A short trip on my way home from work allowed me to explore another part of the Accotink Creek, a section called Accotink Mainstem 2. The area I explored is circled below in black and the other picture shows the general layout of the land that makes up the riparian buffer. The point of view of the photo is facing the creek which I unfortunately did not take a picture of.
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| Found at http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dpwes/watersheds/watershedsearch.htm |
As you can see the canopy leaves little sunlight for undergrowth and the ground being in a flood plane ends up wiping out much of the saplings and less fortuitous species that manage to establish themselves. The banks of the creek had much growth, and I really wished I took a photo to show the difference 20 feet makes in ground cover between the bank of the creek and the flood zone.
Along with taking photos of the different trees I took a bunch of photos of ferns, shrubs, flowers, fruit bearing plants, etc. As this post is titled dendrology, you could also consider it the botany of the creek. I hope you enjoy as much as I enjoyed learning some new things and relearning some forgot identification techniques.
The below slide show includes a bunch of tree and shrub photos with attempted identification and interesting information.
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