March-July 2022
News of the Bethany Wetlands
The wetland are doing well. Water is now flowing thru the wetlands all year. The native shrubs that have been planted along the townhomes have thrived. Some areas are so dense that it is hard for a person to pass thru. People hired by Clean Water Services have planted more native plants every year in the spring. Other crews occasionally apply herbicides on plants that are considered a problem.
This page of photos shows plants and animals that I observed on a few trips thru the wetlands just past our townhomes this spring and early summer.
This photo was taken in June. The bark of the Alder tree is often spotted. You might be able to see spots of two shades of gray. Young branches have greenish bark. Each year the tree trunk gets larger. This bark has been stretching or growing.
Here is an enlarged photo of Alder bark taken in March. In this light gray patch we see circular structures with a darker center. These are apothecia where lichen produce spores. This is evidence that the lighter spots on Alder bark are patches of lichen. The lichen is very thin, like paint, except where it produces spores. Similar very thin lichen cover our driveways making them dark and giving income to people who clean driveways and sidewalks. I presume that the lichen on Alder bark will be more active in winter when the bark receives more sunlight and more moisture.
At the end of February we had lots of rain and the wetland flooded. This photo, taken from our upstairs bedroom window, shows water flowing into the wetlands, bypassing the traditional Bronson Creek. The shed is almost flooded.
This is a panoramic view of the flooding. The water at the bottom of the photograph is Bronson Creek. Right above the creek is the berm that was formed when the creek was dug. Can you find the shed from the first flooding photo ? Going to the right from the just below the shed is the new path of Bronson Creek.
This photo, taken on July 28, shows the same area taken from the same window. The leaves hide the creek and make it hard to find the shed.
What is hard to see when comparing the two panoramic photos is that a willow tree is missing in the lower photo. The photo on the left, taken on June 11, shows the willow tree that fell over. The previous day we could not see the shed from our deck because the tree blocked the view. In the night the tree fell directly away from our home. In this photo the leaves are a lighter color because we are seeing the bottom of the leaves.
It had been raining hard and it continued to drizzle so it was a few days before I visited the tree to see why it fell down. What I found was that the tree just fell over. The trunk was not broken and the roots were still in the ground.
Perhaps, when willow trees get too tall they just fall over. The willow continues to grow. It has captured more area.
In the wetlands we have areas containing tangled messes of trees. Parts of these trees are dead. But notice the smaller branches that go straight up. This suggests that the tree was alive after it fell over. Then new shoots came out of the older trees and went straight up. Now notice the baby shoots with leaves coming out of old trees and heading up. Previously, I had not considered that a tree might take over more area by falling on it.
Lets look at some moss. This photo was taken at the end of March. This photo has been enlarged. It is at the limit of what my camera can do. March is a happy time for this moss. The moss needs rain, fog and mist because the moss has no roots. The water comes in thru the leaves. When there is no water the moss goes into hibernation.
This moss, growing on our rock wall, is going somewhere.
This moss, also on our rock wall, has a more feather-like shape.
The ends of the leaves on this moss have white tips. These moss photos are all from the end of March.
Now look at this moss photo from the first of June. There are lots of brown capsules called sporophytes. Some of these capsules have a pointy top hat. Others have lost their hat allowing the spores to float away on the breeze.
Different moss have different shaped sporophytes. Most of these have their hats on.
Two different moss.
The last moss photo.
This is red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) that has been planted in the wetlands by Clean Water Services. It flowers in March and April. This photo was taken at the end of March.
With a closer look at the flowers we can see that the cover that protects the flower bends back to make what looks like five petals. Inside we see the true petals which, in some flowers, are white.
By the first of May most flowers have completed blooming and some fruits are forming.
By the end of March the willow trees are making pussy willows. The yellow tips are sacks of pollen. The sacks break open to release the pollen.
The female seeds of the cattail start out looking like a hotdog in the fall. By the end of March water has caused expansion and seeds are starting to fly away. On every warm day seed drift up on updrafts. Sometimes the seed fall around the townhomes and people wonder if they are cottonwood seeds.
This lichen grows as hollow tubes. This might be nit beard lichen (Usnea subfloridana).
A common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). The seeds float away on parachutes made of tiny hairs.
This covered the ground on April first. There are two kinds of leaves. The spoon shaped leaves are called false leaves. They are part of the seed. Then the true leaves form. Those leaves have lobes.
By May first I still did not know what this was. The false leaves are gone.
Then, by the middle of June, they had started to bloom. It is orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis). This plant is native to North America on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. Somebody let it get to the west side and it took off and now is common in our wetlands. The flower is strange.
Now for a fern. This is a sword fern. Western swordfern (Polystichum munitum). It looks strange because it is a new branch that is expanding and uncurling. Swordferns have lots of brown scales but you only see them when you look underneath. What impressed me with this photograph is that the fronds look like the arms of an octopus. Even this baby branch has two rows of round suction-cup-like sori on each frond. Inside the sori are spores that will mature and be released.
Boxelder bug (Boisea trivittata), adult. Although they prefer boxelder trees, they can grow on our bigleaf maple. The boxelder is a tree in the maple family.
Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum). The flowers are interesting.
Bigleaf maple flowers. Each flower has many yellow petals. Now look inside the petals. In the middle is a ball of white hairs. Each ball has two brown wings. These are the wings of the maple seed. A yellow "Y" is connected to some of the balls. Pollen is deposited on the top of the "Y" and then tunnels down into the white ball and fertilizes the seeds. Also present are brown sacks containing pollen. What is really interesting is that miniature maple flyers have already been formed inside the flowers by the first of May.
Here are the maple seeds in the middle of June. The white hairs are still there. Even parts of the flowers, brown and shriveled, seem to be there. The wings have turned green but will be brown by the time the seeds are ready to fall.
Almost all the snakes that I see are heading for cover by the time I get the camera out. This one stuck around for a while.
Just some mud. Or, perhaps, a coyote print.
A damselfly. Perhaps a Pacific Forktail (Ischnura cervula). Damselflies are lightweight dragonflies. When at rest their wings are held against their body while a dragonfly has wings that stay in flying position all of the time.
A fence post with an electric-fence insulator holds a horse shoe.
Twinberry honeysuckle (Lonicera involucrata) is a native plant that Clean Water Services has planted in our wetlands. The flowers typically come in pairs and mature into twin black berries. Photo taken on the first of May.
The green blobs sticking out of the flower are the stigma. A visiting insect will first bump into the stigma and deposit pollen there. If it is the right kind of pollen it will send the genetic material to the back end of the flower to fertilize the egg. The insect then crawls into the flower to get the nectar. In doing this the flower deposits its pollen on the insect. We can see the anthers, sacks of pollen, peeking out of the flower.
The crabapple tree on the first of May.
A closer view.
The same tree on June 19.
A closer view. Withered flower parts remain at the flower end of the fruit.
The exceedingly small flowers of Common Cleavers (Galium aparine) mature into little balls of velcro hooks. The seeds (and the plant, too) cling on to fur and clothes. After each trip to the wetlands I spend time picking off these things. In this photo you can see the velcro hooks. Normally, they are too small to see. The leaves and seeds seem to adhere by magic.
This plant has whorls of leaves that are quite pretty.
This is the flower and buds of Largeleaf Avens (Geum macrophyllum) in the middle of June. It is a native plant found in the wetland (and not put there by Clean Water Services).
It makes seeds that look like they would cling to clothing. But I have not found it to be a problem.
Lets look at some grass. Grass have flowers. Because it is wind pollinated it does not need showy flowers to attract pollinators. So the flowers are easy to miss. The little hotdog like things hanging down are sacks of pollen. Now look for the little white feather-like things. They collect the pollen and allow the genetic material in the pollen to fertilize the seed. later, these sexual parts of the grass will be gone while the seed matures.
I can see the pollen sacks in these two photos. My guess is that the light colored ones have dispersed their pollen while the brown ones have still have pollen inside. I don't see the female parts but this might be because the male and female parts are expressed at different times to reduce self pollination.
This is Tall Oregon Grape (Berberis aquifolium) that has been planted by Clean Water Services. It is a native plant but many years of agricultural use of the wetland area removed many of the native plants. It is a mystery to me why the leaves have turned red at the start of May. But Oregon Grape seems to have a few colorful leaves at strange times.
Tall Oregon Grape (Berberis aquifolium) flowers at the end of March.
Last year's leaves at the end of May. Perhaps the darker brown spots are where the leaf has not been eaten by a slug or snail. In the lighter areas the surface of the leaf has been eaten away.
This year I have been manually pulling wetland weeds that are on or near our townhome property. These before and after photos show one hour of work removing weeds from the top of the wetland rock wall. The weeds in the photo on the left are sow thistles, prickly lettuce and nipplewort. The spring rains this year may have helped the weeds grow. The seeds from plants on the top of the wall are nicely positioned to spread over a large area.
Oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare). Not native but still very pretty.