Posts Tagged ‘“Native Plant Society of Oregon”’
Very Early Look at Patterson Mountain
A very early look at the wet meadow near the Lone Wolf Shelter. Snow lingered on the far side of the meadow and behind the thicket of Douglas’ hawthorns (Crataegus gaylussacia). John and I only walked over as far as where the meltwater was flowing across the meadow. No drying out here yet!
Crab spiders regularly hide on flowers (can you spot it?) awaiting unsuspecting pollinators, but I’ve never seen one on skunk cabbage before!
John Koenig will be leading a trip to Patterson Mountain for the Native Plant Society of Oregon Annual Meeting the first weekend of June, so I joined him and his wife, Deborah, for a look at the trail on May 25. We were very relieved to find the road open, although there was a large snowbank just past the trailhead parking, so we probably couldn’t have even gotten to the trail much earlier. We had to cross a couple of large mounds of snow, and there were still some patches in the meadows, so the flowering season had only just begun. While the deep snow pack was melting fast from the hot, dry May we’ve been having, I’m guessing that—unlike Tire Mountain (see Early Season at Tire Mountain)—the plants here were all protected from the heat waves by the snow. Not only is Patterson Mountain several hundred feet higher in elevation than Tire Mountain, but its more level areas are able to collect far more snow than the steep slopes of Tire.
Early Season at Tire Mountain
Spreading phlox (Phlox diffusa) is one of the treats for those who do early botanizing in rocky areas. The yellow flowers of spring gold (Lomatium utriculatum) were just starting to appear.
My first caterpillars of the year! These two checkerspot caterpillars have overwintered as small caterpillars, so they may have woken up recently. Between the spines and the distasteful iridoid glycosides in the harsh paintbrush (Castilleja hispida), they are well protected from predators and can relax in the open.
Both Molly Juillerat and I are leading trips to Tire Mountain during the Native Plant Society of Oregon‘s annual meeting next week, so on May 20, we headed up there together to see if the road and trail were open and how the plants were looking. The cold, wet April slowed spring down, but the hot and dry May weather that followed created an odd combination of the flowers barely having started, while the moss was already dried out. The typically great show of annuals, including seep monkeyflower (Erythranthe microphylla), large-flowered blue-eyed Mary (Collinsia grandiflora), rosy plectritis (Plectritis congesta), and bluefield gilia (Gilia capitata) will probably be disappointing, but hopefully the deep roots of many of the perennials like deltoid balsamroot (Balsamorhiza deltoidea) and the four different species of lomatium (L. hallii, utriculatum, nudicaule, and dissectum) will still be tapping April moisture for a while. And, of course, we are still praying for rain in June before the actual summer drought starts! Read the rest of this entry »
Relaxing NPSO Trip to Echo Basin
Bistort (Bistorta bistortoides) and Cooley’s hedgenettle (Stachys cooleyae) blooming in the wet meadows
Our field trip participants admiring the magnificent Alaska yellow cedars along the trail.
On July 29, my husband Jim and I drove north to Echo Basin to meet some members of the High Desert Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon, who arrived from Bend. At the NPSO Annual Meeting in Roseburg in June, Lynn Putnam, a participant on the field trip I led (see Weather Woes at Hemlock Lake), asked me if I would be willing to lead a trip for her chapter. Getting to go to a beautiful place and talk about plants with a group of flower lovers without having to do any organizing made it easy to agree.
We had a lovely, clear, sunny day (before August brought with it all the heat and smoke we’re experiencing right now). There were ten of us—just the right number. Only a few had been to this beautiful trail. While the main attraction for me is getting up to the open wetland at the top of the loop, the east-side folks were most excited about being in lush woodland. I guess I take for granted all the pretty ferns and forest wildflowers since they are so ubiquitous on the west side. It was great to look at all these plants through the lens of someone from the other, drier side of the Cascades. Read the rest of this entry »
Weather Woes at Hemlock Lake
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 »