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Mt. hood national forest - part ii

The third bog we visited was the Camas Prairie. Accessing the site required a short ramble through the woods. As soon as the trees started thinning, we saw D. rotundifolia.

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It was growing in moss (not sphagnum), rotting wood...

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... and directly in fallen logs:

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D. anglica was also present. This form is markably different from others we have seen yet, being larger, more robust, and less upright than most populations.

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The flower scape in the first picture is 24 cm. tall.

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D. obovata was also present, though at times it was difficult to distinguish it from D. anglica. Another interesting difference between this D. anglica and others observed so far is the mass of the stipules, which seemed to be slightly higher than normal in these plants.

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The wooded area slowly gave way to an open meadow, with sundews, predominantly D. anglica, growing mainly in clumps of moss amongsts sedges:

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When I got to the open part of the prairie and looked up, this is what I saw:

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A herd of bovines! As I walked toward them, I looked for signs of how they were affecting the habitat. Some areas are thickly covered in grasses:

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These areas probably needed to be burned so that the sundews struggling underneath would have a chance to grow.

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In some areas, the cattle had thinned out the grass a little, and sundews were growing well. However, most areas of the fen affected by the cattle were suffering. Lets look at a series of shots as one walks from an unaffected area to the cows' favorite spot to chew cud:

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What should have been a ditch filled with U. intermedia and fringed by mounds of moss and Drosera is now a wallowing pit and stubble field filled with cow pies.
 
Elsewhere on the meadow the damage was not as strong yet. These shots were from an area that the cows had just begun to invade:

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Both D. anglica and U. inetermedia were growing within inches of this cow dung.

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A trampled mound of mosses and Drosera

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An uprooted D. anglica floating in the the water amongst U. intermedia. Hopefully this ditch will survive the fate of the other one pictured.
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I know some of you may be thinking "Isn't this protected National Forest Land?"

Well, like contracts with lumber mills, contracts with farmers brings in cash, so practices like this are sadly likely to continue.
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Signing out in Oregon,

-noah


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RIP
 
Interesting photos.  I just came back from the west, but my wife's broken leg kept us away from places like that.  But part of our trip was Amtrak through Vandenberg AFB in coastal California and the view from the window showed that missile launches and explosions and such cause less ecological damage than cattle were doing outside its borders.  At least at the surface.  What a nice place that would be to explore, if rockets and MPs can be avoided, of course.
 
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