On Monday evening 21 people showed up for a plant identification hike led by Nature Consortium at Pigeon Point Park in the West Duwamish Greenbelt. The large number of people in attendance was gratifying, exciting, and fun for me. And it appeared to be fun and interesting to the people in attendance. Nature Consortium is committed to connecting as many people as possible with the greenbelt and with nature in general and based on the great turnouts at our plant identification and bird-watching hikes this summer, it feels like we are making that happen.
People on the Monday evening hike had a variety of reasons for attending the hike, and a wide range of knowledge about northwest native plants but all, including me were interested in exploring the park and learning about plants.
We saw an American goldfinch on a non-native thistle plant and someone reminded me that the goldfinch is the state bird of Washington. We saw cones on Douglas fir trees that volunteers planted in the past, we used smartphones to determine which plant family Teasel is in, we discussed whether or not the presence of ferns is an indicator of a healthy forest, which led to a discussion about what exactly is a healthy forest. We looked at invasive Hawthorn trees (lots of them) and one hiker pointed out that despite its invasive behavior, people use its berries for a variety of health-promoting uses. We noted that the park supports a surprisingly high number of different of species in the Rose family and discussed why that might be. We all agreed not to eat snowberries, learned the difference between radially symmetrical and bilaterally symmetrical flowers, began to come to terms with the fact that what most of us call a daisy flower is actually many tiny flowers arranged in a pretty pattern that looks like one big flower, and together admired the beauty of some large madrona trees in the evening light.
I think my point in listing just some of the discussion topics is to demonstrate that a lot of creative thinking, learning, laughing, and interaction between people who were mostly strangers to one another at the beginning of the evening occurred on a fairly random summer evening in an urban natural area.
