction: At station 8, on your way back up the trail from the erratic at station 7 you’ll find a patch of sword fern on the left side of the trail. On one of those sword ferns I was able to find a spider web that was woven between the sword fern’s fronds. You’ll actually be able to see this interaction all over the park because it’s quite common for spiders to weave their webs on all sorts of ferns.

Within the spider’s web you will be able to find flies that had been trapped in the sticky web, waiting to be consumed by the spider.

            Within this web we were able to see multiple ecological interactions: the sword fern obtaining nutrients from the soil, the spider building it’s habitat on the sword fern, and the fly getting stuck in the sticky web, waiting for it’s death. You can find numerous interactions just like this all over Ravenna park. For example, you can probably look at any big leaf maple to find that it has moss on it and most likely has lady fern growing out of it. The moss absorbs water and stores it for the hotter months, when the big leaf maple will then need it due to the fact it can’t hold moisture well.

Spider's Web on top of a Sword Fern

Effects of Ecological Disturbance: One thing I never considered about pollution and global warming was how it has been affecting our plant species. There are countless species that have been edged out by the high amounts of CO2 and other toxins in the air. While at my site I was able to find a banana slug, unknowing of how rare it is I continued on my way after drawing a picture of it. This is a prime example of how human interaction with nature needs to slow down so we can fully appreciate the beauty and rarity of organisms around us.

            One species that has been highly affected by pollution is lichen. Certain species of lichen are specifically susceptible to sulfur dioxide. Due to the high toxicity of Seattle’s hair it will be near impossible to find Common Witch’s Hair in the greater Seattle area, even though it’s common on coastlines. If you were looking for Common Witch’s Hair you would have a much easier time finding it along the Olympic peninsula near the Olympic Mountains in a quieter, less densely populated area. For more information on how lichen are affected by pollution go to https://staff.concord.org/~btinker/gaiamatters/investigations/lichens/affectslichens.html

Sources Cited:

Blecha, Peter. "Ravenna Park (Seattle)." HistoryLink.org- the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. N.p., 23 Jan. 2011. Web. 08 June 2016.

Pena, D. (2012, December 17). Salmonberry: Food, Medicine, Culture - Part 1. Retrieved June 07, 2016, from http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2012/12/salmonberry-food-medicine-culture/

Pojar, J., MacKinnon, A., & Alaback, P. B. (1994). Plants of the Pacific Northwest coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia & Alaska. Redmond, WA: Lone Pine Pub.