Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘Polemonium’

Siskiyou onion (Allium siskiyouense) was one of the standout wildflowers of the day. Its bright pink flowers lit up every rocky open area.

The variety of Camassia quamash here, var. breviflora, looked very different to me than what I have at home and usually see in the Cascades. Common camas I’m familiar with can be distinguished from great camas (C. leichtlinii) by its bilaterally symmetric flowers. But these were radially symmetric, and the inflorescences were tighter. They were in bloom in several seepy areas along the trail.

On June 30th, the second day of our short trip to the southern edge of the Western Cascades, my husband, Jim, and I headed slightly north to Grizzly Peak. We unplugged our car, now thankfully fully charged, and left Green Springs Inn after a very quiet and pleasant stay. We headed up to the east side of the Shale City Road loop and drove this narrow but paved road to the intersection of BLM Rd 38-2E-9.2, where there is a sign for the trailhead. I’ll admit that I was nervous until we saw the sign as I usually came up from Ashland where there are lots of signs pointing the way to the trailhead, and this way there wasn’t any road sign on Shale City Road at all. Thankfully we had a map and were pretty sure we were on the right road.

The day was perfect—clear and sunny but not at all hot. There were a number of cars in the parking area of this popular trail, but we only occasionally passed a small party of hikers, so it seemed much quieter than one might imagine. There were lots of flowers in bloom, including many that I rarely see. There were also a decent number of pollinators though not as many butterflies as I have seen on other trips. Here are some photos from the day.

Buckwheats were already in bloom, and this sulphur buckwheat (Eriogonum umbellatum) attracted a couple of cedar hairstreaks as well as several different beetles.

More of the same Peck’s phacelia (Phacelia peckii) that I’d seen the day before on Hobart Peak was in a number of open areas. It was a bit fresher and far more prevalent than I remember from past visits, probably from the above-normal moisture this spring. While looking at old lists, I noticed some confusion about whether the annual species here was Pringle’s (P. pringlei) or Peck’s phacelia. In a paper I found online (OregonFlora hasn’t completed the Phacelia treatment yet), the split in the key between the two similar species was that Peck’s has hairy filaments, which these did.

Eaton’s fleabane (Erigeron eatonii) is another species I rarely see. On Grizzly Peak, it seems to occur only in open areas in the large meadow in the center of the loop section of the trail. The Peck’s phacelia could be found alongside it there.

Bloomer’s fleabane (Erigeron bloomeri) is very cute with its button-like rayless flower heads. It grows in the rocky area just south of the loop trail. There’s now a pretty obvious path through the area that reconnects with the main trail.

This area was all new to Jim, so he spent quite a while enjoying the views. Happily, that gave me more time to photograph flowers! There is a good view of Mount Shasta from the off-trail area south of the main trail.

As we headed back, I was able to catch one quick photo of a large marble, a butterfly that only comes this far west near the California border. It was nectaring on bluedicks (now Dipterostemon capitatus).

The burned area at the south end of the trail is continuing to recover. It had been 8 years since I’d hiked this trail, so the young ponderosa pine and other conifers I had seen before were noticeably larger. Great polemonium (Polemonium carneum) was in full bloom in this area as well as just about everywhere along the trail.

There were more bees than I had seen anytime so far this year. Bumblebees were especially abundant, and seemed to be enjoying a wide variety of flowers. While I’m not sure of the bee species, clockwise from the upper left, the flowers are roundleaf alumroot (Heuchera cylindrica), Bloomer’s fleabane, Siskiyou onion, and candy flower (Claytonia sibirica). Note the pink pollen on the bee on the candy flower.

Beargrass coming into bloom near the trailhead at Blair Meadows.

A rocky area at the edge of Mule Prairie with harsh paintbrush (Castilleja hispida), cliff penstemon (Penstemon rupicola), and Cascade fleabane (Erigeron cascadensis).

On June 25, I went up to Blair Lake. This was another place I hadn’t been to in peak season for quite some time, although I had been up there in late July last year (see Butterfly Day at Blair Lake). Unlike last year’s trip, there weren’t many different species of butterflies, but the flowers were gorgeous, and, for the first time here in years, I got to see the beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) in bloom! Beargrass is an odd species in that the populations seem to either bloom en masse or hardly at all. There are different thoughts about what kind of schedule it is on, but it has been blooming far more often than the “every 3 years” or “every 7 years” and other ideas I’ve heard. Coffin Mountain seems to have a mass beargrass bloom every year I make it there—although I often miss the actual flowering. Although there have been lots of big beargrass years in the last decade or so, Blair Lake doesn’t seem to be on the same schedule as other sites. I haven’t seen evidence of a big bloom year for many years. But this year, it is definitely worth visiting. There were places by the road and patches up at Mule Prairie and farther up the trail at Spring Prairie where there were a great many in bloom, but most are still budding up, so it should be impressive for the next couple of weeks at least. I don’t think anyone knows exactly what factors are required to create a big bloom year, but when there is one, it is well worth the trip to see this impressive sight (and smell, although the strong fragrance of thousands of inflorescences can be a bit overwhelming!). Read the rest of this entry »

The show of great camas (Camassia leichtlinii) was outstanding alongside Bradley Lake.

Two male Sierra Nevada blues resting on their host food plant, mountain shooting star (Dodecatheon jeffreyi), already finished blooming.

I’m way behind posting reports again, but I couldn’t pass up sharing some photos of a trip John Koenig and I took to Bradley Lake on July 6th. After driving up Coal Creek Road a few days before to go to Balm Mountain (see Fabulous Loop Trip Around Balm Mountain) without being able to check all our favorite roadside stops, both of us agreed we wanted a more relaxing day and, despite all the other possible destinations we came up with, we wanted to go back up Coal Creek Road 2133, the gateway to the western side of the Calapooyas. We figured it would be a good time to check on the population of Sierra Nevada blues at Bradley Lake, so that was our eventual destination, but we didn’t even start walking to the lake until 2:30 pm. We stopped numerous times on the drive up, collecting seeds, photographing plants, and looking at all the butterflies—over 22 species for the day. Read the rest of this entry »

From the rocky viewpoint at the end of the trail, we had a great view to the south of the east-west-oriented Calapooya Mountains, including Bristow Prairie where we were the day before and Balm Mountain where I went 10 days later. The coppery-colored shrub to the right is actually a very dwarf Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia), while some snowbrush (Ceanothus velutinus) is blooming to the left.

I believe this is the caterpillar of the police car moth. Its host food plants are in Boraginaceae like this blue stickseed (Hackelia micrantha). He’s clearly been eating both the leaves and the inflorescence.

After our Bristow Prairie trip (see previous post), Betsy Becker decided to stay in the area another day, so on Sunday, June 23, I brought her up to the Moon Point trail. We had a mostly relaxing day (Betsy was not so relaxed when I persuaded her to sit on top of the cliff at the end of the otherwise easy walk!). It was a beautiful day, and the flowers were still fresh. We saw some more plants she wasn’t familiar with, including the rare green-flowered wild ginger (Asarum wagneri). We also made a loop through the lower meadows to pretty Moon Lake. Here are some photos. Read the rest of this entry »

tall bluebells (Mertensia paniculata) growing along the road

On Thursday, June 7, I had planned to check out another unexplored meadow in the Rigdon area that looks like a potential spot for purple milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia). Sheila Klest accompanied me. Neither Sheila nor I had slept well the night before, and as we drove by the road which accessed the meadow, we could see it was bermed off. While I had anticipated that we might have to walk the 1.5 miles or so down the road, at that moment, it was the just the deterrent I needed to say, “Let’s forget about it for now and head up to Bristow Prairie!” which was only a few miles drive farther up the main Road 2125. We never regretted the decision. After weeks of looking at drying out low-elevation meadows, it was so refreshing and relaxing being up in lush, freshly blooming, high elevations of the Calapooya Mountains. While we didn’t find anything new and exciting, it was just what we both needed. Here are some photographic highlights.

We’d never seen so many larkspur (Delphinium menziesii). Here they were in the rock garden area, but they were just as abundant in the meadows.

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Elephant’s head (Pedicularis groenlandica) blooming in a boggy section of the wetland at the end of Road 462.

While the Sierra Nevada blues (Agriades [Plebejus] podarce) were out and about, Willamette National Forest Service wildlife biologist Joe Doerr organized one last group butterfly survey. Now that we knew they were definitely established in the Calapooya Mountains (see the previous post, More Butterfly Surveying in the Calapooyas), we wanted to know if they had moved north across the Middle Fork of the Willamette. The area around Groundhog Mountain has an extensive network of wetlands, most of which have abundant mountain shooting stars (Dodecatheon jeffreyi), its host food plant, as well as lots of bistort (Bistorta bistortoides), its favorite nectar plant. If they were going to populate anywhere to the north of the Calapooyas, I thought Groundhog would be the ideal spot, although I had no real expectations of finding them there since I’d been there over three dozen times and never spotted them. Still, it was worth checking. And any data is important. So on Monday, July 11, Joe, Cheron Ferland, Lori Humphreys, and I, along with 4 botanists from the Middle Fork district headed off to Groundhog. Read the rest of this entry »

Ed Alverson recently contacted me about looking for Klamath fawn lily (Erythronium klamathense) as close to Eugene as possible. There’s an historic record from the Bohemia/Fairview area, but no one has relocated that population, nor are there any other Lane County locations for this southern montane species. Unbeknownst to either of us, we had both been contacted by the same researcher in Romania who is doing some DNA studies on the genus and had been asked to collected samples. Hopefully he’ll be happy that we got duplicates of some of the species. So although I had already collected some E. klamathense when I was down at Grizzly Peak (see Spring Comes Exceptionally Early to Grizzly Peak), Ed still wanted to see it as did John Koenig, so on Friday (May 30), we headed down to Hemlock Lake in Douglas County, the northernmost site I’ve seen it growing.

Great polemonium (Polemonium carneum) looking great! The way the pretty creamy flowers fade to peach and eventually pink adds to their beauty.

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Vines maples turning red between Iron Mountain and Cone Peak

It was a gorgeous day on Monday (September 27), and a great day to be in the mountains even if most of the flowering is over. In all the times I’d been to Iron Mountain and Cone Peak, I realized I’d never been there in late summer or early fall, so that was our destination. Like most people in western Oregon, Iron Mountain was the first place I’d heard of when asking where to go see flowers. So I went a number of times after I moved here in the early ’90s. But, eventually, I discovered how many other terrific botanical areas there are in the Cascades—and how much more peaceful they are without the summer crowds that seem to make the pilgrimage to Iron Mountain as though it is the only beautiful spot in the mountains. I still love to go up to Cone Peak as the snow is melting, but I’ve kind of ignored Iron Mountain for quite some time. There were many late-blooming plants listed for the area that I’d never seen there, so I was long overdue for a visit. Read the rest of this entry »