I took advantage of a seemingly rare break in our recent nasty weather to get out to the southern border of the ‘hood. That welcome excursion provided a few observations and insights—not enough to warrant individual articles, but this being a slow news weekend, I thought I would lump them into a rambling post for you.
Oil Spill on Lake Union
In my recent former life, I responded to oil spills for NOAA. When I heard through the grapevine that there was one in my own back yard here in Wallingford, of course I had to go have a look. This was a release of marine diesel at Northlake Shipyard, on the west side of Gasworks Park. It was reported on Friday, and cleanup began that evening. I went down there on Saturday to have a look, with cleanup activities continuing. Most of the red-dyed diesel oil seemed to be cleaned up, with only sheens still visible. The strong winds from the south helped to keep the spilled oil close to the shoreline, where it could be contained with booms and cleaned up with oil skimmers and sorbent materials. The Coast Guard and the state Department of Ecology are investigating the cause.
Gasworks Park Encampment De-camped
The last time I had strolled down to Gasworks, probably in the summertime, there was a large and established encampment under the sheltered area near the play structures and restrooms. I was surprised to find that it was completely gone. There were lots of men hanging out in the picnic area, but no tents or other living quarters. The park itself was pretty heavily populated with people and geese, who, no doubt like me, wanted to get some fresh air while the getting was good.
Gasworks Park COVID testing site
As I circled through the park, I noticed this lonely guy, Hayden Braun, sitting under an awning in the northwest corner of the parking lot doing PCR COVID testing for an outfit called Curative.com. He said that the site offered testing from 8:00-2:30 during the week and Saturday 9:00-4:00. Usually, it’s a van that houses the testing. According to the Curative site, turnaround time for results is 1-2 days.
Burke-Gilman Tree Question
As an add-on to Alan and Margaret’s recent Wallyhood post about trees, I thought I would ask this question about a conifer tree along the Burke-Gilman trail that I have admired for some time. Does anyone know what species of pine this is? I do have an app on my phone for (allegedly) identifying plants, but once again, it confirmed its notorious unreliability (it told me this was a pine). Very long needles and large, spikey grenade-size cones. It’s really a gorgeous tree that stands between the sidewalk-biking split in the trail.
Syringe Count
Only one syringe observed today, along the upper part of the trail by Pacific.
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How many needles per cluster on the pine tree? And what was the approximate length of those cones? Ponderosa pines are common in the PNW and have needles that look like those (6 or 8 inches long, 3 per cluster), but their cones are a more compact classic shape, not elongated like these.
Oh geez, you’re going to make me go back and count the needles? Can I wait till it (mostly) stops raining again??
A photo of trunk, to show the bark, might help, too. If you had found it in the wild, hence a North American native, I’d say Jeffrey pine (and you’re in California), but with ornamentals, who knows.
And you have to smell it. Break some needles or something.
Further reading about Jeffrey pine (not so sure, it may not be suited to the climate), its smell is quite distinctive, though descriptions vary a lot. Butterscotch maybe, vanilla, violets … Unlike most pines, it’s poor for turpentine, because the resin has a lot of n-heptane, where turpentine is pinene. They learned to tell it from Ponderosa pine back in the 19th century, when their turpentine stills started exploding.
Possibly foothill pine?
3 needles per cluster. Needles are 11″ long. Cones are close to 6″ long. Broken twig smells like turpentine with notes of orange.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d6b92f10bf002256f0a1684fd1d03b984dd18f0ca3eb8433da23a569b7254cf7.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7cc1779bd81d8ba86e6316210a1afc8d78eebacb5870df2146fce5e4b3810cb4.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/950d5e7600ffb16b65d45ef3485dc964fb9222f7e5c1d5a8ff82544d58f33106.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/67ddcdc0d7ebeb3cb1cfb1d040dc22c24cd66f9dbbcf47c173f1c8ee2a353b23.jpg
barbbsea, I hadn’t seen your post and pics so I went back today and took nearly the same ones that you did! The only one I took that is different is this one, of the whole tree. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fa0cb90319ca171dff09ecfccf41d2affa1a3994fd4598aea85a9a35848a2d4.jpg
I took a look at it in person this morning, and I was stumped. So (I hope everyone has had a chance to play the “what is it” game) … I cheated and looked it up. Because it’s essentially a street tree, it’s on SDOT’s Street Tree Inventory Map.
They say it’s a Coulter pine, from the dry rocky mountain slopes of Southern California and Mexico (also a popular ornamental.) “Coulter pines produce the largest cones of any pine tree species and people are advised to wear hardhats when working in Coulter pine groves.” It’s a close relative of the “foothill” pine.
It was a slow winter’s night in front of a fire. We looked up Coulter pine…and I dunno. Those trees have gigantic cones, up to 20″ in length! While the tree in question and the Coulter pine have cones described as spiny (and I have the holes in wool gloves to prove half of that), the discrepancy in cone size is a mismatch…unless maybe the ones here get stunted due to lack of sustained heat? Otherwise, I remain stumped as well. Where are the UW Forestry or Botany majors when we need them?
I see SDOT considers this a “private” tree – they didn’t plant it – and it’s very possible that they just guessed. Maybe without having seen the cones. I agree that the cone doesn’t look right, and not just the size. For me, same with P. sabiniana; P. ponderosa has a little shorter needles and the bark doesn’t look right; P. jeffreyi should have that distinctive smell. Another relative to consider: Pinus engelmannii, a Ponderosa relative from Mexico.
Whatever it is, it’s likely to look a little different from the handbook pictures, because it undoubtedly does not normally occur in this climate.