Though the Pacific Northwest is know for its evergreens, there are some broadleaf trees here that are both important and impressive. In this issue we’ll look at three of the most common trees: Red Alders, Pacific Madrone, and Bigleaf Maples.

In keeping with Salish Magazine’s tradition, these articles address some of the ways that these trees relate to the larger ecosystem: what they prefer, what they contribute, and what relationships they have.

There are also relationships between the articles. For example, the two articles about red alders both touch on the role alders play in nitrogen fixing. Those two articles each link to a third article which talks about what nitrogen fixing is all about.

There are also two articles that take different looks at the Pacific Madrone, one of our more unusual looking trees that keeps its leaves during the winter.

In keeping with our new practice of releasing content between quarterly issues, in the coming weeks there will also be a photo essay about our Bigleaf Maple and some poetry.

publisher’s note

We hope you’ve been enjoying the Virtual Explorations that we’ve been publishing weekly — bringing our local outdoors to you while this pandemic has been keeping people close to home. As of 9 June we have 20 of them online, with more to come.

We are also beginning to up our game in terms of making Salish Magazine more interactive — to take advantage of some of the handy features that really distinguish online publications from printed ones.

For example, we have already been using hyperlinks to allow some things on the page to link to other pages. Text that is a hyperlink is blue, for example: this links to our homepage. 

Beginning with this issue’s article In the Company of Alders, we’re introducing occasional “tooltips” into the text. When you hover over text that is colored dark orange, like thisThis is an example of a tooltip indicated by orange text., a small box will pop up with some additional information. If you’re using a touch-screen, then touch the orange text.

Contact us via the CONNECT menu above and let us know what you think.