Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

On the second day (June 3) of my brief overnight trip to the North Umpqua area, I headed up to the Twin Lakes trailhead, but my destination for this trip was the former BVD trail, accessed from the same area. While I did spend a couple of hours over at Twin Lakes at the end of the day, I was really more interested in looking at rock plants, especially after my fabulous trip to Pyramid Rock the day before (see Peak Bloom at Pyramid Rock). I was not disappointed. There were a great many beautiful plants in bloom. And because I had been camping just a few miles from the bottom of the road, I was already out walking at 8:30am and had lots more time than usual to poke around. My goal was to explore beyond the main meadow I’d been to several times before. Looking at the Google Earth image, it is clear that there are a lot of openings, both large and small, along this steep, south-facing slope.

Perhaps the most outstanding display of the day was from the numerous silver lupines (Lupinus albifrons), which were all over the meadow and rocky areas. I do love purple!

Annual agoseris (Agoseris heterophylla) in its early morning glory among the plentiful large-flowered blue-eyed Mary (Collinsia grandiflora).

One of the first things I noticed was all the annual agoseris (Agoseris heterophylla) in full bloom. This is not a particularly uncommon or showy plant, but it is a tough one for me to see in bloom because it is usually closed up for the day by the time I get to it. Not being an early riser, and usually having to drive an hour and a half to get to a trailhead, I’m often not out on open rock until noon. Being up there so early allowed me to see it in bloom. There is a great deal of it in the main meadow, but I don’t think it grew in the other openings later on, and when I returned to the main meadow around 1:30pm, it was all closed up and hardly noticeable except in the spots where it had gone to seed, and thousands of short, puffy, dandelion-like seed heads covered the ground. I’ve been fascinated with flowers that are able to open and close at different times of day. I now have a patch of showy tarweed (Madia elegans) growing in my meadow from seed I collected about a mile away. I’ve been trying to track its daily cycle. It is in full bloom as the sun hits it around 8:30am, but by late morning all the petals are curling up. At sunset, they start uncurling, and I could see them fully open in my headlights as I drove home at 10pm one night. What’s the point of being closed most of the day and open all night? Perhaps they are pollinated by night-flying insects, although I’ve seen plenty of day-flying pollinators on them in the morning.

Both frosted paintbrush (Castilleja pruinosa) and cliff penstemon (Penstemon rupicola) were blooming on the rocks. The view to the southeast takes in both Thielsen and Bailey, as well as the mountains of the Rogue-Umpqua Divide.

Another plant that does this at the BVD Meadow is Nevada lewisia (Lewisia nevadensis). I was thrilled to find lots of it in open bloom on a previous trip here in 2010 (see Another Surprise at BVD Meadow). I headed over to the far side of the meadow to look for where it grew. Unfortunately, with things so far ahead this year, they were mostly finished. I was able to spot 6 blooming flowers however. When I returned to this spot in early afternoon, however, there was only one open flower to be found. I was able to spot one closed flower with curled up white petals. The ones that were completely finished were no longer white. I don’t know when these reopen or who pollinates them or what time of day, but most of the time I have found this plant, there are no open flowers. If only I could get up and off on my hikes earlier in the morning! I also noticed there seemed to be loads of elegant cat’s ears (Calochortus elegans). I barely noticed them when I first arrived, and they weren’t very photogenic, as none of them were fully open. I’d never realized this, but maybe this species is only fully open during the day. I wonder how many species do this?

One of the more pleasant insects of the day, this tiger moth was just hanging out on a grass inflorescence. Hopefully it didn’t fly away because it was newly hatched and not because something was wrong with it.

From there at the upper east edge of the main meadow, I headed off into the woods to try to see the other openings. I kept hoping I’d pick up the old trail, but everytime I thought I did, it just disappeared under a fallen branch or some other obstacle. Still, the bushwhacking wasn’t too hard, and I was able to explore a number of other openings, most of which were smaller and rockier than the meadow I was familiar with. As with the main meadow, there were many large swaths of shrubs, mostly greenleaf manzanita (Arctostaphylos patula) and dwarf oaks, which might have been Brewer’s (Quercus garryana var. breweri), as they had more sharply pointed lobes than I’m used to. While there were certainly small tree-sized oaks, I walked over a large number of them. I was sure this was perfect tick habitat and was surprised I never saw any crawling on my pants. Alas, that’s because they undoubtedly landed on my head and spent the day up in my hair. I ended up finding three, the last of which didn’t turn up until 11pm when I headed into the shower back at home. Thankfully, none of them got a foothold—or should I say a mouth-hold on me. I try to accept that all living things have a place, but I really, really hate ticks! There were also some mosquitoes about, even though there were none in the wetland at Twin Lakes. And there were ants everywhere. They started crawling on me every time I squatted down on a rock to take photograph. With all those bugs about, I was surprised at how few butterflies I saw.

The gray-green color of the Sierra cliffbrake (Pellaea brachyptera) on the left contrasts with the bright green of those of Indian’s dream (Aspidotis densa) on the right. In between is what is sometimes called “tall Oregon grape” (Berberis aquifolium) but is almost always quite short like this in the mountains.

New growth and new cones on knobcone pine (Pinus attenuata). After the cones ripen, they will remain closed until sufficiently scorched by a fire.

It was getting a little tiring bushwhacking up and down and up and down the rocky openings, but I was rewarded with a number of new species for my list, many beautiful patches of flowers, and two good discoveries. While down in a rocky opening a couple of hundred feet below my main track across the top, I found a population of Sierra cliffbrake (Pellaea brachyptera). It was not quite as plentiful as the one at Pyramid Rock the day before, but I had never found it in this area before. The only population I’ve found in the Western Cascades south of the North Umpqua is at Abbott Butte in the Rogue-Umpqua Divide. Later in the day I found a couple more individuals at the bottom of the main meadow. After recording my waypoint on my GPS and taking a lot of photos of them, I finally found an antless rock where I could sit in peace and eat my lunch. I was looking around at the conifers in the forest around the edges of the small opening—all boring Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)—then I realized there was a pine, and a funny one at that. Once I spotted the unopened cones attached directly to the branches, I realized it was a knobcone pine (Pinus attenuata). With all the forest fires in eastern Douglas County, I’m surprised that I hardly ever see this fire-dependant species in this area. I’ve seen far more in Lane County, at the northern reaches of its range. On returning to the main meadow, I headed down one of the seepy washes where there was still enough moisture for a grand show of common monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus). Growing among them were many clovers, including the uncommon cup clover (Trifolium cyathiferum), and lower down were pink sweeps of rosy plectritis (Plectritis congesta). I was pretty tired after all the bushwhacking and up and down, but other than the bugs, it was another fabulous day and well worth it.

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