 This is how I feel today. We finished I teach horticulture at UBC Botanical Garden and on Friday, we had our last day of classes. It's been a year that I will never forget because of course we had to go to online training. Whoever thinks that when they sign up for our horticulture program, they go online. But you know something, it went really well. We had visitors from all around the world pop in as guests on our Zoom sessions and locals as well, industry people, land people. It was great. We had a really, really good ending to the year and it was a really good lesson for me in terms of student engagement and the use of technology. And the students were so determined and committed and we all finished and it was just terrific. So everybody feels so good. But we're here to talk about trees. I love trees. I really love trees. I don't know why. I like the bark. I like big trees. I like small trees. And I wanna talk about a few trees, few really fantastic trees that I've seen that are not at Lighthouse Park just before we get going. So here, this is the Harris Creek Spruce and the Harris Creek Spruce is on Vancouver Island. And it's not far from Port Renfrew. It used to be the largest thickest spruce in the world until a couple of years ago, top broke off. But it has a massive bowl. I mean, that is one big slab of wood. And on our North Shore, we're so lucky because you don't have to go very far to see big trees. You know, up in the Seymour watershed, if you ride your bike up to the Seymour Dam, which is paved, there's a short little interpretive trail that takes you to these old growth sickest spruce. And this is one of the trees in that grove. So when the area was logged 100 years ago or so, it was too wet in this area to cut down trees with the equipment that they had. And so they left this grove of old growth sickest spruce which is pretty incredible. There are a number of big trees on the North Shore mountains. And there's the big tree registry. And I've sought out many of these big trees. It's a lot of fun actually to look for, you know, the North Shore was logged, but they didn't get everything. And it's really fun to try to find the ones that got away. There's one of the biggest trees on the North Shore, the big Douglas fir. And also outside of BC, this is an old world sycamore. And this is on the border of Bulgaria and Greece. I didn't expect this day to see these trees, but we were wine tasting, wine touring in a really fantastic wine region of Bulgaria. And then I learned on a particular day that we were near this forest that had old growth sycamores. And a lot of the trees are 700, 800 years old. There was one we saw that day at a church that was 1200 years old. And here's another tree from Bulgaria. This is in Sofia. This is an amazing tree. It's called the forever tree. That's what my Bulgarian isn't very good, but that says Vekovno-Dorbo which means forever tree. And according to this sign, it was planted 650 years ago from whenever this sign was put in the ground. So I'm assuming it was put in the ground within the last 20 years. And there it is. So this is a street tree that is over 600 years old. Where it is is urban Sofia. And 600 years ago that it was urban Sofia. So there's springs where you can fill up jugs with fresh spring water. This is right downtown Sofia, like right across the street. And those springs were there. Like they've been there for 2000 years. People have been using them. It's been a, it's one of the oldest cities in Europe. And this was a street tree, an urban street tree that survived 650 years. Vancouver's urban street trees, the average lifespan of Vancouver's urban trees is like eight to 12 years. Includes all the ones that fail within the first year I suppose, but 650 years. But not only big trees, but little trees as well. So here's the Fairy Lake Spruce. This is actually five minutes from Port Remfrew. It's just on the side of the road. I took this picture, but this is a cute, sweet little sick of spruce growing on an emerging little island in Fairy Lake. And it is actually intertidally, when the time comes in, the water level rises and to the point where you can actually see the tree only just on the surface of the water, which is, I've never seen it at that point. Anyhow. And in the Metro Vancouver area, this is at Riverview Hospital. If you want to see some great trees, this is Tillia Tomintosa, Silver Linden, and this is a massive tree. You know, when they're young, they're like, trees are interesting. They're like people, you know? When I was a teenager, I shot up like a rocket and probably my limbs looked disproportionately long and I might not have, you know, my proportions were off because I was growing fast and trees are the same way when they're young. They look like, you know, leggy sticks. And then, you know, trees that we often see in the city are somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 40 years old, 50 years old, and at that stage, a lot of times trees will round out and they are sort of oval in shape, depending on the species, but in the case of Tillia Tomintosa, it's like an egg and a little bit narrower at the top, like a nice ovoid shape. But then as it matures, it grows straight up and gets a flat top, which is fascinating to think that the form of the tree would actually change over time. And I guess I'm changing, my form is changing over time. I'm broadening out in areas that last 10 years. Anyhow, this tree's over 100 feet tall, big linden, and there's my friend, Linden, and he's at the bottom, he's about six feet tall, so you can sort of see how big that is. Big tree. And then I really love urban trees that I love these industrial urban trees. Like somebody started this body shop in the, I don't know when they did, but decades ago, and they decided to plant this hedging cedar. This is a hedging cedar in this tiny, tiny, tiny little pocket in a sidewalk. And I can just imagine it was probably four or five feet tall when they planted it. And they put a plant in the ground. And decades later, this thing has just grown. And I love stuff like this. I really do. I love urban stuff. I like seeing plants that just survive in the city. Anyhow, that's just a little teaser on trees. I could go on and on and on about trees that I like, but just to kind of get you into the mood. So today, I wanted to focus specifically on the trees of Lighthouse Park. And that would include the key species, and that would include Douglas fir, Western red cedar, shore pine, big leaf maple, and Arbutus. And so of course, those are not the only species in the park, but those are the key species that I wanna focus on today. All right. And here's an overview, look at the park. Last week, we looked at the park kind of like from a geographical standpoint. And looking at this image right now, I do really like to think about the topography of the park. And I like to think about how the topography creates niches that are, create different habitats for these different species. And you can actually see, you can see here this cove right here. This cove is actually part of a bigger feature. When you look here, you see this dark, that's the pathway that comes down from the parking lot. And look how it empties out into this cove here. Cove is just the valley that continues into the water and you get a cove. And so you get more moisture that accumulates in the valley and you get different tree species. And last week I showed, you see this cove here, I showed you, and you can see that shaded area. You can sort of see it. That valley there, you see a lot of cedar trees. And up high on the ridges, you see a lot of Douglas firs. See Douglas firs up high, cedar is down low. It's the way it works. Moisture, dry, you know? And that's the great thing about looking for trees. And you can also see, can you see this darkened ridge here? These are mostly Douglas firs. And this is the trail that goes down through the valley of the giants. And so there's some very, very large trees here. And you can actually see it in the topography when you look at an aerial shot. So let's start with Douglas fir. Somebody, when I worked at Van Dusen Botanical Garden, one of the staff there sent interview questions to all of the gardeners. And one of the questions was, if you were a tree, what tree would you be? All right. And I quickly just said Douglas fir. It's because I grew up in Lynn Valley and really close to Lynn Canyon Park. When I was a little boy, I'd go down to the river and throw rocks into the river, make little dams, try to make bridges across Lynn Creek. We would play hide and seek in the woods. My friend's house backed right onto the forest. And so my childhood as a teenager, I discovered hiking and swimming in the creek. And all through my life, I've had a very strong connection to the North Shore Mountains. And for me, the smell of Douglas fir is something that I identify with. I think that if I close my eyes and imagine the scent of Douglas fir, it just brings me to my youth, where I grew up, where I come from. To me, that tree represents my home and where I come from. So is it my favorite plant? I don't think I have a favorite, but I certainly identify with Douglas fir. Here's a big one. This is not at Lighthouse Park, but this is probably the most, well, I don't know, I like this tree. This is the temple giant and it is in the big tree registry. This is in the Seymour Valley. It is on the backside of one of the Needles Mountains, one of the mountains that's part of the ridge called the Needles. And there's a flag root that takes you up to this tree. It is 88 meters high and one of the tallest Douglas firs measured and that's alive right now. It is a fantastic tree. It is a really special tree. And on this day, when I went there, if you go to the tree and you hike up a little further, you get this great shot of it. And the reason why I'm showing you this is that the North Shore, imagine the North Shore before it was logged. And you think about these big trees, like the temple giant. Well, Lighthouse Park is an old growth forest and it wasn't logged. It was kept as a stand of trees to have a backdrop for the Lighthouse to shine against. So as a result, we have this old growth, primarily Douglas fir forest. I went to the, anyways, I went to the temple giant a couple of years ago for the first time. And so that was two years ago, gave it a big hug and this was this year, gave it a big hug. I think I'm probably gonna visit this tree every year now, as long as I can anyways. It's not easy to get to, but pretty cool. Here's another fantastic Douglas fir. I take the students of the horticulture training program to see this tree every year. It's on Vancouver Island. It's called Big Lonely Doug. I'm not sure. Has anybody seen Big Lonely Doug? So this was an area that you can see was being cut. It was a clear cut. And one of the forestry workers, I forget that the name of the role this person has, but they basically were going through the area and flagging trees to that, not to cut for safety reasons or what have you. And that person came across this massive tree and thought, hmm, maybe we'll keep this one. This is a pretty, pretty big tree. And so they logged the area, but they left Big Lonely Doug. And right now the hair is on my head. You can't see because my hair is really short right now, but they're all standing on their end. I've chicken skin on the back of my arm, just thinking about this. It's, when I look at this image, to me, I don't know how that feels. It feels sad. It feels also hopeful. There's poetry in this. There's this, you know, this clear cut with this triumphant emerging Douglas fir. To me, it is a symbol. It's a symbol of resilience and perseverance. And yet it's frightening. It also just shows what humans are capable of and the impact that we're having on the earth. It's a lot of thoughts come to mind when I see Big Lonely Doug. And I've been visiting Big Lonely Doug now for the last six years annually. And that's, yeah, think about all the trees that I make annual visits to. I make annual visits to that Mulberry and Sophia and Big Lonely Doug. Hmm, it's a busy year trying to keep up with all these friends, right? So one really special thing that people may know about Douglas fir is that Douglas fir has a relationship in the soil with its roots with ectomycorrhizal fungi. So a lot of people in the last few years were inspired to read The Secret Life of Trees, which was a very poetic book that described how trees, you know, live together in networks. And the way that book describes the connections that trees have is that they talk to each other and they help each other. And so, you know, those are all very human ways to think about relationships. But it is true that trees, plants are not just independent organisms. They are connected in a network and the conduit for that connection, in the case of Douglas firs and many other plants are fungi. And so, for example, this Amanida here, you know, that's just the fruiting body, the mushroom. You see a mushroom. That's just the fruiting body. That's just the reproductive structure of a much larger organism. And so, that organism, mycelium is the vegetative mass of fungi. When you ask somebody, what is the largest living thing on earth? People often say a blue whale, or they'll say it's a giant redwood. But in fact, the largest, the most massive measured organism on earth has been fungi because one organism can have a vegetative mass of mycelium that occupies many square kilometers of one organism. And it's incredible to think about the services that the fungi provides. And so, if fungi in general are either gonna be parasitic, meaning they derive their nutrients from something that's alive or saprofite, so a saprophytic fungi, it is a decomposer. And so, it's getting its carbon from something that's dead and it's part of the decay process. But so, that's the way, that's part of the carbon cycle. But when you think about other services that fungi provide, the mycelium, which is that vegetative mass of tissue in the soil, and you can see these white strands, that's mycelium, and it acts like rebar in the soil. You know what I mean? Like it's a mesh of vegetative tissue that essentially holds the soil together. It helps create structure in the soil. So, for example, like roots do this. You have soil particles that include sand and silts and clays and some organic matter. And those particles bind together and form pets, little aggregated pea size and shapes, balls of soil particles that stick together. And one of the catalysts for that aggregation of soil particles into structured aggregates, roots do that, but mycelium does that as well. So the particles will stick to the threads of mycelium and the mycelium actually helps pull things together and create structure. And that's important because when you have soil that has good structure, in between those pads, you have big channels and that's where water and oxygen flows. Also, within a pad of soil, you have micro pores and those micro pores, that's where water is stored like a sponge. And so there's a lot of the mycelium, mycelium in soil actually does a lot physically for the quality of soil. But in the case of ectomycorrhizal fungi, the mycelium, these species, they are deriving their nutrients from living plants. So the mycelium is actually penetrating the roots, in this case of Douglas fir. And that is where that organism is getting its carbon, it's from the tree. How the tree benefits? The tree's roots only have a certain ability to draw water from the soil. When the soil gets really dry, there's a point at which the tree roots can no longer pull water from the soil. In fact, when the soil gets really dry, sometimes the opposite happens, particles in the soil will pull water out of roots. But mycelium has a greater ability than most plant roots to pull water from dry soil. So the mycelium's tapped into the roots of the trees and when it gets really dry, the trees through that connection are able to pull water and nutrition through the mycelium into the roots and up through the tree. And that is a great adaptation to this region because our summers are drying. So we're in kind of like a sub Mediterranean climate here. It's a really, really dry summer. And this is how, like when you look at hemlocks, you look at Douglas firs on the North Shore Mountains and in Lighthouse Park, that is why these trees, this is one of the reasons why these trees are so well adapted to our dry summers is because of that connection to fungi. And also, because the fungi, one organism will connect into multiple trees, that links them, that connects them. And so therefore when one tree is struggling and doesn't have, it's not pulling up enough water, it'll actually draw through that mycelium from one tree to another. And so they're connected. And I'll tell you, I don't actually look at it as trees speaking to each other. The way I look at it to me, it's physical. It's all about osmosis and negative pressure and there's moisture here and it's dry there and water will move from saturated area to an unsaturated area. To me, it's just science. It's chemistry. And I don't see it as a process where trees are thinking and speaking. And then as I say that, is our own brain activity, not just the same thing, just chemistry and responding to stimuli and anyhow. Ooh, metaphysical stuff here. Okay, well, so that's very interesting. Here's a couple of species to look at. So when you're looking for mushrooms and you're wondering, are these ectomycorrhizal fungi? Usually the mushrooms that are gonna be, have that mycorrhizal association are gonna be big like this aminida Smithiana. It's a big mushroom, that's a lot of carbon. It's pulling all that carbon from a big source, a tree and many trees. And so big mushrooms out near the root desk of these conifers, those you can usually speculate. I think that's probably a mycorrhizal fungi because it's big and it's growing out in the root zone. Smaller mushrooms are often the decomposers. You'll see mushrooms growing on decay in a tree. And so that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about trees growing on the root systems. Here's a neat one and these are some common ones. These particular species are species that are found, not just locally, but found locally and specifically relate with Douglas fir. So pretty well anywhere Douglas fir grows, these fungal species grow. A neat one of, so gonfidius subrosius and I'm not a mushroom expert. So these are things that I've read. This is not my area of specialty of expertise, but so where it was observed that gonfidius subrosius, it's distribution zone and this asuilus pictus, they were often observed growing together. And so the observation was made that they often occur together with an association on Douglas fir. But what has been learned is the first the gonfidius, it makes its association with the Douglas fir roots and then what happens is the suilus taps into the Douglas fir but through the gonfidius. So it penetrates the mycelium of the gonfidius, the gonfidius penetrates the roots of the Douglas fir. So there's kind of layers of dependency and interconnectedness and that is the magic of the forest. Have you ever seen one of these? Has anybody ever seen a living stump? So what's happening here? Here's a stump that has been, this is, it was a small tree that was cut down or it broke and yet it continued to produce growth. This ball on the top is tissue that is growing from a dead stump. How is that happening? So phenomenon like this occur when trees are connected through mycelium tissues and this tree may be dead but it's still pulling carbon from other trees. And so this is an example of a tree that is continuing to grow because it is connected to other trees. So that's something to look for when you're at Lighthouse Park, look for living stumps. Does anybody know the location of some living stumps at Lighthouse Park? I do not, I don't, I do not but I know of some, this one, this example here is at Pacific Spirit Park and I work at UBC Botanical Garden and I often ride my bike through the park and I'm always looking for living stumps. It's a fun thing to do. So I know where this one is and I know where about three or four others are on the side of the trail. Very cool. Oh, what happened there? Sorry, it looks like PowerPoint crashed but I will open it back up. There we go, back to the living stump. Another magical entity in the forest is Coralrhiza striata. Can you guys see this? Hold on, I'm just wondering if, I'm just wondering if I'm just gonna go back to share screen here and make sure that everybody can see that. There we go. We're back on track. There we go. So, back on track here. Another magical organism in the forest are the coral root orchids. So, Coralrhiza striata is a common orchid that you can find in Lighthouse Park. You can find on the North Shore Mountains. They flower in the late spring and depending on the elevation, if you visit Lighthouse Park and you see that the Coralrhiza are finished, all you have to do is hike higher up in elevation because of course spring happens at different stages in the calendar depending on the elevation. So, springs later the higher up you go, makes sense. So, Coralrhiza are another example of a, in this case, this is a parasitic plant that derives its nutrients from trees. And I love that. I love things like paintbrush. You know, you go up into the subalpine and you see paintbrush. That is an example of a plant family where all the species are either hemiparasites, they get some of their nutrients from other plants or completely parasitic. And in this case, Coralrhiza has no leaves. It is getting its nutrition specifically, in this case, from Douglas fir. Very cool. So, one of the really special things to understand about everything on earth, but trees and plants is that trees and plants have connections. And the mycorrhizal connections are, one very easy example to understand, but when, and next week we're gonna get into plant ecology more deeply and we'll talk about the interconnectedness of different species. And it's so fascinating to look at the world and ask, how is the environment affecting these plants? And then the other flip it and say, how do these plants affect the environment and what connections can we make? And how are these plants affecting other plants, animals? Ah, that's plant ecology. It's a fascinating and really complex and beautiful thing to consider. There we go. So, Douglas fir at Lighthouse Park is mostly found in the areas where it's a little drier. So, here is an image from the, one of the higher points in the park. And you can see there's this kind of bushy, younger plant and here's some older ones growing out of just the rock, you know, which is incredible. And that's, you know, it's really, I just think marvelous. Like when you think about that word, I marvel at this. It's marvelous that plants can grow where they grow. Like we're talking slabs of granite and crevices in between where the granites cracked apart and you've got trees growing in those crevices. And over a long period of time, if you think about in a post-glacial world, all this rock would have been wiped clean of soil and you would have had pioneer plants mosses and lichens and herbaceous things that would have started to grow in these crevices and live and die and decompose and sand accumulates and organic matter and sand accumulation of soil. And then you've got maybe Douglas fir seedling that germinates in that crevice and becomes a big plant. And what's incredible about that is, you know, hundreds of years of that, thousands of years of that, eventually these trees are like wedges in the rock and they'll eventually break the rock up and also they cycle carbon. And so a small little seedling, a Douglas fir seedling that becomes a big tree, all of that tissue is all carbon. Where did it come from? It came from carbon from carbon dioxide and hydrogen from H2O. Over the sun's energy, it makes sugars and all that biomass and then it grows and every year, needles will fall as it defoliates partially and it will die and all of that material will decompose and eventually it will shade the ground. These trees shade the rock and where it's shaded you have more moisture, where you have more moisture, you have more decomposition of organic matter, you have an understory, you have birds and animals and these trees actually create habitat and it's incredible to think they'll do that on crevices of rock. Like the image where I am here, you can see a Douglas fir growing out of the rock and that is just like, that is incredible to that. I enjoy seeing that in front of a body shop just off of Main Street and Fifth Avenue and I mean, but really it's incredible what plants are capable of. And here, look at these things, Douglas firs growing on the bluff and that's my happy place is a coastal Douglas fir bluff. You can see here's a relatively young tree that's having some dieback, but that's not a bad thing. This is, these are trees that are growing in really, really exposed environments and they get wind pruned and they develop so much character over time. And I think the Douglas fir at Lighthouse Park are really just marvelous trees. They have such character. The ones growing right down on the foreshore here are just incredible trees. And then Phillya placata, Western red cedar. This grows where there's more moisture and it will grow width of this fir. I mean, of course, plant species don't, it's not like one stops and the next one starts. There's always this interface and this threshold where the species kind of blend, but you wanna find Western red cedar. You go to the areas where moisture collects where the soil is deeper, where you have physical topography, depressions and everybody likes to call any conifer that looks like a cedar. They call it a cedar. These are not all native trees. Phillya placata, Western red cedar you're gonna see at Lighthouse Park. Eastern white cedar through oxygen tells you're not going to suppress loss of cypress, you're not gonna see it's in Oregon, California. Yellow cedar, compressus nocotensis, it's native to the region, but it's native at higher elevations. So what's really fun is, okay, you go to Lighthouse Park where it's low elevation and you make your way up to Black Mountain in West Vancouver, Cypress Bull Park, right? As you gain elevation, you will see species change and that is fun. It goes from red alder to sitka alder. It goes from Western hemlock to mountain hemlock. It goes from red cedar to yellow cedar as you go up higher, it's so cool. So anyhow, it's very difficult. They're all in the cypress family, these trees. And this is just an example of four and they all look very similar, but you know what's really fun? If you're interested in plants, it's fun to compare the way they look and learn about the little micro details in, so here are four that people all like to call cedar, but if you really get into it, here's Western red cedar. This is what Lighthouse Park, that's a spray, an assembly like that. And the spray is flat on Western red cedar and it has a shape that's different than other sprays from other species, but on Western red cedar, when you look, one of the key ID features on Western red cedar, if you look at the way the scales overlap, they're decusate. So to go this way, to go this way, to go this way, to go this way. A lot of conifers are decusate, but then you get this waxy tissue that exudes where the leaves overlap. And on Western red cedar, they make this little X. And to me, that looks like a butterfly. It's not the only one that does this, but you know, that's those waxy markings, those patterns on the tiny little shoots of these conifers, they're all different. And that's a fun way to identify different plants in the cypress family. There's the X, looks like a butterfly to me. And just to illustrate the point of like this, you can actually see this Cove here, just above the, where it says point Atkinson tide gauge station, you can see a little Cove. And then you can see this, you can see it's a little bit darker. And that Cove is essentially the end of a, it's the valley that continues into, if you drained all the water away, it would just be a valley of rock that goes down. And in that valley, in that valley, you get cedars growing in it. So that's just a niche where you're gonna find more cedars is where it's low and wet. It's close up. See, there's the Cove and there's the valley. That's one of the places where you'll find cedars. Cedars like moisture. And here's a park in Vancouver. And this was a photo that I took last year. And it was planted in the 80s. This was, it was a blend of native trees. And so clearly an attempt to create a native forest. But interestingly, all the dead trees that you see are Western Red Cedar. And you can't see from this image, but the mistake that was made here was all the trees were planted at the top of this hill that was, so there's this hill that was created there. And they're all part of the development of the area. And all these Western Red Cedars are planted at the top and Douglas Friars at the bottom. They kind of got it the wrong way around. And so all the trees at the top of the hill died. And they're all in the process of being removed right now. I walk through there, well, not right now, but on my way, on my bike to the Botanical Garden, I ride my bike through that trail. And last few weeks, months, they've been marked with orange paint. They're gonna cut those ones down now that they're dead. But you've probably noticed that Western Red Cedars are dying. They're dying, young ones on the sides of the highways, they're dying in this region and it's frightening. And to me, they are an indicator of climate change. It is an indication of, they're adapted to dry summers, but 2015 was phenomenally dry. We didn't get rain from April to right up and until October. And that was quite a summer. And since then I've noticed a lot of trees can handle the odd dry summer, but you get a summer like that followed up with more dry summers. And that's why these are dying. I did some analysis of the weather records. And what I was finding was that the actual Vancouver, Metro Vancouver gets about 1,200 millimeters of rain a year. And what I actually found over the last 20 years was that our annual rainfall amounts hadn't changed that much. It's around 12, between 12 and 1,300 mils a year. And even in the last 10 years, the annual rainfall for Vancouver hasn't changed that much. So it's not like we're getting less rain, but it's when it's happening. So we're getting heavier rain events in the winter, which isn't good because you get flooding. And we're getting less rain in the summer months. And that's a trend that I observed by looking at weather data for Vancouver. So it's a bit of a frightening indicator to me about what's happening in our region, climate-wise. Another species on the list is Pinus contorta, subspecies contorta, which is important to point out. If you travel east and you go to the Okanagan, as you get into the Cascades, you get a different subspecies of Pinus contorta. On the coast, we have shore pine, but then as you get into the interior, you have lodgepole pine. And lodgepole pine has a completely different form and growth habit. Lodgepole pine grows like a lodgepole and has a much different form. It's a subspecies. It is fire-adapted, lodgepole pine. The seeds will only germinate after a fire. The seeds themselves are coated in this waxy substance that has to melt off. Whereas Pinus contorta, subspecies contorta, grows on the coast and it has a much different form and a much different growth habit. And so the word, the specific epithet contorta, people often think it refers to its contorted growth habit. No, no, no, it's just the leaves twist and the leaves are contorted. But Pinus contorta, subspecies contorta, has a particularly contorted growth habit. Now, if you're really into taxonomy, there's Pinus contorta, subspecies contorta, or variety contorta. So it's Pinus contorta, contorta, contorta. That's kind of fun. But the species contorta grows all the way down to California and you get subspecies, you lot of folia in the cascades, you get myrianna, belanderi in California and it's a neat species. It has a large range of distribution and many different, a few different subspecies in different parts of that bigger region. So kind of neat. Here's a little contorta story for you, a shore pine story. I did some, I do landscaping work off and on. I can't not. I was put on this earth to build gardens and there was a site in West Vancouver where the homeowner had expressed an interest in re-naturalizing the foreshore. It was very close to Lighthouse Park. So I thought in your landscape, you shall have a shore pine. It's perfect. It's adapted to the salt spray. It can grow in the foreshore. This is where it grows naturally. Let's reintroduce this native species. And so I'm probably showing off my pyramid or my tripod block and tackle tool here. So this thing's capable of lifting over one ton. That tree only weighs about 800 or 900 pounds. But there's my truck and just got the tripod hoisted it up and drove away because my colleague here and I are gonna now get it down 80 stairs without damaging anything. And so we got it down to the bottom and I wanted to furnish this corner with it. And we use how does one get a tree when it's waterlogged that weighs maybe 900 pounds up four feet into a planting pit. So block and tackle. I love tools like this. And of course I get my friends to do the work and then I take the credit. This is how I operate anyhow. Acer macrofilm. This is a great tree. This is the tree that has the maple with the largest leaves in the world. There's no other maple in the world that has bigger leaves than Acer macrofilm. And the largest one, somebody on Vancouver Island, they were like 60 centimeters across measured. So that's a thing. If you can top the world record for measured big leaf maple leaves, what a fun thing to do. You'd have to have one in a wet area and after a wet spring, I guess, anyhow. So we identify as a country with maple leaves. Do we not? Not big leaf maple. I'm thinking sugar maple is probably more in line with what Canadians who came up with a symbol for this flag, but you know, maples and we don't have pennies anymore but the maple leaf was on our penny and this is not a big leaf maple. In fact, you know something? This is not even a maple. That's right. Everybody thinks that this is a maple, including I'm sure the artist who put this on the penny but there is a key ID feature here that tells me this is not a maple. So maples, here's the stem, the buds are opposite. When you look at this, there's a bud on the left and then there's a leaf where a bud is on the right and then there's the last leaf and the buds are alternating. Maples don't have alternating buds. Maples have opposite buds. So where you see one bud, there should be another bud and there should be pairs of leaves. That's a maple. This is a London Plain Tree, I think. That doesn't look, anyways, it's, you know, it is an artist representation. This is not a botanical illustration but it bothers me that that doesn't have opposite buds. If it's supposed to be a maple, put opposite buds. Come on, you know? Anyways, and another funny thing about our money in our country is that we've got this maple on a $5 bill and maple people will tell you that actually looks like a Norway maple. Anyways, we're getting it wrong on our money. So there's a big leaf maple, that's a big leaf. That's my hand. Oh my goodness, please don't anybody tell my mom about those dirty fingernails. And I just love looking at plants up close. I love, you know, the differences between different maples. Like look at the axles of the veins, those little hairs. And there's opposite buds. Look at that bulbous pedial, the base of the pedial, the way it clasps around the stem, big leaf maple. Big leaf maple stems are green in the winter and they have single terminal buds. Some maples have twin terminal buds. They have a single terminal bud and clasping pedials. Wow, what are we looking at there? That's amazing. That when you look really closely at plants, look at the lenticelles. These are the, these little ports here allow gas exchange on the stem. And a really key thing about, you know, woody plants is when the leaves break off of a deciduous plant, it leaves a scar. This is the leaf scar. And then here, when you see these little protruding bumps, those are scars from the vascular bundles. These are the tubes that supply water from the stem into the leaf. And the leaf breaks off and they leave these little scars, the vascular bundle scars. So on big leaf maple, it'll have five, and this one's a bit funky, but usually five vascular bundle scars. Some species have three, right? So kind of cool. And look at the hairs on the seeds. Very, very cool. I love the flowers of big leaf maple. Nobody ever really thinks about flowers on maple, but in April, oh my God, maple flowers, big leaf maple flowers are so beautiful. And the moss, lichen, rose on, you know, it's really neat about some trees. And you'll see this on elms. You'll see it on maples, but not all trees. You'll see plants growing on them, like licorice fern on maples, right? And you know what's happening here is that some trees like maples and elms, the bark will actually exude calcium and magnesium, and that provides nutrition for other plants to grow for epiphytes, plants growing on top of other plants. Whereas not all trees will do that. You can see some limbs in the same environment at the same angle, and there are different species, and you're not gonna get that same epiphytic relationship. And then the last tree I wanna look at today is Arbutus mansisi, which is something that we all kind of relate to. It's got a large range of distribution, all the way down to, you know, all the west side of Pacific North America, Arbutus and closely related species. But in this region here, oh man, yeah, that is like, that is what I think of. If I wanted to take a plant person to see some really great native plants and they're from, you know, from somewhere else, I'll take them to Lighthouse Park and show them Arbutus and blow their minds, right? Peeling bark, it's Canada's only probably favorite green tree. And you know, here's an example though, they're dying at Lighthouse Park, and they're dying in the region, and it's very disturbing. There's a lot of theories as to why they're dying. You know, they're very sensitive to changes in the environment. One of the things about Lighthouse Park is that this is a habitat where forests, where fire is part of the ecological cycle, and there haven't been many fires. After a fire, you will have bare open area and you'll get young Arbutus trees and eventually they'll kind of die back and conifers will grow. And the lack of fire disturbance has actually left a lot of older trees. And these older trees are less resistant to fungal diseases. And so there are like, there are many fungal organisms that actually will live in a symbiotic, not even so much symbiotic way, but in a latent way with Arbutus. But then when the trees get old and weak, what was once a latent relationship becomes a parasitic relationship and the trees decline. And so this is what's happening. And what's very interesting too, because in a healthy Arbutus, all the presence of all those organisms is there, but they're all interrelating with each other. Like they're providing competition with all these healthy organisms. The pathogenic species are not able to thrive because there's competition. But then the tree gets older and things change and then there's less balance and they succumb to these fuller fungal diseases. So here's just to leave you with this story. My dad and mom, they live up on the Sunshine Coast and they, you know, right on the water and they had Arbutus trees that died and that was sad. But my dad and I went and collected a bunch of seeds. There's a septic field up the road and there's Arbutus trees producing seed. And we just rather, because you know that when you plant Arbutus, it doesn't transplant well and seedling when it germinates its roots will integrate with the soil in ways that a transplant cannot do. So what we did is we just put piles of seeds where we wanted those trees and they germinate it. And the first, you know, few years, tiny little seedlings and we thinned them, he thinned them. I say, we, you know, we did the one part together, but so we thinned the seeds and over time, after about five, six years, you know, these little seedlings, they'll find their roots and then they'll boom, shoot up. So now he's got these young, healthy Arbutus trees growing. And I think, you know, if you're trying to reestablish them by planting, you're gonna have a big tree right off the bat, over the long run, you're not gonna have as much success. But here you use seeds and you get a better root establishment and it takes a little while for them to get going. But then once they do, I think that's the trick to getting Arbutus reestablished to seed. So there's an example of a tree that he seeded and that is now, you know, established quite nicely and doing very well. Anyways, my goodness, I was hoping to spend more time for questions, but I see some Q and A came up here. Yeah, quite a few questions. You live on the waterfront in Whitecliff, area facing north on the house down, what ground cover and fruit trees work well within this ecology? My goodness. Fruit trees, you know, apple trees are always a good choice and a ground cover, I mean, this is a good story. You know what, next week, we're gonna talk about some native ground covers. I think when you live, you know, Whitecliff Park here, you have responsibility to kind of recreate some, you know, natural assembly of wild plants. And so Dwarf working grape is good slough, things like that, you know? And fruit trees, Pacific crab apple is a native that, you know, you can use the fruits for sauces and jellies and whatnot and that's a great native. It's not something that you see an abundance of in this region, but it will grow in your area. Here we are. Do the Western Red Cedar, do not have help from mycelium? You said that they are having a hard time with our dry summers and so, you know, all these trees do have connections with mycelium, but you know, there is a limit. There is a limit even with the interconnectedness with other, you know, species, trees, you know, there is a limit and so with the dry summers, you're seeing Douglas firs dying, you're seeing shore pine dying, you're seeing Western Red Cedar. Cedars are just an indicator, but in fact, there's a decline with all of our native trees and that's really, really frightening. Here we go. Okay, those are the questions that were written in. Lynn? So, Egan, I can actually see more questions. Oh yeah? Under the Q and A, can you see them? I can read them. Okay, yeah, I was just looking at the chat. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, perfect. So are other nutrients besides water transferred through the network of mycelium? So yes, the answer is yes. And more than just water and the one nutrient that is most importantly transported is phosphorus because when it's dry, phosphorus is an interesting nutrient. It is not that mobile when soils are dry and so specifically phosphorus availability is, and also phosphorus is not available in really acidic soils. And in this region, we have a lot of rain, we have mineral soils, our soil pH is really acidic. So the fungal mycelium facilitate the uptake of water, nutrients and specifically phosphorus. So it really is incredible, the connection that trees have with fungi. And somebody Elaine mentioned, there are a few closest on juniper loop. And I'm assuming that... I think she's talking about the living stump. Remember you were showing that and you were asking, are there any in Lighthouse Park? Oh yeah, okay, I need to see these. I wanna go for a walk in the park with Elaine. I'm wondering if she'll... Okay, oh, and Rath Trevor Park has many living stumps, very cool. This is an answer rather than a question, great. Yes, there are these two examples of living stumps in Lighthouse Park. Elaine has posted a photo and explanation of the largest one on the bulletin board, just off the parking lot. That living stump is on juniper loop, not far from Seven Sisters Trail. Oh, great, thanks, Sue Ann, that's really great. Here's a question from Chun-Yin Lee. Since the lockdown has significantly reduced visitors to Lighthouse Park, do you anticipate any natural changes to the park as a result? That's a good question. So I've been visiting Lighthouse Park for 30 years and every year I try to make a visit and I've noticed, especially in the last 10, that visitation has everywhere. Like have you not noticed that the parking lots for all of our parks are just like jam-packed and there's just so many people, right? And the impact on the parks has been really, really devastating, not just Lighthouse, but all of the parks. And people love these places to death, right? Has there, what kind of rebound would you see with a few, so far as maybe eight weeks of, or even six weeks of less visitation? I wouldn't imagine you'd see a ton of rebounds. Some of the species that have disappeared from Lighthouse Park are not gonna reappear. It takes time. You know what, Chun-Yin takes so long for these things to establish and it takes no time at all to destroy them. So anyhow, and it says, here's a question. Is ponderosa pine a subspecies of contorta? No, it's not actually. So pine is ponderosa is a different species than pine is contorta. But all of the pines in Western North America, the pines, you know what's really fun about pines is if you look at their needles, they'll be assembled in bundles of two, three or five. There is a single needle pine called Pinus monofila in California, but you're not gonna see that here. All the Western North American pine species are two needle, well, I shouldn't, no, no, no, I shouldn't say that, but there is a group of three needle pines. So pine is contorted as a two needle pine and ponderosa is a three needle pine. And there's, if you travel up and down the west of North America, you'll see ponderosa, Jeffery, I, Savannah, Anaculture, all three needle pines. They're all really, really cool. And contortus in a different group of pines. It's in the two needle group, not the three needle group. Pines, they all look the same when you're not that familiar with them, but they're not. And I got into a thing with pines a few years ago. I got really, three years different. Is the big leaf maple a climax tree? So no, actually the climax species in this region is Western hemlock. And so what happens is you get a disturbance, like a fire, and you get a bunch of herbaceous stuff, and then you'll get alders that grow, but you'll also get big leaf maple that grow in openings where they're not shaded out by the trees. And big leaf maples are short lived species. So they, you know, after about 70, 80 years, they're very brittle. So in a classic thing with pioneer species is that they're short lived, they break easy, they decompose fast. Big leaf maples in that category. Ultimately what will happen is Douglas firs will germinate in the sun and they will shade out things like, you'll get a big leaf maple growing in openings of Doug fir. But then what happens is the Doug firs start losing limbs and then the hemlocks, hemlocks will grow as an understory to Douglas fir. And when the hemlocks, when the Douglas firs break and die and thin out, then the hemlocks shoot up. So that's the climax species of the region. Why don't we plant new Arbidus trees there? So I'm not involved with the reclamation of Lighthouse Park. And I would imagine that there is some discussion and there must be some, you know, reintroduction of the, you know, Arbidus trees. Anyhow, I don't know what's going on in that department but my suggestion would be to rather than plant nursery plants, I would collect seed and I would put seed in the crevices where you want to see the Arbidus reestablish. I think it's a better way to get an establishment of Arbidus trees. It says, I heard that almost all Arbidus will have one dead branch. Is that even true of a healthy Arbidus tree? Oh yeah. So people look at things, like people look at dead branches and decay as a bad thing but decay is a healthy part of, you know, plant ecology. And so yeah, all plants are gonna have dead branches and dead leaves and that is part of the life cycle, the healthy life cycle of a plant. So even a healthy Arbidus tree is gonna have dead branches. Gardens we prune out dead branches and there's something we want, humans want everything to be healthy and organized but that's not the way things are in nature. Does it damage the large tree, large fir trees if people constantly walk around the base compacting the soil? And the answer to that is yes, because Douglas firs, hamlocks and cedars, their roots are in a big disc shape and they are actually rooted more closely to the surface than a lot of other plants. So like oak trees have very deep roots, those conifers have very, very shallow roots and ultimately, foot compaction, you don't think it's very much but over many years, thousands of people, a foot isn't very big and so your weight concentrated on that small point actually creates a lot of compaction. And not only will you compact the roots of the trees but you will compact the roots of other associated plants and the health of the tree is dependent on the health of all of its associates and walking on soil creates damage and impact and that impact will have a detrimental effect on the forest in general. So directly and indirectly. Hi, Egan, you didn't mention Western hemlocks in the park. Are there many and how are they doing? So there are hemlocks in the park and why didn't I feature Western hemlock? I didn't. How are they doing? Hemlocks generally in the region are showing signs of drying summers. A hemlock requires a lot of moisture like you've ever planted a hemlock in a garden. They don't do as well planted as they do in the forest and hemlocks are actually a species that really depend on the fungal associations and without that they tend to really dry down and in the region I've seen hemlocks producing a lot of seed hemlocks are very brittle trees. They're on the west side of Stanley Park and we had the microburst of wind in 2006. It was mostly hemlocks and they just, you know, they're really, really shallow rooted trees. So in the region, there is a, I've made the observation that they're not doing as well in the last 10 years, you can see hemlocks producing a lot of seed, a lot of dead hemlocks. Question here, time to collect our buta seeds and medium to plant in. So you know what? The medium to plant them in is where you want them. Because when a seed germinates the first thing it does is it puts a root down. And if you put, if you sow seeds in situ, meaning in the location where you want them to grow, you will have a root system establishment that you can never, never recreate by growing plants in nursery in a pot and then transplanting. You're always gonna have a root ball and the roots are gonna be affected by the pot and they are never gonna grow out of it. Sometimes really badly, but even if they are successful it's just not gonna be the same as a seedling that germinates. And so, you know, you can grow in our buta in a pot with peat and perlite or a core coconut, husk, whatever but it's never gonna, they don't, and that's a species that does not transplant well. So my suggestion is in-situ sowing where you want to seed them. Egan, I hear discussion from time to time about replacing native trees that are dying from climate change with other more drug resistant species. Are there issues with this approach on native species and wildlife? Oh, good question. Now, another park in the region, I saw incense cedar being planted in what I would call a wilderness area. And this is done by volunteers. And I don't know why that's the case. So incense cedar is a species from California. It's called Kaila Cedrus Decurrence. And so it's a species that is better adapted to drier summers. And the question is over hundreds of years with a drying climate, would you see a migration of these more like Southern species? Would you see their distribution range extend further north? Yeah, you would, but is it responsible for people to make that decision and then start plugging California species into a wilderness area here? I don't think so. I don't. I think that then you're really mixing species through human management in wild areas. I don't think so, personally. I think in urban settings, yeah. I think in the city, I think it's a really good idea to look at plant center from Mediterranean planets for our cities in tree wells and next to buildings and heavily disturbed areas, but in a wilderness area like Lighthouse Park, you could have a discussion around that, but my feeling, it would be very hard to convince me otherwise that the best thing to do would be to allow the species that are already in the park to, you'll probably see fewer Western red cedars and more Douglas furs if it continues to get drier, but I wouldn't introduce, say, or species from Oregon or California at Lighthouse Park. I just think that's irresponsible, personally. What are your thoughts on forest bathing? I think that being in the forest is, I need to be in the forest right now. In fact, I've been in my apartment. I've been behaving responsibly like many of you probably have been too, and I'm really feeling withdrawal from not just being in a forest, but just being in a wilderness area. Forest bathing is actually in a closed canopy forest, but the feeling that I get when I'm somewhere wild, like whether it's a treeless environment or a coastal environment or a forested environment, there's something makes you feel very small and makes you feel like you're a less significant part of a much bigger place. And I need that right now, personally. So I think forest bathing is great. I was contemplating going to Lighthouse Park and taking pictures for this, but I decided to stay home and not do that because I'm trying to stay home. But anyways, we'll be out there again. Yeah. I think that's the last question on the list. Maybe a good place to leave off, Eileen, I don't know. Yeah, I think so, yeah. So thank you so much, Eagan. It was almost as good as being in the park in person. And as you say, we will be there again. And we'll be with you again next week. So thank you everyone for coming today. We will have one more visit to Lighthouse Park with Eagan in this virtual environment and that's next Sunday at two. I've put out the registration form on our website and I can actually email everybody who attended today a link to that site as well, so you've got it. Yeah, so that's great. And we have been recording, so we will figure out a way to get this up on the web somewhere and I'll let you know next week where to find that. All right, thanks so much. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. Bye, everybody.