Mountain Plants of the Western Cascades

Posts Tagged ‘Viburnum’

Beautiful fall color in the thickets of oval-leaved viburnum that grow on the slopes of Mistmaiden Meadow

In the wetland along Road 140, there were still trillium-leaved wood sorrel (Oxalis trilliifolia) in bloom. Its leaves are similar to the far more common Oregon wood sorrel (O. oregana), but the flowers are in clusters and bloom later, and they grow in very wet spots.

Thank heavens for the wonderful rain on August 31! I had been so worried we’d have to wait until October for some decent rain, like last year. We got 3/4″ of an inch at my house, probably more in the mountains. That was followed by almost of week of cool, cloudy weather, and even a little more rain. It tamped down the fires, reduced the smoke, and made it much easier for the firefighters to contain the fires. In fact, The Forest Service reduced the south end of the closure area near the Bedrock Fire. That meant I could finally return to “Mistmaiden Meadow” near Sourgrass Mountain, where I had hoped to survey throughout the flowering season. My last trip had been on July 7 (see Fourth Trip of the Year to Mistmaiden Meadow), and I’d planned to go back on July 23 until I realized the Bedrock Fire had started the day before. I had missed two whole months, so I was really anxious to get back. On September 6, the first nice day I had free after the welcome cool and rainy weather abated, I headed up there. Read the rest of this entry »

Fringed grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia cirrata) blooms at the end of the summer at Echo Basin.

Labor Day Monday (September 6) was a working day for me—if spending the day botanizing in a pretty wetland can ever be called “work.” After studying the Mimulus primuloides at Hills Peak (see Pikas, and a Coyote, and Monkeyflowers, Oh My!), I wanted to see some more populations in a different area of the Western Cascades. So I headed north to Echo Basin. I knew there’d be other late-blooming wetland plants as well. The air was very crisp when I arrived at the trailhead—a bittersweet reminder that autumn is just around the corner, and pretty soon I’ll be saying goodbye to the mountains until next spring. One of the first plants I noticed along the trail was blunt-sepaled starwort (Stellaria obtusa), one the inconspicuous plants whose distribution I’ve been trying to fill out. There were large, prostrate mats of it along much of the trail. I tediously checked many of them with my hand lens to make sure they really were S. obtusa, looking for four blunt sepals, round capsules, and hairs along the edges of the leaves. Only one fooled me by being the more well-known look-alike, Stellaria crispa, with 5 sharp sepals and long capsules. Most of the ones I’ve seen haven’t formed quite such flat mats. I wish the plants would stop trying to trick me! Read the rest of this entry »