Stanley Park Ecology Society News

Fall is upon us which means the flowering season is almost over although both pearly everlasting, and Douglas’ aster are late-blooming perennials still giving colour.

However, there is still more colour around when you find some of the beautiful berries in the garden: scarlet bunchberry, luscious salal, Oregon grape and currants, cascading pearls on the false Solomon’s-seal, and multi-hued berries on the Hooker’s fairybells.

The plants producing their seeds in the form of berries or small nuts have them attractively packaged for birds and animals. Those plants using the wind for distribution, have seeds either with wings or fluffy appendages such as the vine maple with its winged "helicopter" seeds and the Douglas’ aster with its fluffy seedheads.

Here in the West we don’t get the spectacular bright fall foliage colors that Eastern Canada has, because we don’t have the temperature differences between day and night. But look for the Saskatoon. Its leaves will turn a beautiful peachy/orange colour with gorgeous markings. Other leaves offer up soft yellows and coppers.

Fall garden activities will be pruning, cleaning up, seed saving, and mulching.

Wilma Mosmans and Jill Taylor, SPES Native Garden Stewards

Hooker’s fairybells
Photo by Jill Taylor

Mahonia berries
Photo by Jill Taylor

False Solomon’s seal with berries
Photo by Jill Taylor

A bee enjoying the Douglas’ aster
Photo by Jill Taylor

Baldhip rose hips
Photo by Jill Taylor

Pearly everlasting
Photo by Jill Taylor

-Wilma Mosmans, SPES volunteer Garden Steward

SPES volunteers maintain the Stanley Park Native Plant Demonstration Garden, which is located between the end of Robson Street and the tennis courts, and shares the area with the West End Community Garden.  The Garden is divided up into 2 long beds and 2 round beds (as illustrated in the native garden brochure available in the Nature House).

"…May is ‘the’ flowering month, especially for the groundcovers and bushes that need to flower before being shaded out by trees in full leaf.  Look for: Pacific bleeding heart, redwood sorrel, and Siberian miner’s lettuce.  Compare the flowers of: false Solomon’s-seal , star-flowered false Solomon’s-seal, and Hooker’s fairbells.  The black twinberry, which belong to the honeysuckle family, have started flowering.  Last year hummingbirds were seen visiting them throughout the summer for their nectar…

….You may also notice a new mason bee condo (kudos to Dave, its builder and SPES volunteer).  These native bees are shiny black with iridescent blue/green backs, and don’t look at all like a honey bee or bumble bee.  They are extremely important as pollinators, and emerge when orchards are blooming and day time temperatures are at 12-14 degrees.  This year they were late coming out of the "woodworks" (they nest in tree cavities) due to the cold temperatures…

…Flowers to look for in June:

• broad-leaved stonecrop - a groundcover succulent with yellow flowers
• common camas - has blue flowers
• goat’s beard - dies back every winter, and grows to the size of a bush in spring.  You can easily spot its white flowers in clearings and at the forest edge
• bunchberry or dwarf dogwood - a groundcover with dogwood type flowers

…"

The past couple of weeks here at SPES have been wet for sure but also very exciting. A big thank-you goes out to everyone that came out to support us during our “Playing For The Park” event - we had a lot of feedback from families and fans that would like to see it happen again next year, and so would we! In addition, some of the various research initiatives that were identified in the Stanley Park Restoration Plan have already begun and should soon start producing results.
We have UBC researchers in the park that are trapping beetles to see what species are living here and what species may be arriving as our fallen trees begin to decay and send off appetizing odors. There are consultants exploring the park to locate our previously known archaeological sites and to confirm their status after the storm. They are also looking for new archaeological sites that may have been exposed by falling trees and their upturned rootwads.
There is so much happening here and we can’t wait to share it with you but we have to wait until some of the initial findings are completed and sent to us! In the meantime we have another picture of the Yellow-Bellied Marmot in the park as taken by a marmot fan, Mark White, who agreed to let us post this photo he sent in. If anyone else has fantastic photos of cool recent or past events then please send them into us and maybe we can put them up here. Enjoy the sunshine!

Well not really ghosts per say, what we saw was more along the lines of rumours made flesh! We are very proud to be able to bring you photographic evidence of a critter that no-one has seen in Stanley Park for a very long time: the Yellow-Bellied Marmot!
You will not find the Yellow-Bellied Marmot on any of Stanley Park’s mammal checklists, nor will you find them described in the Vancouver Natural History Society’s newest book called “Wilderness on the Doorstep: Discovering Nature in Stanley Park” (which we have for sale - just ask!) You have to go back to the VNHS’s 1988 publication “The Natural History of Stanley Park” to find anything and there you will find, on the second-to-last page, a very brief mention of the colony that used live around Malkin Bowl in the 1950’s. It mentions that “one or two individuals may still survive” but who knew it was true!?!
To be honest, there have been rumours of people seeing them in different areas of the park for the last year or two, but no-one had any evidence. One of our school programmers (Tracy) spotted one the other day and Koren captured the picture you see below. Maybe Bobs and Lolo should write a Yellow-Bellied Marmot song for the “Playing For The Park” fundraiser on the 22nd.

Happy Spring everyone! We are very excited here at SPES for a number of reasons, the first of which is that we have a working blog and have decided to start using it! It also means that we have just under a month left before our “Playing for the Park” benefit event on April 22, 2007. Everyone is super excited about seeing “Bobs and Lolo” play and we hope you will join us for some fantastic family fun!
Speaking of family fun, the numbers are steadily increasing at the Stanley Park Great Blue Heron colony this spring. Last weekend’s count identified approximately 92 adults already on site with over half of the nests still empty and we are expecting many more herons arriving in the near future. Some of the early nesters have already produced the pale blue eggs that should be hatching in mid to late April.

For information on the windstorm that devestated Stanley Park, and recovery efforts, please visit the December 15, 2006 Windstorm section

The Stanley Park Ecology Society’s web site has recently been reorganized, updated, and given a general make over. If you can’t find something on the new web site that you made use of on the old site, please let us know. You will likely be able to find all you need on the site by using the site navigation or simply doing a site search. If not, feel free to contact us. As well, feel free to add a comment regarding the new site here by clicking the ‘comments’ link below this post.