page_title: Balch Creek
section_title: Flora
hierarchical_section_title: Balch Creek / Watershed / Flora
caption_attribution_description: Achlys triphylla English: Deer-foot or vanilla-leaf
context_page_description: Balch Creek is a 3.5-mile tributary of the Willamette River in the U.S. state of Oregon. Beginning at the crest of the Tualatin Mountains, the creek flows generally east down a canyon along Northwest Cornell Road in unincorporated Multnomah County and through the Macleay Park section of Forest Park, a large municipal park in Portland. At the lower end of the park, the stream enters a pipe and remains underground until reaching the river. Danford Balch, after whom the creek is named, settled a land claim along the creek in the mid-19th century. After murdering his son-in-law, he became the first person legally hanged in Oregon.
  Basalt, mostly covered by silt in the uplands and sediment in the lowlands, underlies the Balch Creek watershed. The upper part of the watershed includes private residential land, the Audubon Society of Portland nature sanctuary, and part of Forest Park. Mixed conifer forest of Coast Douglas-fir, western redcedar, and western hemlock with a well-developed understory of shrubs and flowering plants is the natural vegetation. Sixty-two species of mammals and more than 112 species of birds use Forest Park.
context_section_description: The watershed lies partly in the Coast Range ecoregion and partly in the Willamette Valley ecoregion designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The historic lower Balch Creek watershed through the 1880s was a mixture of open water, wetlands, grassland, and forest, while above the flood plain the watershed consisted of closed canopy forest. People who settled here in the 19th century logged much of this forest and filled the wetlands. In 2002, aerial photographs showed that buildings, parking lots, shoreline structures, and other cleared areas covered most of the lower floodplain. On the other hand, hill forests protected from major disturbance covered about 65 percent of the watershed.
  Above the floodplain, much of the habitat in the watershed consists of mixed conifer forest. Trees and shrubs, including stands of red alder and cottonwood trees, cover about 88 percent of the middle reaches. Near the headwaters, the forests  consist mainly of mixed conifers and hardwoods with a few older Douglas firs. Common species include big leaf maple, willow, western hemlock, red alder, western red cedar, and Douglas-fir. Most of this forest is relatively young. In Forest Park, old-growth forest, undisturbed for 250 years or more, exists mainly in isolated patches. The largest tree in the park, Heritage Tree 134, is a Douglas-fir near the Stone House. It is 242 feet (74 m) high, and the trunk is 18.6 feet (5.7 m) in circumference.
  Forest Park and other areas of the watershed have an understory of well-developed shrubs including  ferns, Oregon-grape, vine maple, salal, red huckleberry, Fendler's waterleaf, Indian plum, salmonberry, and stinging nettle.  Among the prominent wildflowers are wild ginger, Hooker's fairy bells, vanilla leaf, evergreen violet, and trillium. Rare or uncommon species include old conifers, Western wahoo shrubs, and ornamental dawn redwoods. Invasive species are English ivy, European holly, clematis, morning glory, and Himalayan blackberry.
caption: Vanilla leaf forms part of the forest understory in the Balch Creek watershed.
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