You can’t get much more alpine than this!

The Deming Glacier flows south off of Mt. Baker, bending around beneath the steep cliffs of the Black Buttes before flowing out into the Middle Fork Nooksack River. It’s the most dramatic example of glaciation in Washington’s North Cascades that I know of. I’m always impressed when I get up on the side of Mt. Baker to look down on the Deming.

Saturday I got there pretty much by accident. I started out to scout a route into the Twin Sisters range, but there was a “road closed” sign blocking my way. Since I was already on the south side of Baker I decided to head up to Schreiber’s Meadows and hike the Scott Paul trail on Baker’s south flank. I’d never hiked it, but heard the views were great and I knew it would take me to the edge of the glaciers.
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I’d heard for years that glacier lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) will bloom through the snow, but I’d never caught one in the act until this past weekend. This fine example was at the edge of the receding snow pack in the meadow below Copper Pass in the Okanogan National Forest. Many more of the lilies were pushing their way up through the snow and showing their bright yellow buds.

Apparently glacier lilies, and other members of the species, generate enough heat as they sprout from their corms to melt the surrounding snow. This extends their growing season by a few days, which can be critically important in the high altitude meadows where they are prolific in the summer. In just a few short days these beautiful lilies will push up at the edge of the melting snow, flower, and set seed.

Not far from where I photographed this flower were other glacier lily plants that had already set seed and their leaves nearly withered away to nothingness.
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Yellow Coralroot, Corallorhiza trifida, is one of four species in this genus found in the Pacific Northwest. It’s also the one that has been eluding me for several years. Back in 2003 and 2004 when I was chasing wildflowers all over Washington and Oregon I spent parts of several days hunting for it in places where I’d been reliably informed that it grew. Each time I came up empty and in the end Phyllis and I left it out of Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest.

On June 20 I finally found it along the Goat Mountain trail in the North Cascades at about 3500′ and created the photo here, as well as many others. Yellow Coralroot grows in moist forests and can live in deep shade because it is myco-heterotrophic and derives most of its nutrients from a fungus. Other coralroots share this non-photosynthetic way of getting their food.

The place where most of the specimens were growing was a depression on a relatively flat bench part way up the mountain, just before the trail starts climbing again. If you know the trail you’ll recognize the spot. Other plants growing in the area were tiarella and oak fern. I’d passed this spot several times on previous hikes, but never in mid-June when the coralroot was blooming. Once my hiking companions and I saw the first ones we spotted many more scattered through the woods along the trail for next 1/4 mile or less.
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The Wenatchee Mountains in central Washington are home to several endemic species — plants that are found nowhere else in the world. Tweedy’s Lewisia, Cistanthe tweedyi or Lewisia tweedyi, is one of those endemics. It’s actually a little more widespread than some, but the largest populations are in the Wenatchees.

Tweedy’s is one of the showiest of the Lewisias, with multiple large salmon-cream flowers and thick succulent leaves. It blooms in mid-June in the mountains. You’ll find it scattered throughout its range, but almost always growing out of rock outcroppings and often on serpentine. Continue reading →