Yesterday I decided to take a day away from the office, so Rodeo and I headed into the North Cascades for a hike. We stopped into the Glacier Public Service Center to check the trail conditions and learned that one of my favorites — Damfino Lakes (which proceeds on to Excelsior Peak) — was clear. I stopped into the bookshop and bought a copy of Mountain Plants of the Pacific Northwest (Taylor/Douglas), which I don’t recall having seen before.
It has nice photographs and plants are organized by family — important to me because my focus is learning to classify plants into families before worrying about genus or species. In fact, I often move past a flower once I’ve determined its family, if I think it will take a lot of effort to work out the species. I’d much rather move on to other flowers, classifying the ones I know and reinforcing that knowledge than spend time working on species identification. In future years, when my knowledge of families is more solid, I’ll spend more time on individual species.
After a 15 mile drive along a forest service road, the trail climbs gently for a little over half a mile to Damfino Lakes (Vaccinium, marsh marigolds). It proceeds uphill for another mile or so (Clintonia) and then breaks into a long subalpine meadow occupying a valley with a dramatic view of Excelsior Peak up ahead. Lupines (pea family), Valerian (valerian family), mountain arnica (aster), glacier lilies (lily), and claytonia lanceolata (purslane) dominated the meadows.
partial plant list:
Clintonia uniflora (Queen’s Cup), a member of the lily family.
Arnica latifolia (Mountain Arnica), an aster.
Phyllodoce empetriformis (Pink Mountain Heather), a heather.
Ranunculus eschscholtzii (Subalpine Buttercup), a buttercup.
Erythronium grandiflorum (Yellow Glacier Lily), a lily.
Caltha leptosepala (Marsh Marigold), a buttercup.
Sorbus sitchensis/scopulina (Sitka Mountain Ash/Western Mountain Ash), a rose. I wasn’t able to distinguish between the two species.
Oplopanax horridum (Devil’s Club), a member of the ginseng family (and the only one found in the pacific northwest).
Claytonia lanceolata (Western Spring-Beauty), a purslane.
