Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘Asarum’

The garnet-colored flowers of the well-named long-tailed wild ginger (Asarum caudatum) were plentiful.

On Saturday, May 13, I joined Molly Juillerat, her friend Michelle, Molly’s dad Lee, and his girlfriend Liane for a hike. Given the forecast for low 90s and the late flowering after such a cold, wet April, I suggested we try the trail that goes along the North Fork of the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. It’s mostly through old-growth forest and is not far from the river, so I thought it would be relatively cool, not too strenuous, and hopefully there would be some pretty woodland flowers. I hadn’t been there since April of 2014, not long after they constructed that section of the North Fork trail (see New Trail to the Base of Buffalo Peak), and none of the others had ever hiked it, although Molly had surveyed in the area back when she was still the botanist for the district. 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 »

After walking on a relatively level, viewless trail through forest and meadows, it is a surprise for those who haven’t been on the trail before—like Jenny (here) and Sheila—to come to the end of the trail atop a steep rock with a fantastic view. The coppery shrub on the left is actually a Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia), and the tree on Jenny’s right is a krummholz ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). The highest points on the horizon are Bohemia Mountain and Fairview Peak.

On July 10, Jenny Moore and I will be leading a hike to Moon Point for the Emerald Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon (see details on the chapter website). Jenny had never been there before, so I thought we should do our pre-hike early to show her all the cool early blooming flowers there. So on June 10, we headed up there with John Koenig and Sheila Klest. Read the rest of this entry »

The cover is once again graced by one of Bonnie Hall’s beautiful serigraphs, Balsamorhiza deltoidea.

At long last, Volume 2 of the Flora of Oregon is finalized and at the printer in Korea! Hopefully, it will be ready by the holiday season, but you can preorder it now. This volume covers the dicot families A–F. There are 39, including Apiaceae (carrot family), Asteraceae (aster or sunflower family—almost a third of the volume!), Brassicaceae (mustard family), Caryophyllaceae (pink family), Ericaceae (heath family), and Fabaceae (pea family). In my announcement after we finished Volume 1 in 2015 (see Volume 1 of the Flora of Oregon is Done!), I said, “Hopefully we can finish the next volume in a couple of years.” Hah! It’s been over 5 years. In our defense, the book is longer (almost 880 pages), covers more taxa (1,668), and has more species illustrated (785). And concurrent with production of the book, OregonFlora (formerly Oregon Flora Project) has also been redoing the entire website (OregonFlora.org), so Linda, Katie, and Thea have been doing double duty. Read the rest of this entry »

While the lower elevation meadows were drying out, this gorgeous area, off-trail just east of Youngs Rock itself, was being fueled by meltwater from the high ridge of Warner Mountain above. Both the monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus) and rosy plectritis (Plectritis congesta) were outstanding.

The Tolmie’s cats ears (Calochortus tolmiei) were outstanding at Youngs Rock. There was also quite a bit of showy tarweed (Madia elegans), but it was closing up in the afternoon.

On Saturday, June 24, Molly Juillerat and I co-led a wildflower field trip for the Southern Willamette Forest Collaborative, a group of people interested in restoration of the Rigdon area, southeast of Oakridge. Their previous field trip had been to see the Jim’s Creek area, which has been undergoing major restoration work for a number of years. The Youngs Rock trail starts in the Jim’s Creek area along Rigdon Road 21. We had planned to show people the wonderful trail going up to Youngs Rock starting just above the Jim’s Creek restoration area. We had pre-hiked it with some friends the previous Saturday, June 17, but when the weather forecast showed temperatures soaring above 100°F, we felt that it would be entirely too hot for an uphill climb through dry meadows and rocky habitat. Instead, we moved the trip farther uphill to Moon Point, which connects with the upper part of the Youngs Rock trail. At about 5100′, The snow there had only melted within the last few weeks, and the more or less level trail through damp meadows would be much more pleasant on such a hot day. Indeed it was a lovely day, and other than lots of mosquitoes (not aggressive, however), we had a great time. Here are a few highlights from both trips. Read the rest of this entry »

Our intrepid group smiling in spite of the rain and snow.

Bunchberry (Cornus unalaschkensis) just getting started. Last year’s leaves remain flattened on the groud, while the showy flower bracts are just developing atop the new year’s growth.

In my last post, I was lamenting about the three weeks of dry weather in May causing the lower elevations to dry out rapidly. So you’d think I’d have been thrilled to finally have some rainy weather. Well, I was, but unfortunately the rainiest day turned out to be Saturday, June 10, the day I was leading a hike to Hemlock Lake in the North Umpqua area for the Native Plant Society of Oregon Annual Meeting. I was really dreading going up there, especially when the forecast included a possible chance of thunderstorms. Since I’d had to shorten my trip the previous week, I didn’t have a chance to pre-hike Hemlock Lake and figure out what we were going to do. The full Yellowjacket Loop trail is over 5 miles—we surely wouldn’t do that in the cold rain. Luckily the president of the Umpqua Chapter had gone up a few days before, so at least I knew the road was okay. Read the rest of this entry »

The old lookout still stands on the summit of Illahee Rock. Piles of wood at the base indicate plans for repairs. Frosted paintbrush (Castilleja pruinosa) can be seen bloooming in the foreground.

After I left the beautiful roadside meadow (see Ill-Fated Trip up Illahee Road: pt. 1, Illahee Meadow), I went to check on a meadow and rock area I’d never seen before. Just a half mile farther up Illahee Road 4760, there’s a sharp corner. A berm hides an old road, now merely a path, that heads south along Eagle Ridge. I reached a meadow I’d seen on Google Earth in an easy half mile. It was quite disappointing, however. Although there were still cat’s ears (Calochortus tolmiei) and spring gold (Lomatium utriculatum) in bloom along the edges, the majority of the meadow was already completely dried out. A few paltry bluefield gilia (Gilia capitata) were attempting to bloom but were clearly parched. I’m not sure why the meadow I’d been exploring below was in much better shape. I checked out a rocky area beyond the meadow, but it was way too steep to explore, and other than a few pretty bloom cliff penstemon (Penstemon rupicola), there wasn’t much to see. Read the rest of this entry »

An incredibly beautiful form of marbled ginger (Asarum marmoratum) at the Camp Comfort campground along the South Umpqua. These are as beautiful as any cyclamen one can buy for the garden.

Having gotten such a late start the day before (see previous post, Exploring the West Side of the Rogue-Umpqua Divide), I’d also gotten into the Camp Comfort campground quite late and had only had enough time to see there was a lot of marbled ginger (Asarum marmoratum) under the big trees in this pretty spot. No one else was staying in the campground, so in the morning (July 14) I walked all around it. I couldn’t believe how many plants and how many gorgeous forms of marbled ginger there were. Alas, this uncommon woodland perennial doesn’t grow in Lane County or anywhere north of Douglas County, so it is always a treat to see. The white coloration varies quite a bit from plant to plant. Some are barely distinguishable from the common long-tailed ginger (Asarum caudatum), others have a pale triangle in the center, while the best forms have a white center and white veining. In this area, I even found some that were frosted white all around the edges, not just on the veins. Needless to say, I got a later start leaving for my hike than I had intended, but since I came to see plants, it really didn’t matter if they were on the trail or right by my campsite! Read the rest of this entry »

A painted lady drinks from an upturned glacier lily (Erythronium grandiflorum). Painted ladies are very common this spring, much more so than the last few years.

Still wanting to check out more populations of glacier lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) to see how they have been affected by the lack of snow, I decided to go to Moon Point on Friday, May 8. Happily, there were still plenty of snowmelt species in bloom in the meadows. This area is moister and less exposed than Grasshopper Meadows, and the small creeks that cross the trail were still running, although not as much as there would be in a normal year. It was certainly far drier than it was on my early trip in 2011 after a winter of heavy snow pack (see Moon Point Melting Out). There were many short, upturned glacier lilies, as I had seen recently at Grasshopper Meadows and Bristow Prairie. It seemed like there was a higher percentage of “normal” flowers with reflexed tepals, maybe half and half. Perhaps that was from the additional moisture. There were also quite a few western springbeauty (Claytonia lanceolata) and Lyall’s anemone (Anemone lyallii), although they still seemed to be less floriferous than I remember them. A number of steer’s head (Dicentra uniflora) were evident, but I only found a few remaining flowers. Read the rest of this entry »

Snowmelt species like glacier lily (Erythronium grandiflorum) and western spring beauty (Claytonia lanceolata) bloom quickly before the other, taller plants emerge.

This week, I went to both Youngs Rock and Moon Point (July 4 & 6). Despite the fact these two trails are so close they actually intersect, they couldn’t have been more different. Youngs Rock is on a south-facing rocky side ridge, and many of the meadows were already drying out. The cat’s ears (Calochortus tolmiei) were outstanding, but the masses of showy tarweed (Madia elegans) were mostly closed for the day, although some were starting to reopen as I headed back to the car. Moon Point, on the other hand, is more or less flat, lying on top of the ridge above Youngs Rock. There is plenty of moisture, still snow on the trail in places, and much of the area is just starting to bloom. I love this flowering time when everything is fresh and full of promise. Read the rest of this entry »