Getting to know southern Oregon

In my short time here, I've decided that one thing I definitely am not missing from home is the heat and humidity. (Apologies to those having to deal with it!) Southern Oregon weather, at least what I have experienced so far, is great. Temps have been in the 70-80's F the whole time I've been here, low humidity, mostly sunny, with 2 days of mist/fog and rain. However, I've been told by many that this is highly unusual for this location at this time of the year. Typically, southern Oregon has summer temperatures at least in the 90's, often just above 100F, and it is very dry with no rain in the summer. This strange weather has led many locals I've spoken with to wonder if this means September will be abnormally hot and dry. We'll see; for now, I'm enjoying the sun and the rain. The next time it rains, I want to get a picture of the hills, as the cloud cover descends and creates a beautiful landscape.

My classes started Monday, and we started learning some of the local flora right away. By the end of the program, we are expected to be able to identify, name (common, scientific, family), and discuss the natural history of a 2 page, single-spaced, two-column list of common flora and fauna of southern Oregon. Which, if you don't know, is (slightly) different than the flora and fauna of the mid-Atlantic region. So I decided to take a walk on the trail in my neighborhood woods this weekend (see picture below) to start learning some of the trees.

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that I happen to now be living in one of the four most diverse coniferous forests in the world. In other words, there are a lot of conifers here. Unfortunately, I am really bad at identifying conifers! But, I took along an assortment of tree guides, dichotomous keys, and my notes from class and set out for the challenge.
There are only about 5 species of deciduous trees in this area, all of which I memorized on the first day, as well as the Pacific Madrone, a broad-leaved evergreen. It is a beautiful tree that has smooth, reddish bark, a twisted shape, and big green leaves that turn yellow when they die. (I tried to take a picture to post, but my pictures don't do the tree justice. Guess that means if you want to see it, you have to visit me and see it in person!) :-)
Anyway, I spent a fair amount of time trying to identify about 7 different conifers, and despite having a key, pictures, and a field guide, I was not 100% confident about any of my conifer identifications. I will say that all that time was not in vain, as I did learn the names of most of the conifers, and now I just need to match what I see with the names. So, the current score is Deciduous: 5, Conifers: 0. The good news is, I have about 14 months to learn more conifer species than I ever wanted to know!