Forget you're in a city at Schmitz Preserve Park and Seward Park

It's only been 18 days since my last blog entry, but I feel like I've learned far more about trees and plants than I have in the first several months of this blogs existence. It's so random how things get started sometimes. I was looking for something to read recently and came across a book  by Richard Preston, The Wild Trees. Something clicked in my mind when I read that book and I now find myself spending a few hours a week in this new hobby of learning about trees and getting out and seeing as many impressive specimens as I can. I've always enjoyed and appreciated nature greatly, but this is something different. It started off as an interest of where all of the coastal redwoods are located that are growing in the greater Seattle area, then branched off into being interested in many, many types of trees, and my interest seems to just keep growing.

So on the one hand, it's kind of a feeling of  what happenned, was that interest always there apparently and it was just a matter of running into it? Or something else?  On the other hand it feels good to be doing something new for enjoyment that I am liking so much I may want to do more than just as a hobby, without worrying about how it happenned or where its going.

For the most part, the majority of trees I'm interested in are conifers. I have a handful of books i'm working on for gradual and thorough knowledge-building, but my initial and primary source of quick info is the internet. I usually start at http://www.conifers.org/. You want all the science, facts, and papers on ANY conifer, you will probably find it here.  As for local tree info and history, I'm enjoying  http://www.arthurleej.com/ , the website of Arthur Lee Jacobson. He is a lifelong resident of Seattle, an avid plant lover since his teens and has made a life of working with trees it seems. He's published a lot of plant books and a couple I want to check out are Wild Plants of Greater Seattle and Trees of Seattle. 

Ok, now for some trees. I always knew that Seward Park has some of the biggest conifers in Seattle, but just recently learned of Shmitz Preserve Park, in West Seattle. From what I understand this area has the most native concentration of trees and other plants all in one place that exist in Seattle. I've only explored this park several times, but it seems to me maybe this park has as many magnificent trees as anywhere else in Seattle. Again though, there are so many good parks that have an abundance of really big conifers, I suppose the merits of another spot can always be argued. The bottom line is that both of these parks have a great abundance of wildflowers, ferns, lichens, birdlife, and other interesting oddities that nature has served up, that tree-viewing becomes just one of the many things to take in when in these parks.

I walked in Seward yesterday and checked out the alleged 'biggest' living tree in Seattle, a Douglas Fir with a circumfurence of 23 feet . I haven't heard from anyone how tall this tree is and I don't have an inclinometer, but I'm guessing it's over 200ft. By biggest, I suppose that means overall cubic feet of wood in the tree, because I have seen thicker Douglas Firs in Lincoln Park (the thickest I've seen in Seattle, North end by beach), and I'm certain I've seen taller trees in Seattle than the tree I saw yesterday. Here's a pic of the 'biggest tree' in seattle, Seward Park. Note my girlfriend standing at the base for reference. It must be 50-60 feet to the first branch.

And here are a couple of pics of the Douglas Fir at the North end of the Beach Path in Lincoln Park. Wider trunk, but not as tall as this tree in Seward. Not sure what overall cubic feet is though, so which is bigger? This is part of the fun of it, the debating and talking about spots, sharing discoveries, good-spirited arguing about what is what.

Western Trillium in Seward Park

Western Red Cedars all over the park-Do yourself a favor and walk the various trails cutting through the center of the park rather than the outer loop only, you will see far more!

SCHMITZ PRESERVE PARK

This less visited nature preserve sits in West Seattle off of Admiral Way, a couple miles West of California. There are big, wide trails for walking as well as more challenging, narrower trails. The center of the area is the shallowest, with a small creek running through, and trails run concentricly on each side. There is plenty of bushwhacking to do as well and some incredibly big downed spans of tree and trunks that are interesting to explore, but there's a lot of delicate looking plant life everywhere and I try to watch my step when off the beaten path. I've been there 3 times now but only had an hour each time-I have not even scratched the surface of what there is to see in here.

Skunk Cabbage, aka Swamp Lantern

Douglas Fir and Bigleaf Maple seemingly fused at base.

I believe this is a Grand Fir, but not certain just by the bark. Big trees for sure and they can get up to 80m tall. I would've examined the cones and leaves/needles to be sure, but a bit of a challenge with the first branches being 50ft+off the ground. This tree is broken off about 60 feet up and has a lot of reiterating trunks and a pretty crazy looking crown developing at that point now. It is shown again in the picture below this one, in the background.

Western Trillium-The flowers may appear as white at first, then a light pink or purple hue.

Downed logs throughout the park act as epiphytes for other plants and organisms. I love the variety of trees growing behind the fallen.

Well, that's it for this blog. I was going to do a little residential updating on some neat trees found here and there, and I was also going to go and shoot some Black Cottonwoods in Seattle that are supposed to be pretty big and kind of interesting trees to look at, but I have a lot of pics here already. In the meantime, check out the trunk of this Cottonwood tree my friend Pat shot on a ride through Stevensville, MT. Thanks to Pat for the first outside contribution to the blog, that is a big, big cottonwood. For those of you that don't know what the top half of a nice cottonwood tree looks like, thank you Steve for providing that. Hope you enjoy, and please feel free to comment or add your own tree info in return. The more people I can get involved in this and the more participation I can generate, the more fun we can all have with it. I'm working on getting a guest author for the blog here and there as well.

Saturday afternoon in West Seattle

I just moved into a new place in West Seattle with my girlfriend and have been looking at towering columns of boxes. It was time for a distraction and some exercise, and to look at some towering trees instead. Grabbed a couple poop-sacks and the leash and had 2 nice walks around Lincoln Park and on the beach with Max today, one in the morning, and one near sunset. I don't think there's a better park for such a wide variety of big-tree viewing in Seattle, although it's not by any means dominant as  this has to be one of the greatest big cities on the planet for tree viewing.

Here's a shot from the beach overlook in Lincoln park. I'm actually straddling the first Y of this tree and although it's only about 10 vertical feet from the base, it's overhanging a 50 foot drop. safe to get into this position but definitely shroinky!

Another shot from the beach overlook trail looking down on the beach path. Note the person walking down on the beach trail and follow your eye up heighth of the douglas firs. You can look straight into the crowns of many of these trees from the overlook,  with people walking by their bases 200 feet below on the beach trail.

I dropped my girlfriend off for work later in the afternoon and it was just too nice, and Max thought so too, whining in the backseat for another walk. So it was off near my new place to look at this massive Seqouia tree pictured below, and then back to Lincoln park for another hour of indulging the dog and tree viewing.

That's it for this day's blog, but as far as discovering more redwoods around Seattle, the bottom line is that they are all over the place if you keep an eye out. I have to write a blog one of these days just listing the locations of all of the biggest redwoods and seqoias i've seen so far, hundreds of seqouias and at least a couple of hundred redwood trees I've seen that are 100 feet or more. There are around 100 in Lincoln Park alone fitting this description. They blend in very discreetly with other tall trees and usually go unnoticed, and I've only explored a scratch of Seattle so far. It will be really interesting to not only see how many total grow in the city and surrounding area, but how many are 100 feet or more. It will be incredible if mankind is still around and Seattle is still around in another 100 years as these trees will dominate in heighth everywhere they grow by then.