Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Archive for the ‘Wetlands’ Category

While the center yellow lines were painted by a road crew, Mother Nature created the line along the edge of the road with a bright yellow ribbon of gold stars. They are also sprinkled all over the cliffs along Hills Creek Reservoir.

A little rove beetle(?) has gotten completely covered with pollen from the tiny flowers of skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus).

I almost always start my botanizing year with a trip in March to the Rigdon area in southeastern Lane County. With the cold, wet weather of March and April and the lateness of the wildflower emergence, I didn’t get out there until April 26! As I suspected, the wet spring was ideal for gold stars (Crocidium multicaule), and most everything was at least 3 weeks later than usual. Here are a few highlights.

Glaucous spring beauty (Claytonia exigua ssp. glauca) is a diminutive, early annual. While I usually see it on mossy rocks, this population grows in a mound of dirt in the ditch below the cliffs.

After being mistakenly cut down several years ago, the Fremont’s silktassel (Garrya fremontii) by the bridge at Hills Creek Reservoir has at long last recovered enough to put its energy into flowers! A dioecious species, this one is a male with longer tassels.

The skunk cabbage swamp hidden behind Everage Flat Picnic Area was one of the highlights of the day. The flowers were fresh and fragrant, and the leaves hadn’t yet started to give off the skunky odor they are known for.

California mistmaiden (Romanzoffia californica) is distinguished by its hairy, tuber-like bases. The little axillary bulbils that are typically present in this area also show the hairy bases. They drop off and form large colonies in the right spot, usually cliffs or rocky slopes.

This wasp enjoyed the little flowers of California mistmaiden. There were also small bees visiting some of the gold star flowers. I was disappointed to see only a few butterflies (a red admiral, a propertius duskywing, and a handful of California tortoiseshells), but as I’d only seen one butterfly so far this year and just a few days before, it was great to see any. I can’t wait for more of them to emerge from their various stages of overwintering.

The rocky bluff next to the Sacandaga Campground was also covered with gold stars.

Looking east across the Saddleblanket Bald meadow, you can see the alder thicket following the water as it drains from the wetland uphill.

While planning a trip to collect seeds at Elk Camp and Nevergo Meadow, I was showing my husband where I was going on Google Earth and happened to notice what looked like a small natural meadow less than a mile west of Elk Camp. It wasn’t far from a road that once led to an old trailhead for Saddleblanket Mountain. I remembered it being gated the last time I drove by, but it was only a half-mile or so to walk if it was still closed. Intrigued, I decided I should add it to my trip. The following day, August 15, I headed up to Nevergo Meadow by my usual route, south from Big Fall Creek Road 18. After a short stop at Nevergo Meadow, I drove south on Road 142 past the trailhead that hooks into the Alpine Trail near the Elk Camp Shelter. It’s only another 1/3 mile to Road 143, which deadends after 0.6 miles. The gate was actually open, and the road was clear and in good shape. I found out later it had been opened and brushed to use as a fire break. Thankfully last year’s Gales Fire never made it over to this area, though I passed burned trees on the drive up farther north. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s quite a contrast between the Boisduval’s blue caterpillars almost motionlessly eating lupine pods and the frenetic activity of the ants running up and down stems and back and forth across the caterpillars. Most of the caterpillars we found were tended by these large red-and-black ants.

After the wonderful trip to the rock garden on the way to Spring Prairie in July (see Beautiful Spots on the Road to Spring Prairie), I was anxious to return to the area and check out the other spot I hadn’t been to in many years. Spring Meadow is a wetland in the drainage of Mule Creek between the rock garden and Spring Prairie. On August 3rd, Sheila Klest and I headed up Road 733. We saw lots of butterflies along the road, including quite a few at a patch of spreading dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium) I hadn’t known about. I definitely wanted to check it out but decided we should drive all the way to Spring Prairie first and work our way back slowly.

A few of the caterpillars had smaller ants. Although the caterpillars ranged from green to this paler pinkish color, they all had a reddish purple stripe down their back.

Read the rest of this entry »

The rock formations of Logger Butte are quite stunning, and the many colorful wildflowers growing in the rocks make it even more special.

Dave admiring the cliff on the south side of Logger Butte.

Groundhog Mountain in southeastern Lane County has been one of my favorite botanizing sites for almost 20 years (over 40 trips so far!). Unfortunately, despite many roads leading up to the numerous wetlands and rocky spots, it has been getting more difficult to get up there, so my visits have been getting less frequent. From any direction, it’s 10 miles or more of gravel roads that have been deteriorating over time, and with no trails and no real logging of late, there has been no upkeep on the roads. So I was thrilled to get invited by Dave Predeek to go up there with him and Alan Butler, who also loves the area. Both are fellow members of the Native Plant Society of Oregon. Alan has a hefty truck and doesn’t mind driving—my kind of a guy! On July 15, Alan drove us up the northern route to Groundhog via Road 2309, the road I took for many years until I finally gave up on it when a deep gully developed in the middle of the road. I was really happy to see the gully seemed to have filled in on its own, and the road wasn’t as bad as the last time I’d driven. Not to say I would take my smaller car up that way yet, but it was passable for a sturdy, high-clearance vehicle. Read the rest of this entry »

The photographic highlight of the day had to be this cluster of trilliums visited by a pale swallowtail. The butterfly was as enthralled as we were and stayed for at least 10 minutes, allowing me to get over 40 photos from every angle.

For months, I’ve been working on and off to finish editing and doing the layout for the Saxifragaceae treatment for Volume 3 of the Flora of Oregon (I finally finished it so I felt I could take a break to write this report, however late). I had enough space to add a couple of illustrations and wanted to do two of the more interesting species, rusty saxifrage (Micranthes ferruginea) and Merten’s saxifrage (Saxifraga mertensiana). Our lead artist, John Myers, does most of the illustrations, but he has so many to do right now that I’m contributing a few of the species I’m familiar with.

Both these species are unusual in that they are able to produce asexually by vegetative offsets. Rusty saxifrage has tiny plantlets in the inflorescences that replace most of the flowers except the terminal ones. These drop to the ground and form colonies of clones beneath the mother plant. Mertens’ saxifrage often produces clusters of red bulblets in the inflorescences. Like the rusty saxifrage, these replace the lower flowers. From what I’ve read, it produces these bulblets in most of its range. In the Western Cascades, however, I’ve only seen them in a few populations. One of these is along Coal Creek Road 2133 on the way up to Loletta Lakes. Read the rest of this entry »

The river of large-flowered blue-eyed Mary (Collinsia grandiflora) washing down the hillside was punctuated by the bright red of harsh paintbrush (Castilleja hispida).

A lovely grouping of naked broomrape (now Aphyllon purpurea) parasitizing rustyhair saxifrage (Micranthes rufidula).

After spending time in the Spring Prairie area of eastern Lane County last year (see Exciting Day at Spring Prairie), I was anxious to get back there and do some more exploring. Way back in September of 2007, Sabine Dutoit and I had climbed up a big rocky slope just above Road 730 that leads to Spring Prairie (see Spring Meadow above Blair Lake). But it was late in the season, and all I remembered was seeing the dwarf lupine (Lupinus lepidus var. lobbii) that I associate more with the High Cascades—it is fairly common along the road near Santiam and Willamette passes. I had vowed I would return the following year when it was in bloom. But I didn’t. Now it is 15 years later, so I was long overdue to check it out during peak blooming season. How had it fallen off my to-do list for so long? I guess there are just too many interesting places to go. Read the rest of this entry »

It was peak season for the common camas (Camassia quamash) at Elk Camp.

Gina especially loved the old-growth forest near the Elk Camp Shelter. As we walked along the trail past the shelter, we were surprised to see someone just waking up after having arrived there on his bike very late at night. I don’t think he was expecting to see us either. The trail past the shelter is part of the much longer Alpine Trail that passes through Tire Mountain and is very popular with mountain bikers.

I’d much rather see flowers than fireworks on the 4th of July, so my neighbor Gina and I went up to see wetlands up at Elk Camp Shelter, Nevergo Meadow, and Saddleblanket Mountain, all no more than 15 miles away as the crow flies from where we live in Fall Creek. It was a pleasantly cool day, but the clouds mostly disappeared as the day went on. Although we did see several hikers and bicyclists—a first for me in that area—it was quiet and peaceful. That’s just the way I like my holidays!

One of the plants I had hoped to see in the Elk Camp meadow was Nevada lewisia (Lewisia nevadensis). Sabine Dutoit had discovered it there a number of years ago when I led a trip for the Native Plant Society (see NPSO Trip to Nevergo Meadow and Elk Camp). Luckily, I timed it right, and some of them were in bloom. I saw several between the trail and large willow thicket, where Sabine originally spotted them, and several more as I wrapped around the edge of the wetland to the bit of meadow that is hidden from the trail. Though there aren’t very many (although there could be more than I think as they are very hard to spot out of bloom), that’s where I had seen the largest number of them in the past. That’s also where most of the population of the rare endemic Umpqua frasera (Frasera umpquaensis), but there were no signs of buds or flowers on them. I”m not sure if they will bloom at all this year as they bloom only periodically. The Nevada lewisia and its frequent companion threeleaf lewisia (L. triphylla) seem to prefer more or less bare ground in moist meadows. I headed farther south along the edge of the wetland to look for more bare ground. I was rewarded with another patch of Nevada lewisia. The odd thing was that these had much smaller flowers—about the size of the threeleaf lewisia near them. I had never noticed this before, but then I rarely see open flowers because they seem to close up on warm afternoons (as does the threeleaf lewisia). With the partly cloudy day, some were still open. Read the rest of this entry »

I was impressed that the whole group was willing to climb down the rocky ridge I call “Lewisia Point” to see one of the few populations of Columbia lewisia south of the Columbia River Gorge area. The lewisia is growing in the rocks by some low-growing serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia). Click on the photo to blow it up to see the lewisia’s delicate pink flowers.

A tiny bee enjoys the very small flowers of Thompson’s mistmaiden, a Western Cascade endemic.

For years, I have been planning to lead a trip up to Bristow Prairie for the Emerald Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon. I always ended up having other commitments or others were leading trips around the same time. But, at long last, there were no conflicts, and on Saturday, June 25, Jenny Moore, Middle Fork district botanist, and I brought a group up to Bristow Prairie. It was a very hot day in the valley, and I was surprised at how hot it was even at over 5000′, but I’d already planned a fairly tame exploration of some of the highlights of the diverse area, so I thought it was doable in the 80° heat. We followed the same route I’d taken for a prehike on Monday, June 20, the first day of nice weather after I’d heard from Chad Sageser that the snow had melted and that he’d cleared the last of the trees off the road (thanks again, Chad!). The plan was to go to “Lewisia Point” first to see the rare Columbia lewisia (Lewisia columbiana) and the nearby shaley area, which has a number of annuals that like the moisture that remains there after the snow melts. Then back to the meadow to make a loop over to the rock garden, across the meadow to the lake and surrounding wetland, and then back to the road. Read the rest of this entry »

Few flowers are as gorgeous as gentians in full bloom. While most of these were single-flowered, a number of them had three flowers to a stalk. The Cascade grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia cirrata) was also coming into bloom, although these three buds hadn’t opened yet.

After several years of bad timing, I finally hit the perfect time to collect milkweed seed at Grassy Glade.

Since the bog gentians (Gentiana calycosa) had only just started on my previous trip to Warner Mountain (see Warner Mountain Botanizing), I was determined to get a better look at them, so I returned by myself on August 9. By this time, the Middle Fork Complex fires had started (after a July 29th thunderstorm went through the district), and finding a day when the smoke wasn’t too bad was difficult. But I was getting tired of being stuck at home, I figured it would only get worse as the summer wore on, and the day seemed like it might be okay. I drove through heavy smoke between Lowell and Westfir, just south of the Gales Fire, and was questioning my plans, but it wasn’t so bad heading south along Hills Creek Reservoir. My first stop was to Big Pine Opening to look for purple milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia) seed, but it had already all blown away, so I continued on to Grassy Glade, a couple of thousand feet higher in elevation. Not only were the milkweed pods still cracking open, but I was above the smoke, so I was very pleased and spent a little while there collecting seeds and wandering around before continuing on to my main goal. Read the rest of this entry »

A western white (?) met its demise in this patch of round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia).

An outstanding show of scarlet paintbrush below the lookout. I was surprised there weren’t more hummingbirds fighting over it.

My most exciting day of last year was finding explorer’s (or bog) gentians (Gentiana calycosa) at Warner Mountain (see Hidden Bog on Warner Mountain). I wanted to spend some more time looking at the population there this year, and I also wanted to share the hidden site with some friends, so on July 22nd, John Koenig, Sheila Klest, and Betsy Parry joined me for a trip to Warner Mountain. It was three days earlier than last year’s trip, but with this year’s extreme drought and heat, I was sure the blooming would be quite a bit earlier. I had also decided boots would be unnecessary as it would most likely be drying out. Boy, was I wrong! I was quite astounded, in fact, to find the bog not only still quite wet, and all the little creeks still running well, but the gentians had barely started. It was pretty much exactly the way I had found it on July 25, 2020. Considering it was a month after the awful record-breaking heatwave and no rain for longer than that, I couldn’t believe how fresh and moist everything was. Where was all this water that appears at the top of the bog coming from? The bog is only about 150′ lower than the top of the ridge above it, so it is not like it is getting water trickling down from much higher up. Read the rest of this entry »