I went on a botanizing trip with Leonard Foltz and Fred Weisensee of Dancing Oaks Nursery to the mountains of northern California during the week of May 20th. The next few posts will consist of photos from that adventure. It was such a fun time and I got to see plants that I never even knew existed. Apologies in advance for the quality of several of the photos.
The scarlet fritillary (Fritillaria recurva) just south of Ashland, OR, on our way down to California.
Nearby, we found the nodding green/brown flowers on this rare ladyslipper orchid (Cypripedium fasciculatum).
Also, this California groundcone (Kopsiopsis strobilacea), which wasn’t quite blooming yet. Apparently, it is parasitic on manzanitas and madrones. We’ll see photos of the flowers in a later post.
A madrone (Arbutus menziesii) was growing nearby. I took an obligatory photo of its bark.
An Indian paintbrush (Castilleja spp). Sorry, no id to species on this one.
Yellowleaf iris (Iris chrysophylla) with decent purple markings. We saw thousands of these blooming everywhere during the trip. Most of them were a bland, washed out white. This made me very happy that we have the far more colorful toughleaf iris (Iris tenax) up where we live in the Willamette Valley.
One of my favorites of the day was this plant, redstem springbeauty (Claytonia rubra). It’s the symmetry and the overall shape of the leaves. So cool.
I’ll leave you with the view from one of the stops from that morning.
Next up will be wildflowers from the Siskiyou Pass area and Pilot Rock.
Book used for plant id: DeCamp, Kierstead Nelson, and Knorr. 2017. Wildflowers of the Trinity Alps. Backcountry Press. California, USA.
I was able to identify most of the flowers that we encountered on this trip using this most excellent book that we brought along on Leonard and Fred’s most excellent botanizing adventure.