Another Trip to Oregon - The End

Wildflowers of the Oregon Cascades

This Substack post is dropping during a holiday weekend in the United States. Since most of my subscribers live in the US, I don’t expect many of them to see it, at least not right away. I’ve found that my wildflower shots are not as popular as my landscapes, so it’s a good time to slip this post in here, when nobody is looking anyway.

Think of it as an “extra” post to finish off the long “Trip to Oregon” series that began three months ago.

We begin with an uncommon beauty called the “Washington Lily.” Ironically, it only grows in Oregon:

Washington Lily (Lilium washingtonianum) in the Oregon Cascades

So why is it called a “Washington” Lily if it doesn’t grow in Washington? It’s named after Martha Washington, our nation’s first First Lady — not the state. Truly a spectacular beauty, and not all that common, so I was thrilled to find it. This specimen was growing next to Red Creek road, which is a branch off of the road that goes to the Pamelia Lake trailhead.

My next wildflower shot is Beargrass.

Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax), a common sight in the Cascades

This showy forb is instantly recognizable whenever you see it: nothing else looks like it. I remember attending nature lectures as a kid and hearing the ranger say, “We don’t know why it’s called bear grass. We’ve never seen a bear eating it. If you ever see a bear eating it, please let us know.”

I guess someone must have seen that since then, because I see that Wikipedia now claims that bears eat the leaves.

This is a versatile plant that the native tribes made extensive use of. The leaves, and the flower stalks, are very tough and were woven into baskets. The roots were cooked and eaten. It only grows in the northwestern corner of the US, and British Columbia, from the Pacific to the Rockies.

Next we have a couple of berries.

Red Huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium). Edible, and delicious, but tart.

These are a lower-elevation huckleberry that are tart and not as popular as the blue huckleberry, which is sweeter and grows at higher elevations. They also fruit a few weeks earlier than the blue ones.

If you’re going to eat them, make sure you’re picking a huckleberry and not a baneberry! The latter are poisonous! Pay attention to the leaves…

These even grow in the Coast Range and we used to pick them every year when I was a kid. Mom made berry pies…

Mmmm. I miss those berry pies. They also make good jam and wine.

By the time the blue huckleberries came ripe, I had left the area. So, no blues in this post.

Salal (Gaultheria shallon) blossoms.

Salal produces dark blue (basically black) berries that people use for making jam, and the native tribes ate them. I don’t care for the taste of them. But what a pretty blossom!

And finally, a plant that is almost ubiquitous:

Lupines (species unknown) near Breitenbush Lake

Lupine is a member of the pea family. Since they are legumes, they fix nitrogen into the soil and make it fertile for other plants that come along later. They are closely related to locoweed, which is a desert plant, but I never heard of anyone’s horse or cattle getting poisoned from eating lupine.

You’ll see them along nearly every trail and road when in the mountains. It’s a big genus with hundreds of species, some of which grow on other continents, so getting precise ID isn’t always easy.

Interestingly, one of them is an invasive species on the US east coast. Well, they’re pretty. I can see why people imported them to the East.

I usually can’t help myself from stopping to photograph them every time I see one.

Meanwhile, back at camp, Pookie was enjoying the woods:

Pookie, supervising the campsite

Her whole life was about to change.

This concludes my 3-month saga of “Another Trip to Oregon.” As mentioned in my previous post, someone hired me to work near Hillsboro, Oregon and I became an Oregon resident instead of an ex-pat who was visiting my old stompin’ grounds.

For the next few months, I lived in Oregon’s Coast Range.