Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Castilleja rupicola

I found a new population of Castilleja rupicola yesterday. This one is a half mile farther south (and 1 mile east) of my previous southernmost population. That makes 2 populations in Douglas County now. I’ve been doing a lot of exploring along the Calapooya crest this summer, especially the last couple of months. I also found Castilleja rupicola at Pyramid Rock near the southern border of Lane County. This newest site was line-of-sight to my other sites at Youngs Rock and Moon Point (~10 miles north) and from Pyramid Rock there was a clear view of Bearbones (~6 miles north), another of my sites.

This last one was up on a ridge on a north-facing cliff hidden in the woods, although there are some plants along the west side of the ridge as well. I checked another nearby set of cliffs with binoculars but only saw 2 plants that might have been it. Way too far away to know and unlikely there would be so few in such good habitat. I’m sure there’s still more on the north side of the Calapooya crest, but most of the other cliffs in the area are also inaccessible (darn, where’s the jetpack I ordered?!). The plants on these 3 sites were touchable, so I trust my ID although they were well past bloom. I did recheck the other Douglas County site earlier in the year while they were in bloom, and they were indeed Castilleja rupicola. There was a dusting of snow above 5000′, and the days are getting shorter and colder, so that’s probably my last exploratory trip of the year. Sigh.