Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘Crepis’

While the rock garden area wasn’t quite as floriferous as usual, the east end had a lovely display of Menzies’ larkspur (Delphinium menziesii), and there were barestem lomatium in bloom everywhere.

The naked stem hawkweed (Crepis pleurocarpa) grows right in the middle of the trail.

On June 4, John Koenig and I went to Bristow Prairie in the Calapooyas. It was our first trip of the year here, but we’re planning to show this area to some folks from the Burke Herbarium in Washington in a few weeks, so we’ll be back soon.

We started our day by hiking the trail from the north trailhead (once we found it—the trail sign is now smashed under a fallen tree!). We were hoping to catch the early flowers, and there were still a few patches of snow in the road ditch, but the warm dry spring had already moved the rock garden area along. There were no exciting discoveries this trip, and there were surprisingly few butterflies or other insects for such a sunny day, but I thought I’d share some photos. Read the rest of this entry »

Red, white, and blue wildflowers prepare for Fourth of July

Bristow Prairie is a large, damp meadow area in the Calapooya Mountains. There is a trail of sorts that starts in Douglas County and runs along a ridge down to the main meadow area. A wet meadow and a shallow lake with a number of aquatic plants lie below the trail just by the county line. The trail is harder to follow to the north on the Lane County side—or so I thought. I’d only been there twice. The first trip (see Bristow Prairie), Sabine and I checked the lake and explored the Douglas County ridge looking for Horkelia fusca. I’ve seen it in a few places in Douglas County, but it seems determined to avoid crossing into Lane County. Late last summer, we bushwhacked down to two small lakes hidden in the woods, one on each side of the county line (see Hidden Lakes at Bristow Prairie), and then did a little exploring on the ridge to the north. We came across a large, open, gravelly slope. As it was August, it was all dried up, but it definitely looked worth returning earlier in the year. We also found an odd dried up plant that I later determined must be whisker brush (Leptosiphon [Linanthus] ciliatus), something I’d never even heard of, let alone seen. Read the rest of this entry »