Bitter-cress? Toothwort?? For the first breath of spring in our woods? I think not. I'll call them Spring Queens as that is what I used to call them, the last time I realized they were not the "real" Spring Beauties (with five petals).
I'll add more flowers later, as they bloom and I get photographs. And hopefully the right names.
Another walk in the woods today, March 12, found many more flowers popping up, but not yet blooming, like these two varieties of Trillium...
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| Sessile Trillium or Mottled Trillium, Trillium chloropetalum |
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| Western Trillium, Trillium ovatum |
The shrub we call Indian Plum is blooming. Oemleria cerasiformis , always the first shrub or tree to bloom, is also known as Oso Berry.
On this warm March day, it was attracting all manner of flying insects.
Today, March 16, many more flowers are blooming in our woods. But I don't know what all of them are. More four-petalled little pink flowers are blooming (some more white than pink, at least in my photos), but with different leaves than the Cardamine nuttallii. The closest I can find is Cardamine angulata, but that is said to be rare, or Cardamine californica... which none of my books even lists. Thanks to Don Boucher for this wonderful photo site of Oregon flora that helps narrow things down: http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/carr/ofp/ofp_index.htm (It is entirely of Oregon, not Hawaii, in spite of the name.) But I still don't know what this 4-petalled flowers is.
Somehow my last update never made it to the web. My old Morton E. Peck "A Manual of the Higher Plants of Oregon" says that Cardamine angulata is found in the woods of northwestern Oregon to Washington, so maybe it is only rare outside that region. I think that's what this is. Common name, according to Peck, Angle-leaved Bitter Cress.
A little five petaled flower is just beginning to bloom but it has no stem leaves. Some young plants, apparently, do not have stem leaves at first so maybe this one will develop them eventually. I'll keep checking. If it isn't Western Spring Beauty, Claytonia lanceolata (named for those lance-shaped stem leaves that my plant doesn't have), then I don't know what it is. Another great site that Don gave me, http://www.oregonflora.org/atlas.php, helps tell where in Oregon a plant has been seen, but I could not find any with the distinctive orbicular seven-lobed basal leaf that this flower has. Or I think it has. That leaf *looked* like it was coming up from the same place as the flowers...
Update March 23... Many thanks to John Woodhouse who found what looks like this flower in Peterson's Pacific States Wildflowers (which I have but did not do as good detective work as John did!). Suksdorff's Romanzoffia (whew! And that's the "common" name!). Romanzoffia suksdorfii is the Latin name. Looks just like my photo. Click on the photo for an enlarged version that shows the yellow band in the throat of the flower, and the tiny projections at the tip of each leaf lobe. My Peck book agrees and adds more location info: "Damp cliffs in the Coast and Cascade Mtns to Alaska and Calif." That would be here.
The little yellow violets are easier to identify: Viola glabella, Wood Violet. Thankfully, all the guidebooks agree.
Most of the trilliums are still not blooming but I found one that was: Western Trillium, Trillium ovatum. The Western Trillium flower has a stem holding the flower above the leaves.
Today, March 19, I prowled the woods again. Lots more leaves up and Trillium ovatum blooming...
The Spring Queens, as I now call them, are thicker than ever... Cardamine nuttallii, presumably, although my old Morton E. Peck "A Manual of the Higher Plants of Oregon" doesn't even list that species.
I have six guidebooks laid out on my desk, plus all the resources of the web, but none of them agree or have the same names, far as I can tell. I need a wildflower expert. This little apparent Cardamine with the three to five lobed leaves, pale pink flowers in bud turning into white flowers, is still a mystery, although my Peck book lists C. angulata as being in the woods of northwestern Oregon to Washington, so maybe it is only rare outside that region. Whatever they are, they are common in my northwestern Oregon woodland.
Another update from 3/23/14: Howard Bruner tells me that this is not C. angulata (but agrees that the one earlier that I called that is that). Rather this is C. integrifolia, which none of my books list. However according to websites, a synonym for C. integrifolia is Dentaria californica or C. californica var. integrifolia. Oh my. I thought it was the same as the plants pictured earlier but apparently not. Will I ever get these little spring woodland flowers sorted out?
Although the leaves of Wild Bleeding-Heart, Dicentra formosa, have been carpeting the ground all month, today was the first day I spotted flower buds. Perhaps on my next walk in the woods, the many Bleeding Hearts will be flowering. There's always something to look forward to in the coastal mountains of Oregon.
March 23: more Dicentra formosa in bloom...
Lots of Oxalis oregana, Oregon oxalis or Redwood Sorrel, are up but not yet blooming, except for this one, just opening, showing the pink veined white flower.
March 30 finds many more plants up and finally a few sessile trillium (Trillium chloropetalum) blooming. I read that the leaves are most mottled in the shade, fading out in sunlight, and that seems to be the case. The first blooming ones, presumably because they get more sunlight, have little mottling in their leaves. The heavily mottled leaves are still refusing to open their flowers.
This Western Trillium has turned pink as it aged. Pretty!
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| Trillium ovatum |
The path through our woods closest to Agency Creek is covered in Western Bluebells (Mertensia platyphylla)... not yet open but this one is close. I thought they were Mertensia bella, Oregon bluebells, but Howard Bruner tells me they are platyphylla, Western Bluebells. Whatever, we have lots of them and I love their blueness.
On Easter Sunday, April 20, finally one bell was open.
As for those confusing Cardamines, they are all over the place. I have started a post just for them: "Toothworts". http://fffwildflowers.blogspot.com/2014/03/toothworts.html
A good site for wildflowers west of the Cascade Mountains is: http://science.halleyhosting.com/index.html
Then navigate to Wildflowers West of the Cascade Mountains and follow the simple identification key.
April 7 I headed to the woods again, hoping to find more flowers open. Mostly all the same are blooming. I did find this candy-striped Oxalis oregana.
And, at last, a truly mottled, Mottled (or Sessile) Trillium is flowering.
And the sessile trillium I've been watching for a month with a tightly closed bud, finally opened.
The Oregon Grape were in full bloom, too.
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| Mahonia aquifolium |
April 8: two new flowers in bloom, but I sure had trouble finding their names. It took all my keys plus my new-to-me Hitchcock 5 volume set to find that this plentiful plant is simply a woodland buttercup. The trouble was that most of the guides insist it has 5 petals. Only my old and dear Plants of the Pacific Northwest, by Leonid Enari, solved the mystery: "Flowers pale yellow, small, inconspicuous, with 5 sepals, 5, 4, 3, or 2 petals..." I thought at first it was missing petals, but, if so, every single flower was missing the same number of petals because all of them had three.
Here is Ranunculus Bongardii Greene, synonym (thanks to Hitchcock) Ranunculus uncinatus...
Another plant was blooming: Siberian Miner's Lettuce, or, as some keys call it, Siberian Candyflower. Montia sibirica
It does look good enough to eat and, indeed, all parts of the plant are edible and rather tasty. Oxalis, with a similar looking flower but very different leaves is also edible but rather sour. We call it sourgrass.
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