Maple Glade Rain Forest Trail - Quinault Valley

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Olympic National Forest, surrounded on three sides by salt water, offers terrific interpretive footpaths for the public to enjoy the notable marine climate, verdant rain forests, and rocky, mountainous terrain inhabited by Roosevelt elk. Jay and Daddy stroll a portion of more than 250 miles of pathways in Olympic National Forest. We're glad over half lie at low elevations, available for year-round enjoyment. Joe and Ruth in a cavernous tree trunk on the half-mile loop nature route. This special rain forest community has developed on avalanches and other coarse soils. Elk & deer as landscape architects contribute to spacious openness. Mother & Anita trek the trail toward a young Sitka spruce (named for tribal citizens and town of Sitka, Alaska), by far the largest species of spruce, and 3rd tallest conifer species on earth (after the Coast Redwood and Coast Douglas-fir).
These "guests" draping from limbs derive support — not sustenance — from their host tree. Air plants or epiphytes instead absorb all they need from the air. Maple branches send adventitious roots into moisture-laden clumps of the true mosses and clubmosses to tap water and nutrients. Jay looks up at moss as hanging as far down as he is tall. These towering trees in the northern hemisphere's only temperate rain forest are some of the largest in the world. Close-up of moss in photo on left. In the Quinault Valley, maples—with clubmoss draperies—mingle with spruce and alder trees, more than in most rain forest communities. Massive mossy old-growth forest, understory view. Mild temperatures, summer fogs, and abundant annual rainfall nurture the giant trees, ferns, and carpets of moss here in Olympic National Park's magnificent temperate rain forest.
Youth on Age (Tolmiea menziesii), the only member of the monotypic genus Tolmiea, also known as Piggy-back Plant or Thousand Mothers; to the left blooms a common yellow monkey flower (golden monkey flower), Mimulus guttatus. Close-up of foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, June 25, 2007. William Withering pioneered digitalis, a clinical use for the common foxglove, native to most of Europe, and now naturalized in pastures along the Pacific Northwest. Foxglove grows at the historic Kestner homestead and barn in the glacial carved Quinault Valley. Anton Kestner, arriving in 1889, lived with his family on the North Shore, claimed the land, and homesteaded here for many years. A coastal hedgenettle (Stachys chamissonis Benth.), Lamiaceae (Mint Family), an herb native to the U.S.A.
The Pacific Northwest's humid-temperate weather zone, the annual drizzles to downpours exceeding 140" (3.5 m), is an ideal climate to nourish a lavish coniferous rain forest. Joe, Anita, and Amber pass under a mossy big leaf maple mid-morning. Afterwards Anita, Jay, Amber, Tim, and Ruth hiked the Quinault Lodge Trail and Loop above the lake. The moss-crested wooden sign identifying an indeed very big leaf maple tree, the biggest of all maples, having 5-12" leaves with 5 lobes, and often hosting lichen, clubmosses, ferns, and true mosses on their expansive branches. Statuesque big leaf maple specimen in photo on the left. Woodcarvers prize maples that develop swirled grain inside protuberant lumps on their trunks called burls.
The impressive base of a gigantic Western Red-cedar, an evergreen coniferous tree in the cypress family, not cedar, has stringy bark too acidic to encourage lichen, fungi, or moss growth; it may well live more than 1000 years. The canopy of this same towering Western Red-cedar, with small and scaly leaves on branches often hanging like fronds, bearing tiny cones about a half inch long. Canopy of the western hemlock in the photo on the right, with feathery foliage bearing cones about an inch long. A young tree can be easily identified by its drooping top. Mature western hemlock, Washington's state tree, is a common understory tree.
A crown of ferns at the base of a tree helps protect it from strangling climbing vines. The word "leaf" refers to the entire frond on the fern. We crossed over Kestner Creek at the trail beginning and end. Ample ferns, which produce spores, carpeted the earth long before flowering seed plants came to dominate. Sitka spruce, growing only along the Northwestern coast of the USA and Canada, with highest strength-to-weight ratio of any lumber. Canopy of the Sitka spruce identified in photo on the left. Identifying features: 2-3" papery cones; thin, scaly bark; and stiff, sharp, dark glaucous blue-green needles.

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