Quinault Rain Forest - Big Cedar Trail

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Joe ascends the stairs to see a Rain Forest Champion Tree, the world’s largest known Western Red-cedar. Back behind is an amazing aerial example of the nurse log phenomenon of the Sitka spruce forest, new life beginning out of the old. The Quinault Valley in Grays Harbor County, Washington, one of three major drainages on the west side of the Olympic Peninsula, is renowned for the immense ancient trees of its unique and majestic temperate rain forest. Joe on the Quinault Big Cedar Trail, an environment of stately Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, western hemlock, and western red cedar which reach gargantuan proportions. Daddy and Mother enjoy hiking by groves of red alder, which enrich soil by fixing nitrogen in their root nodules. Red alder, the area's most common deciduous tree (losing its leaves every year), is often mistaken for birch.
Olympic National Park with its lush temperate rain forest is recognized internationally as a Biosphere Reserve & World Heritage Site and is a magnet for rain forest enthusiasts. The Quinault Big Cedar, the world’s largest known western red cedar, at 174’ tall and 19.5’ diameter DBH [Diameter at breast height; the average diameter (outside the bark) of a tree 4.5 feet above mean ground level]. Jay and Ruth humbled by the lofty trees. The western red cedar is somewhat intolerant to dry intense heat, thus flourishing in rain forest wet regions, usually in mixed stands of Douglas fir, Sitka spruce and western hemlock. Anita on the path amongst the ferns of Quinault: sword fern (Polystichum munitum), licorice fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza), deer fern (Blechnam spicant), lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina), bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), oak fern (Gymnocarpium dryopteris), maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum), wood fern (Dryopteris austricaca).
A temperate rain forest is recognized by the following combination of hallmarks: the presence of Sitka spruce, nurse logs (upon which seedlings of trees grow), big leaf maples with clubmoss draperies, trees standing on stilts, colonnades (trees standing in a row, a result of their head start on nurse logs), and a profusion of mosses & lichens. The western red cedar was the canoe cedar and the most important “tree of life” to the Northwest Coast Indians. Trees of Quinault: Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla), Douglas-Fir (Psudotsuga menziesii), western red cedar (Thuja plicata), big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum), red alder (Alnus rubra), vine maple (Acer circinatum). Vine maple is a hardy fast-growing maple frequently found in bushy masses, with 7 - 9 lobed leaves that midsummer start to turn a brilliant red to orange. Deer browse this and the alder; the Native Americans also relied on both trees.
Fern growing on a tree trunk, June 25, 2007. Even with less animal and plant life diversity, the sheer quantity in a temperate rain forest is much greater than in a tropical rain forest ...or anywhere else on Earth. Can you see the same fern growing low on the tree trunk, shown in photo on the left? Looking at the roof of the rain forest toward sunlight of emerald-green hue, filtered by a canopy of tree crowns. Temperate rain forests support more biomass than tropical rain forests, which have a greater variety of plants and animals. Temperate rain forest trees tend to be taller and bigger in girth than typical tropical counterpart trees with their sizeable, swollen bases called flying buttresses.

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