Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘Scutellaria’

Jenny studying the plants in the still-green seep along the edge of the west meadow. The lush shrub at the top of the photo was a very healthy poison oak!

Back in February, I was invited to a Zoom meeting set up by Walama Restoration and the Middle Fork Ranger District to discuss ongoing restoration projects in the area and further work on purple (or heartleaf) milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia) and monarchs (if their population bounces back) in the Rigdon area. At that meeting, I learned that last summer the district hired some surveyors to check out special habitats (I think that includes anything that isn’t forest!) on the west side of Hills Creek Reservoir and the Middle Fork of the Willamette. They surveyed a number of south-facing openings that I’d seen on Google Earth but never explored. I was very excited to hear that they found two new populations of milkweed! And these were farther north than any of our other sites, making them the new northern boundary of its range. Jenny Moore, the current district botanist, didn’t know much more about the sites or the milkweed itself there, so we discussed going up there together to see them for ourselves once the milkweed started blooming.

After seeing the milkweed starting to flower at Big Pine Opening a few weeks earlier (see Relaxing Day in Rigdon), I figured it was time. The weather was supposed to get hot again, so I was happy that Jenny was able to go out with me on Friday, May 28 before it got too hot for a steep bushwhack up low-elevation, south-facing, rocky meadows around 600′ above the road.

Beautiful spreads of woodland phlox (Phlox adsurgens) bloomed along the edge of the both the paved road and the gravel one we walked on.

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The most floriferous spot at Rabbitbrush Ridge is a small draw next to the dike. No doubt this area funnels most of the surrounding moisture to the mass of northern buckwheat (Eriogonum compositum), frosted paintbrush (Castilleja pruinosa), varifleaf phacelia (Phacelia heterophylla), bluefield gilia (Gilia capitata), ookow (Dichelostemma congestum), and Oregon sunshine (Eriophyllum lanatum).

Candelabrum monkeyflower is a delicate annual that prefers openings among shrubs where there’s little competition.

On Wednesday, June 10, we had a day off from the rain (not that I’m complaining about rain in June anymore!), so I took advantage of it to head back to Grassy Glade and check out one more opening I hadn’t been to yet and see how the purple milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia) was doing.

First I made a few stops to collect seeds: silvery lupine (Lupinus albifrons) was ripening on the north side of Hills Creek Reservoir, and there was still some seed of Hall’s lomatium (Lomatium hallii) along the cliffs west of the reservoir. I also got a good collection of seeds of the annual miniature lupine (Lupinus bicolor), which I’d spotted growing abundantly along the road right under the guard rails. In this same area, the paintbrush (a mix of Castilleja hispida and C. pruinosa) was still blooming as was the Oregon sunshine, including a lovely pale yellow-flowered plant I’ve watched for years. I’ll be back for seeds of those later in the summer—Castilleja blooming in an area I’m restoring on my property are the progeny of these plants, growing successfully in mats of Oregon sunshine, some of which were also grown from seed collected here. Read the rest of this entry »

The mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii) was in full fragrant bloom at Many Creeks Meadow and attracting lots of snowberry checkerspots. I can almost still smell the heavenly fragrance!

On Sunday, June 16, I hiked up the Youngs Rock trail, bushwhacking in from a meadow between Road 2129 and the trail that John Koenig and I named Buckbrush Meadow last year. Then on Wednesday, June 19, I went to Grassy Glade with Maya Goklany of Walama Restoration and two volunteers, Alicja and Sabine. We also explored the lower openings, “Rocky Glade” and “Mock Orange Glade.” Finally, on Friday, June 21, I headed over to “Many Creeks Meadow” for an afternoon of seed collecting before camping at Sacandaga Campground for the weekend (more on that later).

Here are some photos from those trips. Read the rest of this entry »

The site as seen from Bearbones Mountain a few miles to the southeast. It is unnamed on the map, but I could hear Horse Heaven Creek running below to the north, so I’m calling it “Heavenly Bluff.”

Discovery really is what gets my blood pumping. I had a spectacular day yesterday (July 4), and it had nothing to do with fireworks. Several weeks ago when I was on Bearbones Mountain (see Beautiful Bloom at Bearbones), I had noticed an open rocky area between there and Bohemia Mountain. I planned to head to Bearbones yesterday to see the next wave of flowers but wanted to see if I could even find this intriguing spot first. It’s at the end of a small spur road 920 off of 2213 just south of Johnson Meadows. I wasn’t even sure the road would be passable. I was quite pleased to find it was, although it clearly wasn’t used much and was lined with a dreadful amount of the bright yellow but nasty invasive Lotus corniculatus. It looked to be a very short bushwhack through some woods to reach the opening, but it was even easier than I expected. Someone had made a trail and lined it with pink ribbons. Who did that, and what could they be doing out here? The North Umpqua Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest is in charge of this area, and they don’t have any records of projects there, so I may never know. The trail led right out to the opening and down into some woods below, so they probably were not there to look at the fabulous floral display. Read the rest of this entry »