Seattle Tours

Staying in High Point, I decided to check out the Delridge/Longfellow valley. Across the street from Westwood Village shopping center is the Roxhill bog, the headwaters of Longfellow Creek. This has been the site of restoration work in recent years. Likely planted by loving neighbors, we see here red indian paintbrush (Castilleja sp.), yellow monkey flowers (Mimulus sp.) and purple lupines (Lupinus sp.):

While it is known as the Roxhill bog, it is not truly a bog. Not to split sedge leaves, but it is more of a fen than a bog. This is because of the dominance of sedges and not sphagnum moss and other bog-obligates like Labrador tea. True bogs can not exist if urban drainage is arriving at the area, due to excessive inputs of cations like calcium and magnesium, which lower the acidity of the water in the bog -- leading to sedge invasion. Here we can see the sedges in the wetland, with the Westwood Village shopping area to the north (downslope). It is also interesting to note that it was possible to walk in the "bog" since it was quite dry; its original hydrology has also been altered by the installation of street drainage networks, which affects plant communities as well.

Westwood Village shopping center (now renamed Westwood Town Center) near White Center serves immigrants, more comfy working class folk and gentrifying white newbies alike. It is not at all like Westwood Village in Los Angeles. They renamed it in the last five years or so when the redeveloped it.

A landscape feature was created to represent the stream that came through here at one point. It is not actually connected to the stream or bog. Longfellow Creek is a very sick urban waterway -- many of the salmon that go upstream to spawn in the autumn die before they lay eggs, due to something in the water.