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| Site location (click to enlarge) |
Ginkgo Petrified Forest is located at the intersection of Interstate 90 and the Columbia River in Vantage, Washington, in a mostly treeless region of the state. The nearest naturally-occurring ponderosa pines (
Pinus ponderosa) grow about 35 miles to the west in the foothills of the Cascade Range. Yet a lone ponderosa pine, perhaps planted for shade, stands in front of the Ginkgo Petrified Forest's ranger station, dropping cones onto the Oregon grape (
Mahonia aquifolium), pine needles and rocks below.
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Pine cone beneath Oregon grape
in full flower |
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| Lots of old webs on these cones |
Tapping 50 of those cones netted (pun intended) me only two spiders, a male and a juvenile
Sitticus dorsatus (Salticidae). This species of jumping spider is uncommon in Washington state - there were only five records in the
Burke Museum's spider database previous to this one. Too bad then that a third specimen I tapped from a cone got away! Despite the low specimen count in this sample, the frequency with which I found old webs on the cones indicated lots of past spider activity.
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| Showy phlox (Phlox speciosa) growing through tall sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) |
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