Cardamine species (Toothworts) are many and confusing to me, so I'm going to do an entire blog with photos of the ones in our woodland (in the coast range of Northwest Oregon) that may or may not be Cardamine and try to sort them out. I will add names as I get them identified. All help appreciated! First photos taken March 23, 2014.
Update April 1st, 2014 (no foolin'!) ... Oh, happy days! Howard Bruner, bless his heart, photocopied and emailed 15 pages out of Hitchcock's Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest with Cardamine key and drawings. From those drawings, principally, I'm finding the names of the wildflowers pictured below. My original guess (when there is one) is still by the photo along with the corrected version from Hitchcock... at least, one version. (The name usually has about half a dozen synonyms. Every botanist, it appears, classifies these little darlings somewhat differently.) Later update: Howard Bruner has corrected my guesses. The captions on the photos give his corrected names. However, modern naming systems do not always agree with Hitchcock (or, therefore, Howard Bruner). When my head clears, I'll try to name them according to more recent sources. That may be in another year or two... My head is pretty confused right now. Here is the website that holds the most promise:
http://science.halleyhosting.com/nature/plants/4petal/must/cardamine/cardamine.html
Also helpful: Oregon Flora Project http://www.oregonflora.org/
Another photo site: http://www.pnwflowers.com/search?t=Cardamine&Search=Search
And the one mentioned by Don Boucher: http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/carr/ofp/dicot_genus_index.htm
The flowers below are all through my flowerbeds as well as down by the creek, so I don't really consider them proper wildflowers, since the flowers are tiny and inconspicuous. But I think it's a Cardamine.
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| My guess is Cardamine oligosperma, Little Western Bittercress |
This is the same as the one above, showing the stem leaves and the basal leaves and the linear seedpods. Pretty sure it's Cardamine oligosperma. Update: Cardamine oligosperma, var. Kamtschatka. One common name seems to be milkmaids so that's what I'll call it although I have no idea how it got that name (which is applied to other plants as well). (Howard Bruner has weighed in with C. oligosperma. Wrong area for Kamtschatka.)
From the first website mentioned above: Little Western Bittercress, Siberian Bittercress, Umbellate Bittercress: Cardamine oligosperma var. oligosperma (Synonyms: Cardamine oligosperma var. kamtschatica, Cardamine umbellata)
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| Cardamine oligosperma |
Now things get even more muddled. This looks very much like the earliest blooming Cardamines in our woods, C. nuttallii (according to most sources), but with segmented leaves, not simple. And they began blooming a little after the C. nuttallii. According to Haskin's Wild Flowers of the Pacific Coast, this is, I think, Dentaria tenella Pursh, commonly called Spring Beauty. But unlike the "other" spring beauty (which we, apparently, do not have in our woods), it has 4 petals, not 5. Haskins says the root leaves are orbicular. I did see orbicular leaves that, for some reason, I did not associate with these flowers at the time I took photos. Maybe because, as my Gilkey "Handbook of Northwestern Plants" says, the basal leaf is "generally somewhat distant from stem".
But wait! It gets worse! A web source says Dentaria tenella is a synonym for C. nuttallii!! Or more exactly, "Dentaria tenella var. palmata Detling is a synonym of Cardamine nuttallii Greene." So... apparently we are now dealing with subspecies or varieties. I may go back to calling them all Spring Beauties.
(Update: Hitchcock says the larger flowered Cardamine, with usually brighter flowers, are often called Dentaria.)
The one below that is so plentiful in our woods is C. pulcherrima... otherwise known as C. nuttallii. I know it's somewhat different than the first Spring cardamine types to bloom but perhaps they are just different varieties. To illustrate the confusion in naming:
Spring Beauty, Nuttall's Toothwort, Oaks Toothwort, Slender Toothwort: Cardamine nuttallii var. nuttallii (Synonyms: Cardamine nuttallii var. covilleana, Cardamine nuttallii var. dissecta, Cardamine pulcherrima, Cardamine pulcherrimia var. pulcherrima, Cardamine pulcherrima var. tenella, Dentaria tenella, Dentaria tenella var. pulcherrima, Dentaria tenella var. quercetorum, Dentaria tenella var. tenella) -
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| Cardamine pucherrima |
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| Cardamine pulcherrima |
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| Cardamine pulcherrima |
The five photos below I think are all of the same species and I think it is Cardamine angulata, Angled Bitter-cress. Wild Flowers of the Pacific Coast by Haskin says "The slender plants of the angled bitter-cress will be found growing in moist woods and on stream banks near the coast or in the mountains. The white, four-petaled flowers proclaim it at once to be a member of the mustard family, and the rather large, sharply angled leaflets of its pinnate leaves will help to distinguish this species from others of this rather diffficult genus. The blossoms appear from April to June."
I will second the comment that this is a rather difficult genus!
According to the drawings in Hitchcock, the following are, indeed, C. angulata. But Howard Bruner says only the first three are. The last two are C. integrifolia. "Remember that C. angulata has a very strict trifoliate leaf pattern and is very hairy while C. integrifolia is sparsely hairy and has a lot of single basal leaves."
Seaside Bittercress, Angled Bittercress, Angle-leaved Bittercress
Cardamine angulata
Synonyms: Cardamine angulata var. alba, Cardamine angulata var. hirsuta, Cardamine angulata var. pentaphylla, Dentaria grandiflora
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| Cardamine angulata |
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| Cardamine angulata |
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| Cardamine angulata |
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| Cardamine integrifolia |
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| Cardamine integrifolia |
This is our earliest blooming wildflower, Cardamine nuttallii, I'm pretty sure. It is still blooming. However, Hitchcock does not even list a C. nuttallii. He does, however, list a C. pulcherrima that looks like (and keys out to) this flower. A search of the web reveals that C. pulcherrima is a synonym for C. nuttallii! I do wish these botanists would stick to one name or the other. However, Howard Bruner says this is another C. integrifolia. I am reserving judgment on this one because I have only seen the pulcherrima (nuttalii) this deep a pink.
The flowers on the plants below had not yet opened (on March 23). I was eager to see what they would look like! Lots of orbicular long-petioled basal leaves here, along with the three-lobed, sharply angled upper leaves. But Howard Bruner says these are C. integrifolia. (Note synonyms above. Current naming system would make these, near as I can figure, C. californica var. integrifolia. Maybe.)
Here are photos from March 31, grouped into what I thought must be different species, but now I'm wondering. They are tentatively identified with the help of Hitchcock.
Group A... C. integrifolia (nope, according to H. Bruner these are C. angulata)
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| C. angulata |
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| C. angulata |
Group B... will have to wait for the flowers to open (But H. Bruner says C. angulata and he knows a whole lot more than I do...)
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| Cardamine angulata |
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| Cardamine angulata |
Group C... C. angulata (nope according to Howard Bruner... rather they are C. integrifolia)
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| Cardamine integrifolia |
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| Cardamine integrifolia |
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| Cardamine integrifolia |
Group D... C. integrifolia? (yes, according to H. Bruner)
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| Cardamine integrifolia |
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| Cardamine integrifolia |
Group E... C. tenella var. dissecta (or C. pulcherrima var. tenella or C. pulcherrima var. pulcherrima or Dentaria something and who knows what else...)
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| Cardamine pulcherrima |
Many thanks to Howard Bruner for his invaluable help and identifications and to the authors of Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest. And especially to Paul Slichter's excellent website. Input on these flowers welcomed.
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