Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘Jim’s Oak Patch’

Dan and Nancy enjoy the show of beautiful Oregon geraniums right by the main road.

Geranium oreganum has very large, very bright pink flowers. How could I have passed by this spot so many times and never seen these?!

Monday (June 11) was another day of leisurely roadside botanizing southeast of Oakridge for me, along with Sabine Dutoit, Nancy Bray, and Dan Thomas. We stopped at many of our usual sites, including the cliffs by the reservoir, Youngs Flat Picnic Area, Mutton Meadow, Jim’s Oak Patch, Skunk Creek by Road 400, several unnamed meadows, and even briefly up to the amazing “Mosaic Rock” Sabine and I discovered last year (see Amazing Rock Feature Worthy of a Name). One of the most prominent plants of the day is one I rarely see, Oregon geranium (Geranium oreganum). There used to be a plant on my property, but I haven’t seen it for years. I probably drive down Road 21 at least a dozen times every year, year after year, yet I was totally surprised when we came upon a grassy spot along the road just past Secret Campground that was filled with blooming geraniums. The only thing that might explain how I’ve missed these is that perhaps they have a short season of bloom. We stopped to take a look and saw several butterflies among the pretty flowers, including a great arctic. I got what I thought was a nice photo of a female silvery blue that Nancy had spotted. Sadly, when I saw it blown up on my computer, it turns out she was in the death grip of a crab spider. Read the rest of this entry »

“Mosaic Rock” seen from farther down the road. Steeple Rock is off to the left farther up the slope.

Back in March, while doing our usual early-season poking around southeastern Lane County (see Spring is Here!), Sabine and I came across a huge rock feature we hadn’t noticed before. At the time, access to it was blocked by snow, even though it tops out at 4000′, so on Monday (June 20), we finally headed back up there to get a close up look. We took the first right off of Coal Creek Road 2133. The sign says the road is called 2133-200, but the maps disagree as to what it is called farther up.

Montia diffusa comes in after fires. It looks somewhat like a small-flowered version of the common candyflower (Claytonia sibirica).

On the way up, we spent some time at Jim’s Oak Patch, an area the Willamette National Forest has been doing restoration work on. Several years ago it was burned, and we found several interesting plants that are adapted to burned habitat. These are always interesting because they tend to come in en masse in the scorched ground, but they eventually disappear as other plants reestablish. They must leave vast amounts of seed in the ground, which can sit and wait for many years until the area reburns. Some of these plants have been considered rare, but it is hard to make a judgement about a plant that is so temporary. One of these plants is Montia diffusa. I don’t remember seeing it before, although I was aware of it, so it was great to see it in bloom and get a chance to photograph it. Another was Geranium bicknellii. According to Bruce Newhouse, this pops up a lot more than the Atlas would indicate. It also likes to establish in ground cleared by fire. There was a lovely sweep of Camassia leichtlinii with Plectritis congesta in wet spots and our perennial native Geranium oreganum in bloom as well. Several patches of Heuchera chlorantha foliage lead me to believe there is more in this part of the county than I previously realized. Read the rest of this entry »