As the summer turns to fall ...
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| Leaves and flowers drop. Unidentified plant, cliff face, Buttle Lake |
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| Or just change colour. Oceanspray, Holodiscus discolor, in its winter colours. |
And I mentioned the horizontal moss on trees facing Buttle Lake winds. Here are a couple of those trees.
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| This moss usually hangs vertically. The lake is to the right. |
And a couple of tall snags. These always make me wonder.
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| Two dead trees tower over new forest. |
How is it that these dead snags manage to stay erect, so high above the forest that would shield them from winds? How is it that they don't crack and join the logs on the forest floor?
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Y el verano se va; y entra el otoño. Y hay cambios: primera foto; una planta que no puedo identificar; perdió las hojas y las flores, pero los tallos y botones perduran.
Segunda foto, las flores blancas de Holodiscus discolor se vuelven cafés. Siguen en la planta durante todo el invierno.
Tercera: mencioné antes como algunos musgos cuelgan de troncos que enfrentan los vientos de Buttle Lake de manera casi horizontal. Estos están en un punto extendido en el lago. Normalmente estos musgos cuelgan verticalmente.
Cuarta: siempre que veo árboles completamente muertos como estos, me quedo con la pregunta; ¿Cómo es que no se caigan, muertos como están, y sin la protección del bosque alrededor? No lo entiendo.
Just a thought about why trees will stand so long after they are dead--when they were alive, with all their needles on, they presented probably three or four times as much area to the wind, and their trunk grew strong enough to resist that. Now that they are dead and their needles gone, they have much less wind resistance, so it takes many years of decay before the wind will have any effect. (Often branches blow off first, even further reducing the area.)
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense. Thanks!
DeleteThey are such evocative reminder of the lost forests of the past. Here in the Alberni valley, at the end of Sproat Lake, the trees that were killed in the Tay Fire still tower over the regenerating forest, even though it has been growing back for more than 50 years now.
Delete"... lost forests of the past ..." Showing how far the current young forest has to go. Something to think about.
Delete