Finding specific tree species in Washington and Oregon

Finding specific mushrooms can require finding specific trees. Mushrooms like chanterelles, boletes, hedgehogs, at matsutake all depend on intimate connections with certain tree species. When you browse a mushroom guide you will often find these trees listed in the Habitat section.

Learning about the environment a specific tree is likely to be found is a great place to start. For instance, pine trees which have long skinny needles are more likely to be found in the drier region east of the Cascades as well as along the coast.

Douglas Fir and Western Hemlocks are broadly distributed throughout our region but are quite common on the west side of the Cascades.

Finding specific areas where one might find less common tree species is much more difficult. I created this map to help. I used data from the US Forest Service annual survey and a data visualization tool called Tableau. You can use the slider on the right to scroll through different tree species. The size of the dots corresponds with the amount of tree there is in that plot.