Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

There’s a fabulous 360° view from top of Potter Mountain. Here you can see Mount Bailey to the south. The air was cool and clear after the recent rains, and I could see Mt. McLoughlin and maybe even the top of Mt. Shasta.

Have you ever heard of Potter Mountain in Douglas County? I may have seen the name on a map, but I’d never heard anyone mention it. I had no idea what I was missing! I’m always excited to find new places, and several weeks ago when my husband and I were hiking along the ridge of Balm Mountain (see Butterflies, Blossoms, and Boulders on Balm Mountain), I couldn’t stop looking at a craggy summit a few miles due east. Later, looking at a map, I discovered it was Potter Mountain, and I was thrilled to find it was just off Road 2154, a major road (for a gravel road, that is) that traverses much of the Calapooya crest. This might actually be an easy place to access. With so many interesting plants in the Calapooyas, I couldn’t wait to check it out. Yesterday, July 25, I finally got to do it.

Marum-leaved buckwheat has smaller flower heads in looser umbels than the similar sulphur buckwheat. To the east, you can see Diamond Peak and a little of the Three Sisters.

Most of the drive follows the same route as going to Balm Mountain, so since I had just been up Staley Creek Road 2134 to get to Balm, I didn’t have to worry about road conditions for that part. From the intersection of Staley Creek Road, I headed east for 3 miles along Road 2154. That section was all new to me, so I was pleased to find it was in very good shape. I was quite surprised to see another car on the road and two more by the end of the day. Admittedly, it was a Friday, but farther west, in the Loletta Lakes and Bradley Lake area that I’ve been to so many times, I rarely see anyone until hunting season. I wonder where they were all going? In no time, I could see my destination, a big rock with a steep, rocky slash down the west side. I had figured I would approach it from farther down the road, but the road started to go downhill, and the woods looked quite open and bare underneath, so I decided to follow the short side ridge up through the woods. It was only 400′ of elevation gain to the summit ridge over a mere third of a mile, and the rocky habitat started part way up. Wow, this was easier than I could have imagined! What with making a list of the plants (having lost my digital recorder, I had to use a pencil and paper—how archaic!), and photographing butterflies, it took me an hour to get up to the top, but had I not been so distracted, it wouldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes.

Creamy stonecrop (Sedum oregonense) forms an interesting pattern on the gravelly slope above the forest on the west slope.

A female lilac-bordered copper sips from leafy fleabane (Erigeron foliosus).

Although the top reaches over 6100′, it is late July, and things have been so early this year that I knew I would be too late for the peak season for rock-loving plants. I was very pleased that there were still a number of things in bloom. Composites were abundant, as they often are as summer moves on, and included the lovely leafy fleabane (Erigeron foliosus var. confinis), Scouler’s hawkweed (Hieracium scouleri), and naked-stem hawksbeard (Crepis pleurocarpa). Silverback luina (Luina hypoleuca) was just coming into bloom, and Hall’s goldenweed (Columbiadoria hallii), a very late bloomer, was still only in bud. The plentiful coyote mint (Monardella odoratissima), a butterfly favorite, was not attracting as many butterflies as I would have expected, but it was still beautiful. Three buckwheat species were also blooming well, northern buckwheat (Eriogonum compositum), sulphur buckwheat (E. umbellatum), and the high-elevation marum-leaved buckwheat (E. marifolium).

I had hoped I might get lucky and find one of the other rare plants found along the Calapooya crest, but neither the Gray’s bedstraw (Galium grayanum var. nanum) from Loletta Peak nor the Columbia lewisia (Lewisia columbiana) from Pyramid Rock, McLean Mountain, and Dome Rock was anywhere to be seen. I did find one small patch of Drummond’s anemone (Anemone drummondii), normally found in the High Cascades, which grows more abundantly at Balm Mountain. The big surprise, however, was an abundance of cutleaf daisy (Erigeron compositus). This uncommon species is quite variable, with large-flowered, small-flowered, and rayless populations. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to their distribution pattern either. It grows at quite low elevations at Horse Rock Ridge and Eagles Rest, and at high elevation on the top of Rattlesnake Mountain. I also saw it once, and it is recorded by others, at the summit of Browder Ridge, but the last time I went there, try as I might, I simply couldn’t it. As at Rattlesnake and Browder Ridge, these were only right on the top of the ridge, sort of riding along the spine. I had long since missed the bloom, so I will have to return to see what type of flowers these have.

Fuzzy little cushions of cutleaf daisy (Erigeron compositus) seemed to run in a line across the top of the ridge.

A fritlllary nectars on coyote mint (Monardella odoratissima) on the west slope.

After exploring the ridgetop at the south end, I headed over to the main rock—the one so prominent from the road. While there weren’t as many plants as I would have expected on the large vertical faces, there were a great many cliff penstemon (Penstemon rupicola), as there were on the ridge rocks. Alas, I was too late to see more than a few scattered pink flowers still hanging on. To see these here in their full glory is reason enough to come back earlier in the summer next year. Another of my favorite cliff plants was still blooming, however, Merriam’s alumroot (Heuchera merriamii). It seemed to be happiest on the north face of the rock, mostly where I couldn’t get close to it. The east side of the rock was quite comfortable, but looking over through the cracks to the precipitous west side made me reluctant to get any closer to them. I found several other species that were only growing on the north-facing rocks, including a very small rockcress (Boechera sp.) I have yet to identify. Interestingly, there were no saxifrages, or, in fact, many of the other plants commonly seen on north-facing rocks. Many common plants were not found here but could be seen blooming along the road. Perhaps it had something to do with the rocks themselves. They mostly broke into very thin flakes, forming beautiful outcrops that I wish I could have in my rock garden. I’ll just have to be happy seeing them up here in this magnificent natural garden.

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