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This is particularly noticable along the Pony Express Trail in the desolate areas of the west. Everywhere there is water there is a big patch of currants or chokecherries

More recent but one can see lots of daffodils around old homestead sites in various places in the Willamette Valley. Also old apple trees in the middle of nowhere .

Way more recent, but if you see forsythias in the Midwest without a house around, there was a settlers home there at some point.

We found an old foundation after digging around where there were forsythias growing in the woods on our place after being keyed into that one.

So… the entire PMW near water?

Much of the Pacific Northwest (coast, including lake coast) is extremely rocky with scant amounts of sand. Much of it, heavily wooded, even today. A number of invasive species (like the Himalayan Blackberry) have muddled sites, that would have been obvious, based solely on plant sign.

Damn Luther Burbank[1]!

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/29/491797791/th...

wow, i always thought that park just had low effort landscaping, but i guess the dense thorny thickets are intentional