Document Actions
Oregon WildBlog
Oregon Wild Blog RSSNews, notes, trip reports, and the lighter side (of the wilder side) of the Oregon environmental and conservation movement.
Oregon's Yellowstone Wildflower of the Week #14
Oregon's Yellowstone hosts 1,400 known plant species--over 100 of which are found nowhere else on Earth. This week's flower is pine in name only...
The Siskiyou Wild Rivers area in southwestern Oregon is one of the few regions in the lower 48 with such extraordinary biodiversity. Check out this week's "prince" of a flower.
Prince's Pine, Chimaphila umbellata
Prince's Pine, Chimaphila umbellata is not a pine, but grows at middle and upper elevations under pines, firs and other conifers—blooming well into August in the higher elevations. In Greek cheima means “winter” and philos means “loving” in description of these (non-deciduous) evergreen plants.
A day in the Nestucca
Oregon Wild staffers get out to check out the northern Coast Range.
"Hebo" sounds so exotic to me - but maybe just because on a map it looks far from my home in Eugene. And, while Oregon Wild works closely with the Siuslaw National Forest on may projects through collaboration, the Hebo Ranger District of the Forest is farther afield and our staffs had never met. We came closer together yesterday when we toured part of the North Nestucca Restoration Project.
Oregon's Yellowstone Wildflower of the Week #13
Oregon's Yellowstone hosts 1,400 known plant species--over 100 of which are found nowhere else on Earth. This week's flower reveals strength (and beauty) comes in numbers...
The Siskiyou Wild Rivers area in southwestern Oregon is one of the few regions in the lower 48 with such extraordinary biodiversity. Look closely, this week's featured wildflower is actually a collection of hundreds of flowers.
California Coneflower, Rudbeckia californica var. glauca
From the Umpqua River Valley and well south into its namesake state, California Coneflower (Rudbeckia californica var. glauca) graces southern Oregon serpentine fens and wet meadows in mid summer, in some years extending well into August in the higher elevations.
One outstanding place to view Coneflowers as late as August is Snow Camp Meadow, located on the Gold Beach Ranger District in the Windy Valley Roadless Area, in the uppermost headwaters of southwest Oregon’s Pistol River.
Because of its larger size, a close up view of this flower well reveals how the “individual” sunflower is really a collection of multiple (even hundreds) of smaller, fertile flowers as contained on the thimble, or cone-like head. Look really close, as these small flowers also have petals! The petals are but an outer sleeve or ring with five tiny lobes that appear as tiny pentagons when you look at the disc flowers straight on. Additionally, the obvious petals that most people only observe, are also individual “ray” flowers—but are sterile in this species of sunflower, and thus these particular ray flowers, do not produce pollen or seeds. In this species the number of bee attracting ray flowers (yellow petals) ranges from 8 to as many as 21!
As somewhat romanticized by Lewis J. Clark in his classic 1976 Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest:
"The generic name ‘Rudbeckia’ recalls a pleasant bit of history. The young (Carl) Linnaeus, as an impoverished student, was taken into the household of the Professor of Botany at Uppsala, Olaf Rudbeck. The kindly old professor found a tutoring job for the ragged and hungry young man, and later launched him on his remarkable career--initially as a plant collector in Lapland. Many years later, when Linnaeus had carved an immortal name in science, he honored his old benefactor by naming the genus of attractive plants, Rudbeckia."
Oregon's Yellowstone Wildflower of the Week #12
Oregon's Yellowstone hosts 1,400 known plant species--over 100 of which are found nowhere else on Earth. This week's flower has Russian roots...
The Siskiyou Wild Rivers area in southwestern Oregon is one of the few regions in the lower 48 with such extraordinary biodiversity. This week's featured wildflower is actually a member of the rose family.
Partridge Foot, Luetkea pectinata
When hiking in the high Cascades and higher elevations of the Klamath-Siskiyous, look where late melting snow is replaced with clusters of cream colored flowers and multi-lobed leaves to see an alpine plant known as Partridge Foot, Luetkea pectinata.
Partridge Foot, which ranges as far north as Alaska, was named for Russian sea captain, geographer, and Arctic explorer Count Fedor Petrovich Lütke (1797-1882). With botanist Heinrich Mertens (for whom Mt. Hemlock trees, Tsuga mertensiana, and other northwest plant species were named) Count Lütke made a globe circling, exploratory voyage between 1826-29.
Partridge Foot, is considered a "sub-shrub" whose runners or rhizomes form mats, securing delicate alpine soils. Classified in the Rose Family, if you look really close, you will notice that the flowers have approx 20 stamens, and 4 to 6 follicles (pistils) in the center of each individual flower.
Adventures Rescuing Lost Hikers
Oregon Wild helps rescue lost hikers in the middle of nowhere in the Clackamas River watershed.
After driving around on a bunch of bumpy roads all morning doing research monitoring the effectiveness of closing roads with the Clackamas Stewardship Partners, we turned a corner only to be waved down by someone.
As it turns out we found two lost hikers/campers that were totally lost. They had been out in a fairly obscure part of the watershed and had been wandering, lost since the day before.
Their first question was, "any chance you have a good map?" Never before has a vehicle so equipped with mapping capacity driven down this bumpy road. We had GPS with a live link to GIS on a laptop, topo maps, hard copy maps, the works. So naturally our response was a fairly confident "yes". We then listened to their confused descriptions of where they think they started and parked.
Of course out of all the maps we had none of them showed the obscure trailhead(I say trailhead lightly, it was little more than a pink flag marking the trail) that they were describing. Fortunately I had seen older maps that showed this trail, so we made a few educated guesses and headed further off the beaten track to where we thought their truck was. Much to their great joy we got lucky found their truck down at the end of a very obscure road.
Yea for happy endings. Moral to the story, bring your own good maps, don't hope to run into a virtual map store driving down the road the next time you venture out to the middle of nowhere!
Erik
Oregon's Yellowstone Wildflower of the Week #11
Oregon's Yellowstone hosts 1,400 known plant species--over 100 of which are found nowhere else on Earth. This week's flower you can really smell...
The Siskiyou Wild Rivers area in southwestern Oregon is one of the few regions in the lower 48 with such extraordinary biodiversity. This week's featured wildflower will draw you in with its looks and stun you with its smell.
"Dirty Socks," Eriogonum pyrolifolium
When hiking this month on Oregon’s higher, dry, alpine slopes, be on the look out (or perhaps the “sniff out”) for a plant with small clusters of cream colored flowers best known as “Dirty Socks.” This native wild buckwheat species is so named due to the remarkable fragrance of its flowers which remind most people of the smell of sweaty, unwashed socks.
Ranging primarily from Mt. Stuart, Washington to Mt. Lassen, California, Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park is an easy place to access this wildflower that can be viewed on many of the park’s pumice flats immediately below Rim Drive.
Other “common names” that Eriogonum pyrolifolium also goes by are: Shasta Buckwheat, Pyrola-leafed Buckwheat, Alpine Buckwheat, Alpine Eriogonum, or Oarleaf Buckwheat—but I like the name “Dirty Socks” the best.
Three Cheers for Roadless!
Oregon and other states across the nation are celebrating roadless recreation this week.
Get ready. It’s almost here- Roadless Recreation Week is August 7-15th. The national event celebrates the 58.5 million acres of roadless areas protected by the 2001 Roadless Rule.
Oregon is blessed with nearly 2 million acres of roadless wildlands including Olallie Lakes, Mt. Bailey, Metolius Breaks, and the Imnaha – home to one of Oregon’s two confirmed wolf packs. These remaining pristine wildlands are important sources for clean drinking water, habitat for endangered fish and wildlife, and of course the amazing recreation opportunities for which Oregon is so well known.
Oregon's Yellowstone Wildflower of the Week #10
Oregon's Yellowstone hosts 1,400 known plant species--over 100 of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Check out this week's purple (and yellow?!) orchid...
The Siskiyou Wild Rivers area in southwestern Oregon is one of the few regions in the lower 48 with such extraordinary biodiversity. This week's featured wildflower is a three party, symbiotic relationship, between the orchid, a fungus and an old growth Douglas fir tree.
Purple Coralroot, Corallorhiza mertensiana
Flourishing in the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest there is a lot that can be said about the Purple Coralroot, Corallorhiza mertensiana--starting with the fact that a few individuals (like the one pictured to the right) can be entirely yellow rather than purple. Purple coralroot is an orchid that supports a number of small flowers along its single, translucent stem. One of four species in the Pacific Northwest, coralroots in general tend to grow in dark, shaded forests that lack other flowering plants in the understory. Sometimes hundreds, if not thousands of individual Purple Coralroots can be seen dispersed over a few acres under old growth Douglas fir.
Mount Bailey adventure
A preview for Roadless Recreation Week - Mount Bailey summit.
I'm not much of a mountain climber. But I set myself the goal of summiting one of the Oregon Cascade's peaks this year and picked one of the most accessible - Mount Bailey - to lead an Oregon Wild hike to.
This mountain has always appealed to me, with it's humble rounded summit - as opposed to Mt. Thielsen's pointy pinnacle standing out across Diamond Lake. It's a 10-mile round trip hike, with 3000 feet of elevation gain, which seemed doable on paper.
What's in a name?
What does conservation mean to you?
Conservation [kän(t)-sər-vā-shən] - NOUN
- a careful preservation and protection of something; especially: planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect
This is the definition of conservation according to Merriam Webster. It seems straightforward enough, but I think that, when asked what comes to mind when they think of conservation, people would give a wide array of responses. When words are as ubiquitous as this, one hardly ever stops to really think about what it means to them.
If you asked your grandparents, they might tell you about the likes of John Muir, Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold, and the establishment of the National Parks Service. For others, old-growth trees encircled by activists, or redwoods with their protectors perched high in the branches come to mind. Many will recall the passage of the Endangered Species Act, or the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. For an inhabitant of a small mill town, it might conjure up the fear of a lost job.
Oregon's Yellowstone Wildflower of the Week #14