Table Rock Wilderness Wildflowers

[BurnsideBob]

The past week we’ve made it into the Table Rock Wilderness a few times. Yep, it is all still there.
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But there is a difference—trail signs at trail junctions!
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Trail signs are not at every junction—High Ridge Trail at Saddle Trail did not have new signs on June 10—but who knows, maybe a work in progress. Rooster Rock/High Ridge junction, Table Rock/Saddle junction, and Table Rock/Image Creek Junction are signed. Did not pass by Bull Creek/High Ridge junction, so don’t know about that one.
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But our mission was to hike, not inventory signs. We hoped to find wildflowers, and boy were we successful. We found one really unusual plant:
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And we found what may be the largest tree in the Table Rock Wilderness—a Doug Fir we are guestimating at 6-7’ dbh. But that is off trail—a different story so to speak, plus no photo.
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Our favorite wildflower area—the meadow between Rooster Rock and Chicken Rock—is looking really fine. True, it does not have the ocean-of-flowers effect of Dog Mountain, but it does have an amazing number of different flowers tucked away. While some have bloomed out, poking around will find the same plant in a spot with more water or shade that is just coming into prime.
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Here’s a sampling from June 10:
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Still more action to come:


Happy flower trails and longest day to you.

[bobcat]

Thanks for the information about the signs. Finally they've decided to put some up, which is perhaps a positive harbinger of more resolute trail maintenance to come.

Your first plant is the unusual and rather rare gnome plant (Hemitomes congestum), a parasite of fungi in coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest.

The Table Rock Wilderness is indeed a wildflower paradise and this is about prime time: one year I noted down almost 150 species in bloom on the Image Creek circuit. The meadow below Chicken Rock is a wonderland!

[greenjello85]

I was up there a couple weeks ago and I was also pleasantly surprised by the wildflowers and trail maintenence/signs Your pictures are excellent! Thanks for sharing
Dan

[Sean Thomas]

Ditto on what others have said, I had no idea it was such a botanical wonderland up there!!

[chiefWright]

Table rock, Bull of the Woods, Monument Peak and many others are all part of the Western Cascades instead of the futher east High Cascades. They're a lot older (10-40 Mya instead of <1 Mya). This means a lot more time for a greater diversity of plant species to become established. Tanya Harvey has a good explanation on her website:

http://westerncascades.com/about/mountains/

[BurnsideBob]

Bloom at Table Rock continues to develop. Susan and I went to Table Rock itself yesterday, June 23, and, if anything, more color than last week. Lilies are starting to bloom on Table Rock's summit:





I had hoped to get back to the rare plant to catch it in full bloom, but we didn't have time.

ChiefWright, thanks for the tip on Tanya and her Western Cascades website.

Thinking Tanya might be interested in the Gnome Plant, which she does not have listed in her species list for Table rock, I emailed her. In response she sent me a page from her book that covers both the Gnome Plant, Hemitomes, and Fringed Pinesap, Pleuricospora fimbriolata. The flowers of my plant are definitely fringed, so it looks like Fringed Pinesap is the ID, although I have to qualify that I am no botanist, but I do like pretty photos.

Here's an enlarged view of the photo in my TR showing the flower detail and a photo of a second plant found a few feet away from the first.