Western Spring Beauty (Claytonia lanceolata)
Cone Peak Trail, Willamette National Forest, OR, 6/2017.
Spring Beauties are part of a group of plants sometimes called “spring ephemerals”, also including Blue-Eyed Grass, that harness the insulating properties of winter snowfall to send a shoot up from their underground bulb through the cold wet soil, during winter (more…)
Smooth Douglasia (Douglasia laevigata)
Royal Lake Campground, Olympic NP, 7/2016.
Last July we found a single specimen (above) of this uncommon primrose peeking out from among the rocks near Royal Lake Campground. One year later, and a few miles west, (more…)
Tweedy’s Lewisia (Lewisia tweedyi)
Chiwaukum Creek Trail, Wenatchee NF, WA, 5/2017.
The largest member of the Lewisia family grows at low and mid-elevations almost exclusively in the Wenatchee Mountains in central Washington. Frank Tweedy, a botanist with the US Geological Survey stumbled upon this beauty while working with the Northern Pacific Railway in 1882. (more…)
Shrubby Penstemon (Penstemon fruticosus var. fruticosus)
Rainy Lake Road, OR, 6/2014.
Looking very similar to both davidsonii and rupicola (of which, only the latter is found in the gorge), this variety puts on quite a show in June, growing in large patches along the higher elevations of Rainy Lake Road, at the southwest side of the Hood River Valley. (more…)
