Ona Beach

We’ll soon be leaving the coast for the Willamette Valley, so I took a short trip this morning to Ona Beach, where Beaver Creek meets the Pacific Ocean.  This is a small estuary among small estuaries and is only partly under tidal influence according to the National Wetlands Inventory classification.  Nevertheless, there are some of the typical estuarine plants present right along the creek’s banks and intergrading into the sand dunes.  Here are a few pictures:
This is three square, aka Schoenoplectus americanus or Scirpus olneyi.  It seems to prefer sandy environments. In Netarts Bay along the sandy spit that separates the bay from the ocean, it grows in large monospecific patches in the low marsh.

This is Douglas’ aster, Symphyotrichum subspicatum in Latin. It is not a very dramatic plant until it is in flower.  It generally grows in upper elevations in tidal marshes.

An unknown species in the carrot family (Apiaceae).

This is a cool pattern formed by a filamentous alga (?Rhizoclonium) distributed across the sand near the outlet of Beaver Creek into the Pacific.