Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘Eagle Creek Road’

This old quarry may not look like much, but several plants that are scarce in Lane County grow here including the pretty pink Ageratina occidentalis starting to bloom in the center of the photo.

Yesterday (August 21), I sort of took the day off from exploring the Western Cascades to join Gerry Carr, Dick Halse, Stu Garrett, and Barbara Ertter for a trip up to Fuji Mountain. Barbara is a Potentilla expert from the Jepson Herbarium who lives in Idaho, and she wanted to see the rare Potentilla up there. While Fuji is a High Cascade peak, the upper trailhead is accessed from the same road as Hells Half Acre. I wanted to show everyone the interesting old quarry spot along Eagle Creek Road 5883 that Sabine and I had discovered after our last trip to Fuji Mountain in 2007 (see Unusual Botanical Spot on Eagle Creek Road), just up from the Hells Half Acre trailhead, so after our successful hike to Fuji, we made a stop on the way back. The Ageratina occidentalis was coming into bloom and the lovely Parnassia cirrata was just starting to open. The green-flowered alumroot (Heuchera chlorantha), so abundant along the road, was just about finished. I was also able to show Richard Halse, an expert with our rockcress, an Arabis/Boechera that I’d seen there before. Alas, it was too over the hill for him to identify. Read the rest of this entry »

It is easy to find the green flowered-alumroot (Heuchera chlorantha) along Eagle Creek Road.

Sabine and I had another exciting day in the field yesterday, checking on Fuji Mtn to see how it might be if we offer a hike there for next year’s NPSO Annual Meeting. Our major excitement was when we did some roadside botanizing on the way back from Fuji. We stopped to look at the oodles of white bog orchids in a ditch and discovered lots of other wonderful plants including a little Stenanthium and Parnassia. Just a little farther down the road at MP6, I was shocked to see hundreds of Heuchera chlorantha in bloom on the steep roadbank. I have it in the garden, but in all my wandering have never seen it in the wild. I noticed most of the Lane County sightings are from Bruce Newhouse. Loren Russell tells me he saws it long ago along the bottom of the road to Moon Point. I’ve gone up that road dozens of times, but I’ll look again. Read the rest of this entry »