UW Wildflowers

UW Campus
Day, 2012
5/9/12
1:30-3:30

Today I went all over campus looking at wildflowers for our iNaturalist project [http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/uw-wildflowers]. Most of the species around campus are obviously planted but I did find a few that looked like they could be native. It was interesting though to see all the plants the campus chose to use to decorate the landscape. For instance, I saw a lot of bluebells, ceanothus, and azaleas.

Bluebells were in areas that were slightly more “protected” I guess; in places like the Quad. They were mostly blue hybrid bluebells but I did see some white hybrids too.

I kept seeing ceanothus around campus as well. They had dark shiny green leaves and tiny blue flowers in bunches. The stamen had yellow tips that I'm assuming were pollen because bees were really attracted to this plant. I see ceanothus a lot around the Seattle neighborhood. It’s really pretty but I thought it was interesting people like to plant this so much because of all the bees.

Finally, rhododendrons were actually everywhere. I saw the big 10-15’ rhododendron trees and the small azalea bushes in just about every area of campus I visited. The big trees were much more abundant than the small azalea bushes though.

The best part of going out and taking pictures for the website was just wandering and seeing what’s on campus. I hadn’t really taken that much time to observe the plants around campus before. Though it’s too bad there aren’t more native species and that at least most of the wildflowers and trees/shrubs with flowers were planted.

Species List:
Daphne
Carpet Bugle
Camellias
Azalia
Stinking hellebore
Common Dandelion
Daisy
Greater Periwinkle
Red Baneberry
Common Vetch
Pacific Bleeding Heart
Hybrid bluebell
Chinese Caps
Irises
Wood Sorrel

Julkaistu kesäkuu 5, 2012 12:34 AP. käyttäjältä lisad22