Layers of a Forest transcript

[Music] hi i'm kelly stanley and i work for port blakely today we're going to talk about the layers of the forest [Music] we are going to learn about four layers of the forest today we have the subfloor which is under the ground we have the forest floor where all the plants are we have the understory and then way up in the sky is where the canopy layer is [Music] right now we're in the forest floor and there's lots of sword fern out here in all the little plants we have some miners lettuce growing out here we have foam flowers we have inside out flower up here so lots of different plants here and then we have lots of animals that live on the forest floor too right now we probably can find slugs out here black bear would be coming through here lots of mice would be here grouse would be here [Music] so underneath the forest floor is the subfloor and that's under the ground that's where all the roots of the trees and the plants are they're soaking up the water and bringing it up the tree and lots of animals actually live on the forest floor like mountain beavers moles worms are under there certain salamanders will be under there so it's a very important layer of the forest so the next layer we're going to talk about is the understory look at this amazing vine maple right here it's in the understory we have the western hemlock that's in the understory it's a really neat layer lots of wildlife use it like chipmunks and squirrels and porcupines and lots and lots of birds that we're listening to so the canopy layers the layer way up in the sky up there and that is where the trees meet the sky so lots takes place in the canopy and this horse there's a lot of douglas fir trees some of the cedar would be up there in hemlock animals that love the canopy layer would be lots of birds like birds of prey make their nest up there flying squirrels are up there and these trees this canopy layer is about 130 feet tall that would be like a 10 story building so it's way up in the sky now that we've learned about the layers of the forest would you guys like to hear a story oh bigfoot do you want to hear a story come on and sit down a long long time ago in this forest there was this horrible horrible forest fire and all the animals were so scared they didn't know what to do and the fire kept on creeping closer and closer and closer into the forest and then the big animals that live on the forest floor the deer the bear the cougar the elk they have very very long legs and they could easily outrun the forest fire the birds we've been listening to up in the canopy layer they flew away but still the fire kept them raging closer and closer and closer into the forest and in our forests live lots and lots of little mice and they have extremely short legs and they knew they could not run the forest fire and they were so scared they thought they were going to be burned up until one of the mice looked up into a tall douglas fir tree and noticed the cones way up in the canopy layer were not burning so all the mice in this forest scampered up up through the understory until they got to the canopy layer and when they got to the cones they survived the forest fire and how they survived the forest fire is they took their head and their two front legs inside the cones and if you look at your douglas fur cone to this day you still can see the mice hiding in them but you only can see their back two legs in their long long tail this is the legend of the douglas fir cone so i hope you guys enjoyed listening to the legend of the douglas fir cone and learning about the layers of the forest a fun activity is to take a piece of paper draw the different layers and then include as many plants and wildlife that you can think of that would live in each layer thanks for joining me