Vegetation and Wildlife
Dominant plants in the Tryon Creek watershed are red alder, bigleaf maple, Douglas-fir, Western redcedar, and Western hemlock. The forest understory in the park includes many trilliums, celebrated each spring during the park's Trillium Festival. More than 90 species of wildflower such as fringecup are found in the park as well as plants such as sword fern.
More than 50 species of birds as well as small mammals such as beaver inhabit the park. Tryon Creek is among the few streams in the Portland metropolitan area with a run of steelhead trout, and coho salmon have been recorded spawning in the creek. Water striders, invertebrates that can walk on water, are common in the pools of Tryon Creek.
Read more about this topic: Tryon Creek State Natural Area
Famous quotes containing the words vegetation and/or wildlife:
“I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)