Monotropa hypopitys, often called pinesap, a parasitic plant that’s in the family Ericaceae (along with blueberries, azaleas, and many others). It parasitizes mycorrhizal fungi, which in turn have a symbiotic relationship with trees. This one was found in Olympic National Park.
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#pinesap #monotropa hypopitys #parasitic plants #botany #olympic national park #plants of washington state I thought it might be fun to make a collage of some plants that aren’t green. These spooky species are naturally ghost-white or blood-colored. They lack the green pigments that enable plants to make food from the sun. Instead, they are parasites, snatching food from nearby plants.
Clockwise from top left: Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), summer form pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys), Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana), autumn form pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys), one-flowered cancer root (Conopholis americana).
Rustyhair saxifrage, Micranthes rufidula, is a small saxifrage common on cliffs on the west coast. You can see the rusty-orange wooly hairs on the bottom of the leaves in the second photo, which is one of its distinguishing features. Micranthes used to be lumped in with the Saxifraga genus, which was very confusing for me as a botany student! While the flowers of species in the genus Micranthes look like those in Saxifraga, they are more closely related to other genera in the saxifrage family, Saxifragaceae, like Boykinia and Heuchera.
Back in 2015, my botany professor told me that this rush was Luzula campestris. But it looks like things are heating up in the rush fandom, because now, botanists have either placed this species as Luzula campestris var. multiflora or Luzula multiflora. Luzula campestris is the name of the European relative of this species, which I found growing in Washington Park near Anacortes, WA. Look at those flowers! They’re small, but pretty cute. The common name is common woodrush or heath woodrush. The brown parts that look like petals are actually tepals - basically the equivalent of petals or sepals without any differentiation between the two.
Elephant heads, Pedicularis groenlandica, are very unique in appearance, each flower looking a lot like a pink elephant head! Like most members of Orobanchaceae, they’re parasitic, obtaining nutrients from other plants with structures called haustoria, which pierce roots and absorb what they can. These were found on Mount Baker.
Pink mountain heather, Phyllodoce empetriformis, is a favorite of bees in the western North American mountains. This one was seen on Mount Baker, in Washington State.
Lewisia rediviva, commonly known as bitterroot, is a really interesting little plant native to the American West. The famous botanist Frederick Pursh named it after Meriwether Lewis after Lewis collected it during the Lewis and Clark expedition. “Rediviva” refers to the plant’s ability to grow back from desiccated roots, seemingly coming back to life. However, the plant was already well known by the Native peoples of America, including the Cheyenne, Ktunaxa, Shoshone, and Nez Perce, among many others. Although the roots are very bitter, they were commonly eaten with salt or sugar and sometimes used as protection against bears.
These individuals were photographed on a dry ridge in the Methow Valley, Washington State. They tend to live on dry, exposed, often gravelly terrain where few other plants easily survive.
Bitterroot is such an important plant that a number of locations, such as the Bitterroot Mountains, are named for them, and it’s the state flower of Montana.
The wildflowers are spectacular this time of year at Washington Park near Anacortes, WA! The Samish Nation used to go here collect plants like common camas, Camassia quamash, and nodding onions, Allium cernuum. The hills used to be just purple with wildflowers, but misuse by Europeans, followed by modern tourist activity, compacted the soil and killed a lot of the wildflowers. I’m one of those modern tourists, but I tried to be careful and stay on the trail to protect the remaining flowers. Flowers pictured here are: Calypso bulbosa (calypso orchid), Ribes sanguineum (red flowering currant), Plectritis congesta and Lomatium utriculatum (sea blush and spring gold), Lithophragma parviflorum (small-flowered prairie star), Cerastium arvense (field chickweed), and Collinsia parviflora (small-flowered blue-eyed Molly).
Sambucus racemosa, the red elderberry. Berries are poisonous when raw, but edible if cooked certain ways. Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest often used red elderberry for food and as a medicine for a variety of ailments.
Erythronium oreganum, the Oregon fawn lily, is a beautiful species with colorful mottled leaves, which have much more colorful and prominent mottling than that on the the leaves of many other Erythronium species. The corms are segmented and edible, although they’re fairly uncommon and should not be picked by non-Indigenous people.
They usually have one flower, but occasionally you get an oddball like this one, which has two. Very strange!
Epidendrum lacustre is an interesting species of Central and South American orchid. It’s found in the mountains at elevations of 1,200 to 2,500 meters. It’s typically found growing on trees or rocks (as an epiphyte or lithophyte), although I found this one growing on the ground beneath a wind turbine. The scientific name gives it the common name “lake orchid”, and refers to the fact that the type was found on a half-submerged log. They do tend to prefer wet, cloud forest environments, although this one was nowhere near a lake.
