I guess it’s a sign of being a true plant nerd to take off on a day trip halfway across the state to look for one plant that may not even be in bloom.

There’s been a fair amount of chatter recently on the Native Plant Society of Oregon e-mail discussion list about sightings of Orobanche pinorum, pine broomrape. It’s one of the plants I missed finding in bloom while I was working on Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest so I wanted to find and photograph it. But I didn’t feel like driving down to southern Oregon to the places where this uncommon parasite had been reported. I checked the WTU Herbarium online records and found it reported in Yakima and Klickitat Counties in Wasington. Then I queried the Washington Native Plant Society e-mail list and received a response saying it was just east of the Cascades near Leavenworth. The herbarium records said plants in bud in July and gone to seed in September. The third week of August seemed possible to find it in bloom.

Sunday Natalie and I hopped in the truck and zipped over Stevens Pass to Fish Lake, just up the road from Lake Wenatchee. We parked at the Cove resort and started poking around under every ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor) we could find. That’s the host plant for the misnamed pine broomrape. After about half an hour of searching I found the specimen in the photo. It was just off a small trail along the south side of the lake, about at the drip line of a small ocean spray. There were ponderosa pines towering overhead.

As you can see, we were about three weeks too late to catch it in bloom. It’s still an interesting plant, and now that I know at least one place where it grows I can go back earlier in the season another year.

Since we were already east of the mountains I thought it worthwhile to go looking for another uncommon plant I’d missed in a previous year.
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Here’s one of my favorite true alpine plants from the North Cascades. It’s called Moss Campion, Silene acaulis, and you’ll only find it at high elevations in the mountains. Here it’s growing among the rocks on the shoulder of Mount Larrabee with one of the summits of The Pleides in the background.

Moss Campion grows as a ground-hugging little bun, often appearing as a soft mound among the rocks. Its roots seek out cracks in the rocks, penetrating deep to find pockets of lingering moisture and nutrients. It blooms soon after the snow melts and once the flowers fade all you’ll see is a pale green lump. But when it’s in full bloom it can be spectacular.

Sometimes I’ve seen it high on a cliff, the bright pink flowers calling attention to it and presumably attracting the bees that pollinate the blossoms. In those instances it is so far out of reach as to be impossible to photograph. Even if I were to rappel down to it how would I set up my tripod while dangling in space?

I found this clump, as well as several others that had finished blooming, on a day hike of the High Pass trail Saturday. The weather had cooled off a bit and the bugs weren’t too bad. Starting at Twin Lakes the trail rises a little, then descends a couple hundred feet through moist flower-filled meadows before contouring around the hill and ascending a series of switchbacks to Low Pass. Then it continues climbing to High Pass and a well-worn boot track gains another 500 or so feet to the shoulder of Mount Larrabee. I only met a couple of other people on the trail, and they were on their way back to the lakes from bear hunting. They said it was the first day of bear season but they didn’t see any bears.
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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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