Bonneville Trail, Swamp Trail & Puget Power — Sunday, Apr. 14, 2024

It's one of my favorite times of the year on Tiger Mt, there's a massive explosion of plant growth. The tree blossoms are amazing, the wild cherries, big-leaf maples, and Pacific dogwood (photo 1) in particular. The reproductive shoots of the horsetails are producing spores (photo 2). They are yellow and tan in color, the non-reproductive are green. If you jostle them a bit, you'll see a cloud of spores. A new flower for me is the shepherd's cress (photo 3). You can find it in thick clumps in open areas on the plateau. The Pacific Bleeding heart is just coming out, the range of colors is beautiful (photo 4).

2024 events on Tiger Mt

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All started blooming between Mar 25 and April 13

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Western service berry

Pacific dogwood 

Wild cherry 

Big-leaf maple 

Vine maple

Woodland forget-me-nots 

Fragrant Fringe cup

Pacific Bleeding heart 

Red flowering currant 

Low Oregon grape 

Red elderberry 

Trillium 

small-flowered nemophila

Siberian springbeauties 

Common dandelion

annual water miner's-lettuce

Trailing blackberry 

Shepherds cress

False Lily of the valley buds

Rhododendron

Bracken and sword ferns unfurling

Sitka willow, come and gone  

3-15 evergreen violets in bloom (TMT and Hidden Forest intersection)

3-14 (60 and sunny) first butterfly (species unknown)

3-14 first pollinating moth (Puget power line)

3-14 willow on the Puget Power trail goes into bloom, working on the species

3-14 full flowers on mouse-ear cress or thalecress, gas line trail (Arabidopsis thaliana)

3-12 (upper 40's mostly sunny) first bee, tall Oregon grape above East Sunset

3-12 first pollinating beetle, tall Oregon grape above East Sunset

3-12 first bee, tall Oregon grape above East Sunset

3-11 first skunk cabbage bloom (gas line road, culvert near the big tree trail)

3-5 (sunny in the 40's) first hoverfly, first significantly sized fly family (midge or gnat)

3-2 first shoots, great or northern giant horsetail, swamp trail, water-covered portion (Equisetum telmateia)

3-2 flower buds, mouse-ear cress or thalecress, gas line trail (Arabidopsis thaliana)

3-1 flower buds, currant (probably red flowering) just above East Sunset Way trailhead

2-27 red huckleberry in bloom, multiple trails, (Vaccinium parvifolium) parvifolium means small-leafed

2-27 Pacific waterleaf shoots (Park Pointe)

2-27 sitka willow flower buds (gas line trail, end of Big Tree trail)

2-25 cherry plum blooming (Tradition Lake loop)

2-24 first moths (American idia, small, tan-orange, same species that came out first last year)

2-24 colt's foot in bloom, poo poo point trail

2-22 salmonberry flowers (Swamp trail)  

2-22 tall Oregon grape flowers open (Power Line above Sunset Way)

2-17 stinging nettle shoots

2-14 colt's foot flower buds (Poo Poo Point trail)

2-13 colt's foot (Petasites frigidus) shoots appear (section line, they must have been many days earlier on the Poo Poo point trail)

2-13 red elderberry leaves (Sambucas racemosa)

2-8 tall Oregon grape flower buds (Mahonia aquifolium)

2-2 oso-berry flower (Oemleria cerasiformis)

2-1 male Pacific Wrens singing for mates and territory