Oregon sunshine

When my sister, Diana, asked me to come to her home in southern Oregon this spring, she suggested that we might hike a bit. Diana knows of and shares my deep enthusiasm for wildflowers and she said she’d try to find some trails where there were some wildflowers.

Well, the thing about my sister is that she doesn’t do anything half-way so when I arrived last Friday, she had done weeks of research and had hiked a dozen or more trails to find THE BEST flowers for me. And, being Diana, she had chosen ones in all different directions and different areas of the beautiful region she calls home. The region includes both the Siskiyou and the Cascade mountains and she wanted to me to see it all. In four days.

I wouldn’t exactly call what we did “hiking.” It was more wildflower sleuthing. And, we spent more time in the “botany squat” than we did walking. But oh my! if you love wildflowers like Diana and I, the days were heavenly.

The stats? We walked four days, 22 miles and identified. (drumroll, please) ………….98 different species of wildflowers. There were more that we haven’t been able to identify, yet. Diana wrote down the flowers as we saw them on the trail and each day we saw between 40 and 50 different kinds. Obviously, there were some flowers that were on all the trails – and some that were unique to only one of the trails.

I know my southern native plants pretty well but Diana was the expert on the native southern Oregon plants. Many of the plants I could identify down to the genus but then would have to turn to her for help. But no one knows them all, so each evening we’d kick off our hiking boots and dash to the books and the computers to spend hours late into the evening to get a positive I.D. for all the plants we had found. You may think I am exaggerating. I assure you, I am not. I know few people who would do this with me, how lucky I am that one of them is my sister.

But the best thing? We got to get up and do it all over again the next day – for four straight days. Even when we stopped for breakfast on the way to the airport for my flight home, Diana brought her computer and we tried again to identify the small white flower with fused petals. A Solanum surely but gosh darn, which one?

Though we got along splendidly, I have to admit to some arguing. It was all along the lines of…..”it had SIX stamen, not three, I’m sure!” or “I thought the leaves were lobed and you’re saying they were toothed.” One of our most heated discussion was about the ‘Hairy Oregon Sunshine,’ a plant the grew profusely along the Baldy Peak trail but nowhere else. Problem was that it wasn’t blooming so we couldn’t tell for sure what it was. But then? Voila! Two gorgeous, bright yellow flowers – which earned them their name of ‘Oregon sunshine.’

Photographs taken along the trail helped enormously, of course, though the phone plant I.D. apps proved to be all but useless. I learned a lesson after the first day about taking pictures. I had taken a photo of a gorgeous low growing white plant with four petals and pink stripes. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent trying to find the name. There just aren’t THAT many flowers with just four petals. Finally, we asked one of the women we had been hiking with if she would share her. photo and guess what? The plant has five petals. The flower I photographed had a petal hidden behind another. Identification came quickly after that.

I could go on and on about the plants, the area, the good times I had with my sister but I think I’ll let the pictures tell the story. I am so grateful that there are wild places still left where beauty can be found around every curve of the trail. Let’s fight to keep these wild and scenic places. And, thank God for sisters!