Forests of the Week for May 25th-June 1st, 2008: Forests of the Willamette & Columbia Vallies
So, I spent all of last week in the state of Oregon, both to get a nice long look at the University of Oregon at Eugene and to take a nice little vacation in a land with some awesomely epic forests. As far as the first goal went, my trip was a success, since I now have come to the quite conclusive decision that, next fall, I will be attending the University of Maine at Orono. But I am not sure how successful of a vacation it was, since I was sick for a damnably large chunk of the time I was out there, and since I have been in various sorts of bad moods since my return. But I did get to see some very handsome forests with some very handsome trees, and so it is about them that I will write.
The first thing my Pa and I did when we stepped off the plane in Portland was find me some coughdrops, tissue paper, and nasal decongestants. But immediately after that, we hopped into our rental car and travelled East, to the Lindsey Creek State Park along the banks of the Columbia River. There we went for a brief hike, maybe 45 minutes total in duration. The forest we saw, growing up along the side of a tall bluff, was bloody beautiful. Great old Hemlocks and Douglas-Firs dominated, a few of them noticeably wider than I am tall, and the forest was also dotted with graceful Redcedars. But although these conifers were without a doubt the largest and grandest sorts of trees present, I found myself paying far more attention to the park's Maples.
There are principally two different types of Maple that grow in Oregon: the Vine Maple (Acer circinatum, visible in the foreground of the above photo) and the Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum). There is a third species - the Rocky Mountain Maple, Acer glabrum - but in my whole stay in Oregon I only saw a handful of specimens. I do not know if this reflects any actual rarity of the species in the region or if I was just being particularly stupid, but seeing as how little I saw of it, I shall say nothing more of it.
But the Vines and Bigleaves - whew! What trees! Their leaves were still bright with the freshest greens of Spring, and they positively glowed in the bright sunlight. Both species twisted and turned through the montane air, growing into strange and curious shapes and together seeming to fill up almost all available room in the forest. The contrast between them and the dark conifers couldn't have been greater; the giant softwoods seemed almost mineral in their solidity and massiveness, whereas the Maples had an animal air that left one with the feeling that they could start moving at any minute.
Vine Maples are, to an Easterner like myself, a strange and novel thing. I have been raised on the idea that the word 'Maple' indicates some lofty forest tree like the Sugar Maple, Acer saccharum. But not only is the Vine Maple quite definitely a shrub, it is also one of the weirdest shrubs I have ever had the privilege of seeing. It reminded me somewhat of the Rhododendrons of Appalachia, insofar as both utterly dominate the undergrowth by forming incredibly dense thickets through which travel is impossible for anything larger than a rabbit and smaller than a buffalo. But the Vine Maple, as its name suggests, occasionally shoots off runners along the forest floor or up the sides of trees. Even when not so engaged, its branches often look like vines that manage to climb across empty space, seeming to defy gravity. In Lindsey Creek, they almost completely dominated the understory, forming a second canopy almost ninety feet below the main one. Beneath them was a twilit realm of dark green, leather-leaved ferns and dainty wildflowers.
The Bigleaf Maples, on the other hand, were a completely different sort of beast. Like the Vine Maples, they seemed to defy gravity, sending out whip-like branches that performed improbable mid-air gymnastics, whilst their trunks jagged this way and that down from the canopy like so many lightning bolts. And, also, like the Vine Maple, it is an aptly named plant. It does indeed have very large leaves, each measuring about a foot in both length and width; I am told that they are the largest leaves of any Maple. But whereas the Vine Maple is a shrubby little bugger, the Vine Maple is a quite respectable tree. In any sane, reasonable forest, it would be a dominant canopy tree, like our Eastern Sugar Maples. It grows quite tall - sixty or seventy feet, even under the powerful, sun-eliminating shade of the Hemlocks. But of course, the coniferous forests of the Northwest are not sane and reasonable; that's their charm, innit? And so there was always at least a dozen or two feet between the top of the Bigleaf Maple layer of the forest and the top of the forest.
This is a row of Bigleafs right next to a trail not in Lindsey Creek, but on top of Skinner's Butte. Skinner's Bute is a small forest preserve near downtown Eugene that I visited several times during my stay; really, whenever I felt like seeing some trees but didn't want to go very far away. The forest growing there is very young. My father and I visited an old mansion (the oldest surviving building in town) now owned by the local historical society, and there we were told that but a century ago the Butte was covered by a meadow. But more on meadows later; for now, all ye need know is that the forest growing there has had merely a century to develop. Already, though, it has developed a reasonably complex-looking canopy, and trees of considerable size, like the Douglas-Fir pictured below.
Look, I know it's not a great picture, and it does a piss-poor job of showing the size of the tree, but just recall that the Maple right beneath it is probably around fifty feet tall. But yah, the Skinner's Butte forest is a young one. It had a very dense understory, with a wide variety of different species of shrubs and trees. I most especially noticed the California Laurel - which I was surprised to see, as I thought it didn't grow this far into Oregon - and something that looked like a strange sort of Hawthorn. I say a "strange sort" because I checked through several of my tree guides, and could find no western Hawthorn that looked anything like it, with its rather deeply lobed leaves. Perhaps it was an invasive. I wouldn't be surprised if it was; the areas of the forest preserve where it was most common looked overgrown in a way that I have come to associate with an unhealthy forest. Anybody out there know anything about an invasive Hawthorn species in the Northwest?
The South side of the Butte was primarily coniferous, with lots of Douglas-Firs and Giant Redcedars (Thuja plicata), plus the occasional Larch and Pine. I couldn't get close enough to any of the Pines to get a specific ID on 'em. It was rather overgrown with undergrowth, and many of the trees looked rather weedy. But the great Redcedars were lovely, with their perfectly symmetrical fern-like branchlets growing in lusty profusion, and their thick, cinnamon red trunks that look the same way that a really nice fire smells. The North side of the Butte was less overgrown than the south side, and consisted mostly of Bigleaf Maples, with Douglas-Firs (including the one appearing above) towering intermittently above them. The Bigleaf Maples were draped in epiphytic mosses and ferns in the loveliest way imaginable, a common feature of practically all the Bigleafs I saw out in Oregon. This site claims that the Bigleaf is especially attractive to epiphytes because its bark is particularly good at trapping calcium and moisture, and this one claims that the total weight of epiphytes growing on Bigleafs can be up to four times that of the tree's own leaves. Yowza! Between these great masses of midair greenery, and the precise way that the trunks and branches of the Bigleafs traced lines in the air, I was reminded of photos I have seen of tropical rainforests. 'Twas really cool.
The above is a closeup of the trunk of a Bigleaf Maple on the northern edge of the Skinner's Butte preserve, near where the Butte butted up against some parkland on the edge of the Willamette River. You can see all the various epiphytes growing on it. In this more open area, the Maples were given more room to spread themselves out, and did so amply, sending out big, hefty limbs and growing nearly spherical crowns. There was a world of a difference between these hefty, Oak-like trees and the zigzagging specimens of the closed forest.
The city of Eugene proper was a terribly tree-friendly community, its streets lined with substantial trees of too many varieties to mention. The Douglas-Firs looked particularly impressive, though. It is a particularly surreal and deeply satisfying feeling to be walking through an urban agglomeration, complete with minimalist concrete 'n glass boxes, and suddenly find oneself, and the concrete cubes one had been passing, underneath the shade of a row of dark conifers that look like they belong in a fairy tale. The campus of the University of Oregon was even cooler. It was practically an arboretum in its own right, such was the variety and the beauty of the trees grown there. Particularly awesome were the great Oaks and Maples outside the library, and the true Cedars (Cedrus spp.) and Magnolias scattered about the campus. Also, the cemetery. Y'see, there is an old cemetery in the middle of campus, and it has been planted with Redcedars and Douglas-Firs that have attained a particularly imposing size and degree of majesty.
Now, I said earlier that I would get back to the subject of meadows, and now is the time for't. Y'see, the whole central valley of Oregon, the land between the Coast ranges and the Cascades, used to be dominated by open Oak savannas, not unlike northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Only wetter. Much wetter. However, as this is prime agricultural land, the savannas have been cleared to make way for farms, and fire suppression has eliminated the brushfires that the area was dependent on. Thus, even in those areas that haven't been cleared, less fire-hardy coniferous forests have been taking over. Which is a real pity, because the Oregon White Oak (Quercus garryana) is an absolutely lovely tree. Most of the other trees and shrubs of the area look, to my eyes anyway, very robust, even when small. Q. garryana, on the other hand, looks gracile and lithe, even when large. I was fortunate enough to see some preserved remnants of these Oak groves at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, just outside of Eugene. Good God, were they lovely; were they ever lovely! There was a small creek running through the Arboretum, and around it...it was paradisiacal. Short but wide-crowned Oaks and Maples dominated, with occasional Oregon Ashes (Fraxinus latifolia) squirming their way up above them. Underneath them, the floor was bursting with grasses and wildflowers, all in bloom, many growing thigh or waist high. The place was all filled with drop-dead gorgeous greenery, but 'twas open enough that it was also filled with sunlight. It is in one sense a pity that I did not have my camera when I went to Mt. Pisgah, for I cannot share any photographs with y'all. But, in another way it was a good thing; as it made me pay more attention to my surroundings, which amply deserved it; and because it means that if you want to see what has moved me so, you must go out there yourselves, a task which is full of rewards.
But speaking of photographs, I am quite tired of typing, and I've got to go somewhere soon, and I've gone on quite long enough already. So I'm going to end this post by just showing you some more photos, with very little accompanying text. Good night, folks!
Foot of Giant Redcedar (Thuja plicata) at Eel Creek State Park with my jacket for scale.
Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) canopy viewed from the ground.
View from the top of Spencer's Butte (which is different from Skinner's Butte) near Eugene, OR.
Oregon White Oaks on top of Skinner's Butte near downtown Eugene, OR.
Foot of Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis) at Eel Creek State Park with my jacket for scale.
Using your jacket for scale since 1986,
--mark
The first thing my Pa and I did when we stepped off the plane in Portland was find me some coughdrops, tissue paper, and nasal decongestants. But immediately after that, we hopped into our rental car and travelled East, to the Lindsey Creek State Park along the banks of the Columbia River. There we went for a brief hike, maybe 45 minutes total in duration. The forest we saw, growing up along the side of a tall bluff, was bloody beautiful. Great old Hemlocks and Douglas-Firs dominated, a few of them noticeably wider than I am tall, and the forest was also dotted with graceful Redcedars. But although these conifers were without a doubt the largest and grandest sorts of trees present, I found myself paying far more attention to the park's Maples.
There are principally two different types of Maple that grow in Oregon: the Vine Maple (Acer circinatum, visible in the foreground of the above photo) and the Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum). There is a third species - the Rocky Mountain Maple, Acer glabrum - but in my whole stay in Oregon I only saw a handful of specimens. I do not know if this reflects any actual rarity of the species in the region or if I was just being particularly stupid, but seeing as how little I saw of it, I shall say nothing more of it.
But the Vines and Bigleaves - whew! What trees! Their leaves were still bright with the freshest greens of Spring, and they positively glowed in the bright sunlight. Both species twisted and turned through the montane air, growing into strange and curious shapes and together seeming to fill up almost all available room in the forest. The contrast between them and the dark conifers couldn't have been greater; the giant softwoods seemed almost mineral in their solidity and massiveness, whereas the Maples had an animal air that left one with the feeling that they could start moving at any minute.
Vine Maples are, to an Easterner like myself, a strange and novel thing. I have been raised on the idea that the word 'Maple' indicates some lofty forest tree like the Sugar Maple, Acer saccharum. But not only is the Vine Maple quite definitely a shrub, it is also one of the weirdest shrubs I have ever had the privilege of seeing. It reminded me somewhat of the Rhododendrons of Appalachia, insofar as both utterly dominate the undergrowth by forming incredibly dense thickets through which travel is impossible for anything larger than a rabbit and smaller than a buffalo. But the Vine Maple, as its name suggests, occasionally shoots off runners along the forest floor or up the sides of trees. Even when not so engaged, its branches often look like vines that manage to climb across empty space, seeming to defy gravity. In Lindsey Creek, they almost completely dominated the understory, forming a second canopy almost ninety feet below the main one. Beneath them was a twilit realm of dark green, leather-leaved ferns and dainty wildflowers.
The Bigleaf Maples, on the other hand, were a completely different sort of beast. Like the Vine Maples, they seemed to defy gravity, sending out whip-like branches that performed improbable mid-air gymnastics, whilst their trunks jagged this way and that down from the canopy like so many lightning bolts. And, also, like the Vine Maple, it is an aptly named plant. It does indeed have very large leaves, each measuring about a foot in both length and width; I am told that they are the largest leaves of any Maple. But whereas the Vine Maple is a shrubby little bugger, the Vine Maple is a quite respectable tree. In any sane, reasonable forest, it would be a dominant canopy tree, like our Eastern Sugar Maples. It grows quite tall - sixty or seventy feet, even under the powerful, sun-eliminating shade of the Hemlocks. But of course, the coniferous forests of the Northwest are not sane and reasonable; that's their charm, innit? And so there was always at least a dozen or two feet between the top of the Bigleaf Maple layer of the forest and the top of the forest.
This is a row of Bigleafs right next to a trail not in Lindsey Creek, but on top of Skinner's Butte. Skinner's Bute is a small forest preserve near downtown Eugene that I visited several times during my stay; really, whenever I felt like seeing some trees but didn't want to go very far away. The forest growing there is very young. My father and I visited an old mansion (the oldest surviving building in town) now owned by the local historical society, and there we were told that but a century ago the Butte was covered by a meadow. But more on meadows later; for now, all ye need know is that the forest growing there has had merely a century to develop. Already, though, it has developed a reasonably complex-looking canopy, and trees of considerable size, like the Douglas-Fir pictured below.
Look, I know it's not a great picture, and it does a piss-poor job of showing the size of the tree, but just recall that the Maple right beneath it is probably around fifty feet tall. But yah, the Skinner's Butte forest is a young one. It had a very dense understory, with a wide variety of different species of shrubs and trees. I most especially noticed the California Laurel - which I was surprised to see, as I thought it didn't grow this far into Oregon - and something that looked like a strange sort of Hawthorn. I say a "strange sort" because I checked through several of my tree guides, and could find no western Hawthorn that looked anything like it, with its rather deeply lobed leaves. Perhaps it was an invasive. I wouldn't be surprised if it was; the areas of the forest preserve where it was most common looked overgrown in a way that I have come to associate with an unhealthy forest. Anybody out there know anything about an invasive Hawthorn species in the Northwest?
The South side of the Butte was primarily coniferous, with lots of Douglas-Firs and Giant Redcedars (Thuja plicata), plus the occasional Larch and Pine. I couldn't get close enough to any of the Pines to get a specific ID on 'em. It was rather overgrown with undergrowth, and many of the trees looked rather weedy. But the great Redcedars were lovely, with their perfectly symmetrical fern-like branchlets growing in lusty profusion, and their thick, cinnamon red trunks that look the same way that a really nice fire smells. The North side of the Butte was less overgrown than the south side, and consisted mostly of Bigleaf Maples, with Douglas-Firs (including the one appearing above) towering intermittently above them. The Bigleaf Maples were draped in epiphytic mosses and ferns in the loveliest way imaginable, a common feature of practically all the Bigleafs I saw out in Oregon. This site claims that the Bigleaf is especially attractive to epiphytes because its bark is particularly good at trapping calcium and moisture, and this one claims that the total weight of epiphytes growing on Bigleafs can be up to four times that of the tree's own leaves. Yowza! Between these great masses of midair greenery, and the precise way that the trunks and branches of the Bigleafs traced lines in the air, I was reminded of photos I have seen of tropical rainforests. 'Twas really cool.
The above is a closeup of the trunk of a Bigleaf Maple on the northern edge of the Skinner's Butte preserve, near where the Butte butted up against some parkland on the edge of the Willamette River. You can see all the various epiphytes growing on it. In this more open area, the Maples were given more room to spread themselves out, and did so amply, sending out big, hefty limbs and growing nearly spherical crowns. There was a world of a difference between these hefty, Oak-like trees and the zigzagging specimens of the closed forest.
The city of Eugene proper was a terribly tree-friendly community, its streets lined with substantial trees of too many varieties to mention. The Douglas-Firs looked particularly impressive, though. It is a particularly surreal and deeply satisfying feeling to be walking through an urban agglomeration, complete with minimalist concrete 'n glass boxes, and suddenly find oneself, and the concrete cubes one had been passing, underneath the shade of a row of dark conifers that look like they belong in a fairy tale. The campus of the University of Oregon was even cooler. It was practically an arboretum in its own right, such was the variety and the beauty of the trees grown there. Particularly awesome were the great Oaks and Maples outside the library, and the true Cedars (Cedrus spp.) and Magnolias scattered about the campus. Also, the cemetery. Y'see, there is an old cemetery in the middle of campus, and it has been planted with Redcedars and Douglas-Firs that have attained a particularly imposing size and degree of majesty.
Now, I said earlier that I would get back to the subject of meadows, and now is the time for't. Y'see, the whole central valley of Oregon, the land between the Coast ranges and the Cascades, used to be dominated by open Oak savannas, not unlike northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Only wetter. Much wetter. However, as this is prime agricultural land, the savannas have been cleared to make way for farms, and fire suppression has eliminated the brushfires that the area was dependent on. Thus, even in those areas that haven't been cleared, less fire-hardy coniferous forests have been taking over. Which is a real pity, because the Oregon White Oak (Quercus garryana) is an absolutely lovely tree. Most of the other trees and shrubs of the area look, to my eyes anyway, very robust, even when small. Q. garryana, on the other hand, looks gracile and lithe, even when large. I was fortunate enough to see some preserved remnants of these Oak groves at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, just outside of Eugene. Good God, were they lovely; were they ever lovely! There was a small creek running through the Arboretum, and around it...it was paradisiacal. Short but wide-crowned Oaks and Maples dominated, with occasional Oregon Ashes (Fraxinus latifolia) squirming their way up above them. Underneath them, the floor was bursting with grasses and wildflowers, all in bloom, many growing thigh or waist high. The place was all filled with drop-dead gorgeous greenery, but 'twas open enough that it was also filled with sunlight. It is in one sense a pity that I did not have my camera when I went to Mt. Pisgah, for I cannot share any photographs with y'all. But, in another way it was a good thing; as it made me pay more attention to my surroundings, which amply deserved it; and because it means that if you want to see what has moved me so, you must go out there yourselves, a task which is full of rewards.
But speaking of photographs, I am quite tired of typing, and I've got to go somewhere soon, and I've gone on quite long enough already. So I'm going to end this post by just showing you some more photos, with very little accompanying text. Good night, folks!
Foot of Giant Redcedar (Thuja plicata) at Eel Creek State Park with my jacket for scale.
Western Hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) canopy viewed from the ground.
View from the top of Spencer's Butte (which is different from Skinner's Butte) near Eugene, OR.
Oregon White Oaks on top of Skinner's Butte near downtown Eugene, OR.
Foot of Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis) at Eel Creek State Park with my jacket for scale.
Using your jacket for scale since 1986,
--mark