Life on the Outer Coast

June 18
Took the new section of Forest Ecology class to lay out a plot in the Gavan Big trees areas on Monday. We found a great spot just uphill of the very large Picea sitchensis in the trail. Challenging might be a better word, this site has a more recent slide, perhaps an ephemeral stream and lots of Oplopanax. The site also has abundant Conocephalum conicum, Polystichum braunii, Gymnocarpium dryopteris, Tiarella trifoliata and some Galium and Stellaria (which I haven't looked at yet). The class was in a good humor about the site, so it should be okay. They did get a nice look at a sapsucker, hopefully this group will see more birds than the first one did. At least one of the girls had never been in a forest before this class. Not surprising for a tundra resident, but still an amazing thought.

Looked at the tall sedges along the Cross Trail again yesterday in search of species that I might have neglected. Not too much of a surprise that I found one. While most of the tall sedges are Carex aquatilis, there were a few Carex lenticularis. The latter has more erect and chunky-looking pistillate spikes with veined perigynia that are longer than the scales. Not sure why I didn't notice it before, but at least I finally did.
Also collected a Carex mertensii from the quarry road on the walk back to the van. They are fairly recognizable by the caespitose habit, nodding short cylindrical spikes, greenish perigynia that are longer than the dark scales and lastly that each spike is gynaecandrous (male flowers below female).
The Kalmia seems to mostly be done blooming along the Cross trail, but the Ledum is coming on. In the muskegs between Mud Bay and Shelikof the Kalmia was in full bloom and the Ledum still in bud. I didn't get to spend enough time admiring the Dodecatheon jeffreyii on the way back from the beach, so I'll have to find a good clump on Baranof to enjoy. Which reminds me, I'd really like to find the Nymphaea this summer.

Unfortunately, the lovely yellow-green insects that I put in the refrigerator on Friday, didn't make it to Monday.