We went back to the Visitor Center in the Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, WA, specifically for the Ranger-led walk on the Spruce Trail. Laura did a fantastic job and we learned a lot. We can even identify some of the trees now on our own!
Laura is standing next to a Giant Sitka Spruce that is probably 200 years old.
The Coho Salmon were in this little creek (really a branch
of the Hoh river). Young salmon are
called Fry. They seemed to be hardly
moving - just keeping up with the current - but they were biding their time
until a bug hit the surface. Then they
darted so fast the bugs never knew what hit them.
I tried some more High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing. I think it helped in recording the mosses and ferns of the temperate rain forest.
The conifers are
huge and dripping with moss. Over 90
percent of the conifers in the rainforest are Sitka Spruce and Western
Hemlock. And 96 percent of those get
their start on nurse logs. Only one
seedling in 10,000 will survive.
The most dramatic
player is the Bigleaf maple draped in spikemoss (among others). Epiphytes, “plants that grow upon plants” use
tree limbs as props and do not harm the trees. More than 130 species of mosses,
lichens, liverworts and ferns live on the trees. Laura, our guide, explained that deciduous
trees, like the Bigleaf maple, send tiny roots into the thick moss layer and
gain nutrients.
Mosses absorb 20 times their dry weight in water. With an average of over 137 inches of rain a year, it stays quite moist. July and August together have only a 7-inch average. But this year July only received .5 inches. The previous 4 months exceeded their average.
Ranger Laura called this mushroom Chicken of the woods.
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