Biodiversions: Quaking Aspen

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on October 27, 2009

This time of year, I’m one of many throughout the West enthralled by – and worried about - one of our most striking fall color trees: Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides ). Utah and Colorado have acres and acres of aspens.  In northeast Oregon, we have smaller groves dotting the more prevalent bunchgrass slopes and ponderosa pine forests.

The Giving Tree

By Biodiversivist | Posted on July 19, 2009

If you have children, you are probably familiar with The Giving Tree. Our version is a Stella cherry tree. My neighbor, Farmer Breakfield, allowed me to plant it on his property in the side yard between our houses way back when my first born was not yet a year old. It was just a stick, barely eight feet high. He was a good neighbor and ate many a cherry from that tree before passing on.

My wife and I were having dinner on our front porch the other day watching the starlings and crows that had descended on Stella (the name given to this tree by my daughters) when suddenly, like a cannon shot going off, a hawk attacked. The birds exploded out of the tree and within a second or so there was dead silence. Over Lake Union the flock of forty or fifty starlings was weaving through the air in an evasive maneuver, looking very much like a school of black fish. The crows had disappeared.

Species of the Week - Western Redcedar

By Rachel Shaw | Posted on July 17, 2009

The Western redcedar is one of the most important species in the Pacific Northwest.

Ramifications

By Dave Bonta | Posted on May 18, 2009

The bottle is the message
the river sends to the sea:
Aquafina.

Biodiversions: Ponderosa Pine

By Elizabeth Enslin | Posted on May 12, 2009

Ponderosa pine needles and cone

Growing up in Seattle on the west side of the Cascade Mountains, I always thought of ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa, also sometimes called western yellow pine) as exotic trees.  They belonged to what we called “the other side of the mountains.”  Whenever we drove over Stevens Pass or Snoqualmie Pass, the first glimpse of ponderosa pines thrilled me.  I knew we had left behind the rain and dense undergrowth of douglas fir forests (which I also loved) to more open stands where I could wander miles without a trail.