16 January 2012

16 December 2012
Location: The woods that are accessible from Parking lot F on TESC campus. I walked in the SW entrance and took the S main trail. Walking into the woods “proper” (out of the parking lot at the SW trail head, onto a grassy patch of trail), you can bear right or left. Going right takes you to a main trail. Going left takes you to a student created trail that has a steep gradient, about fifteen feet long, as soon as you get under canopy cover. Eventually, this trail merges with one of the main TESC trails that is accessible from Driftwood Road.

Locality/GPS: Approximately 125yds down from where the main trail heads from the NW and SW merge at the top of the hill. Coordinates: 47 .04’38,47” N and 22” 58’ 32.61” W.

Route: At the bottom of a slope, on a wooden boardwalk that crosses saturated soil. (Is it a bog, swamp, or fen?) The trees on either side of the trail on the slope are Red Alder and Douglas Fir.

Weather: The sun is out but it is shining through grey snow clouds. The temperature is hovering right at freezing/ There are light sprinkles of snow and rain in the air. The snow is <1.5cm thick. The parking lot lot and boardwalk have ice under the snow.

Habitat: forest.

Vegetation: An alder grove in a larger, second-growth, mixed Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii, PSME), Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum, ACMA), Western Redcedar (Thuja plicata, THPL) forest. Sword ferns (Polistichum munitum POMU) and salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis RUSP) line the boardwalk. There are many THPL seedlings and downed Red Alder (Alnus rubra, ALRU) logs. I see English Ivy (Hedera helix, HEHE) poking through the snow.

Species: Today, I’m curious about what kind of moss grows on salmonberry. I think there might be two or three species. I see a fan shaped moss with definite “fingers.” It might be a liverwort-one plane of leaves, two rows, with one reduced row on the underside of the stem. There is also a feathery species whose leaves are app. 1-6cm long, that hang towards the ground. The liverwort drapes against the salmonberry stem a little but them swings out away from it. I also see a moss that is shorter than the feathery one, that has longer leaves that make the moss look prickly. I might see a fourth moss, but I’m not sure-it’s nested in what looks like the oldest, densest moss growth on the salmonberry, at the crotch of the two main, most upright, stems. It’s browner with obvious sporophytes that are much larger than those on the the other mosses.

Other life forms: Other than people walking on the trail, I haven’t noticed any animal activity. I haven’t been listening for birds, though. There are alder twigs on the ground with catkins.

Questions: All of the moss growing on the salmonberry is roughly the same color. Even the browner one blends in with the dead moss material and the RUSP bark. If mosses are roughly the same color and size and growing together, does it have to be competition? Could it also be cooperation? The alder grove is open because of the ALRU leaf fall. Wind may sweep through here because it’s in a small valley: the trail ascends a bit before the longer, down-slope towards Eld Inlet. The downed alder logs could be from strong wind, or the combination of weaker wind and weaker alder root systems in saturated soil. Could the mosses not be huddled together for warmth?

Bog-grass or other plants, spongy ground, associated with peat.
Swamp-a seasonally flooded bottomland with more woody plants than a marsh and better drainage than a bog.
Fen-produces sedges, grasses, and other aquatic plants.

Posted on 17 January, 2012 05:07 by homeformosses