One of my favorite spring plants is the Western Trillium, or Trillium ovatum. It is lovely with its showy white flower against the greens and browns of the forest floor.

Where & When Trilliums Grows

I adore trilliums. They are one of the first plants to flower near our house. It’s a sign that spring is here. I usually spot them near the end of March, into April.

I find trilliums tucked in among other low lying greenery in the coniferous forest surrounding our home.

The Stem & Leaves?

Trilliums grow to about a foot high on what is stem-like, but not scientifically a real stem. The “stem” is actually part of the rhizome.

Similarly, the plant does not have real leaves. Instead, the 3 green sections are bracts with the flower extending from it. They do function like leaves in that they aid in photosynthesis.

Color Changes

Western White Trillium with pink markings

As the flower ages it turns a dark magenta color.

Trilliums are Fragile

Trilliums are fragile. If the flower is picked, the rhizome does not get the nutrients that is needed for next year’s plant. The advice is don’t ever pick a trillium.

They also don’t propagate easily. They don’t transfer well and it can take as long as 5 – 7 years to get a plant grown from seed.

With the help of ants, though, trilliums are able to reproduce. Similar to the Western Bleeding Heart, ants aid in spreading the seed.

Beauty of the Forest

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We live in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. We are also above 1000′ elevation. Our weather patterns differ from what happens in the valley. We average about 6° colder than our closest city and get more wind & rain.

Rain. That’s what I want to know. How much rain do we get. It seems like a lot. Some days it totally bums me out, but I love how lush and green the forest we call home is, so I’ll tolerate it.

Portland receives an average of 35″ – 40″ of rain annually. Temperate rain forests receive 55″ or more of rain. I’m going to take a wild guess and say we typically reach those 55″. A few hours north of us is the Olympic National Park in Washington. They get 140″+ of rain annually. I’m also going to take a guess and say we don’t get quite that much. My guesstimate is we will get somewhere between 60″ and 80″ of rain in 2017.

Farmer John put up a new weather station the evening of December 31st, so we were ready to start the new year collecting data. Woop, woop!

Here is what we have so far:

2017 Rainfall

2017 Rain Total: 154.63″

January: 12.12″ ( +22.5″ snow)
February: 30.18″ (+12.75″ snow)
March: 28.49″ (+7.5″ snow)
April: 15.45″
May: 7.16″
June: 3.28″
July: 0.01″
August: 0.34″
September: 5.02″
October: 15.06″
November: 25.54″
December: 11.98″ (+2.5″ snow)

January 2018 update: Apparently I was off on my guesstimate – by nearly half. We ended up with 154″ of rain in 2017. I knew we got a lot, but I didn’t know it would be that much. Maybe it was a really wet year? I will be keeping track in 2018 to compare.

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The rainforest dome.

Saffron Finch

Violaceous euphonia

Blue necked tanager

I haven’t been able to get out birding these days, so I don’t have any new birds to add to my list.

BIRD SPECIES SEEN IN 2013:

SEEN SO FAR = 81 of 100

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After visiting North America, the next stop on our imaginary world tour was to the Amazon rainforest in South America. This part of the world is a favorite for my kids – as I’m sure it is for many kids. There is such an array of fun plants & animals. They love the big snakes, colorful birds & frogs, monkeys & big cats.

Google defines a tropical rainforest as:

a luxuriant, dense forest rich in biodiversity, found typically in tropical areas with consistently heavy rainfall.

School Room

We used our globe & multiplication to figure out approximately how many miles it is from the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest to the Amazon rainforest. We came up with 5,280 miles and marked it on our map.

Our biome pocket chart filled with info on the rainforest.

Left: Every week Farm Kid1 is “sending” a postcard to his dad who didn’t travel on this trip with us. He decorates the front & writes a little message on the back.

Right: South America stamp in Farm Kid1’s passport.

Left: Rainforest collage made by Farm Kid1.

Right: Farm Kid1 chose to do his rainforest animal report on a toucan. The animal report wheel is from Enchanted Learning.

A few rainforest goodies sitting in our geography center. Toy animals from the boys collection, a Tropical Rainforest leveled reader from scholastic, Afternoon on the Amazon Magic Tree House book & Jan Brett’s The Umbrella.

Field Trip

Our rainforest theme took us to the Oregon Zoo once again. To see my post on our trip through the Amazon Flooded Forest exhibit click here.

More Rainforest Info

Our South American Continent Box
Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool
Kids Do Ecology
Blue Planet Biomes
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom

Links to our Continents & Biomes:
North America – Temperate Rainforest
South America – Tropical Rainforest
Antarctica – Ice Cap
Africa – Sahara Desert
Australia – Coral Reef
Asia – Tundra
Europe – Deciduous Forest

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The first stop on our world tour was a temperate rainforest in North America. This is very similar to the biome we live in, so it was a great place to start. Although, I think the idea of a temperate rainforest confused Farm Kid1 a little bit. He’s only ever heard about tropical rainforests. I could have also chosen a coniferous forest as our home biome.

Wikipedia‘s basic definition of a temperate rainforest is:

Temperate rainforests are coniferous or broadleaf forests that occur in the temperate zone and receive heavy rainfall.

School Room

This week the pocket chart showed the following information:
• average high temperature around 76°
• average low around 35°
• annual rainfall definitely varies, but averages around 100″
• example plant producers are salmon berry and moss
(Click here for a quick peek of our hike at Munson Creek Falls, with a stop for picking salmon berries)
• example herbivores are deer and elk
• example carnivores are black bear and cougar
• example decomposers are slugs and worms
(Click here for a post on how slugs mate)

Left: I stamped Farm Kid1’s “passport” with evergreen trees.
Right: Farm Kid1 chose to do his temperate rainforest animal report on the coyote.

Front side of his temperate rainforest postcard.

I sent Farm Kid1 on a mission to collect things from his bedroom that are found in the temperate rainforest. These are the things he came back with. They are placed near our world map and continent boxes.

Since we were visiting North America, we rummaged through our North America continent box – even though there wasn’t much on the temperate rainforest.

Field Trips

We had fun visiting both the Tillamook Forest Center and the World Forestry Center.

Around our House

Some maps state we live in a temperate rainforest, some don’t. Either way, we have many of the same plants and animals as Olympic National Park, which is a temperate rainforest. The temperate rainforest is dominated by large trees, but is also home to many mosses, lichens and epiphytes. Right now one of my favorite wildflowers is in bloom, the trillium.

This was a fun week. I actually learned a few things about our environment, as well.

For more information on a temperate rainforest check out this post from Marietta College or this pdf from Nasa.

Links to our Continents & Biomes:
North America – Temperate Rainforest
South America – Tropical Rainforest
Antarctica – Ice Cap
Africa – Sahara Desert
Australia – Coral Reef
Asia – Tundra
Europe – Deciduous Forest

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