Northwest Natives- Tom McCall Nature Preserve

View of the Gorge

This spring I went to the Tom McCall Nature Preserve just east of Hood River. It was covered in wildflowers and felt like it was mid summer compared to Portland's climate. It made for a nice day trip I am sure I will repeat from Portland, with a few hiking trails and lovely views of the gorge. The native wildflowers in the area were much more colorful and showy than I had expected, and would be great to use for landscaping and gardens.

When I first arrived I was greeted with views of fields full of bright orange balsamroot and purple lupine. The two flowers complimented each other perfectly, with an intermittent addition of buckwheat, fiddleneck, or Oregon sunshine.

Field of Carey's balsamroot and lupine.

Field of lupine

Field of Carey's Balsamroot

Eriophyllum lanatum - Oregon Sunshine

Lupinus latifolius- Broad leaved lupine

Buckwheat flower

Amsinckia menziesii- Common fiddleneck

Eriogonum - Buckwheat

Further along the trail was a small pond with plenty of poison oak in bloom all around it.  There was so much of it that you really had to watch your step in some areas. below the pond was a dry stream bed lined with tiny white and yellow flowers. The stream bed has an obviously wet and dry side, the wet side covered in lush green poison oak, and the dry side dry grasses.

Dry stream bed

Yellow monkey flower- Mimulus gutatus

Popcorn flower

Poison Oak- Toxicodendron diversilobum

On the lower bluffs returning back there were many Lomatium, a member of the carrot family with finely dissected leaves and umbels of large seeds. They were all kinds of sherbet colors, from light green to pink and looked like strange fluffy clouds. Commonly they are known as desert parsley or biscuitroot. 

Yellow, orange, pink and green desert parsley in a field.

Desert parsely, with buckwheat behind it.

Unusual foliage of the desert parsley.

Umbels of seeds up above the plant.

Northwest Natives- Larch Mountain

View of Mount Hood from the top.

Larch Mountain is a great place for cycling or hiking only an hour's drive out of Portland. The elevation at the top is about 4,000 feet above sea level, so it is quite a climb. It is probably the closest place to Portland where you can find the types of natural landscapes found in the Cascades such as alpine meadows, talus slopes and subalpine forests.

Cornus canadensis

These cute bunchberries were growing along the trail at the beginning of the hike. They can be grown in residential gardens, but are a bit fussy and like a lot of decomposing wood and organic matter in the soil, like there is in the forests around here.

Dicentra formosa

The bleeding heart was still blooming up there even though it was June. It made a nice ground cover beneath the fir trees. These pacific bleeding hearts becoming much more common in nurseries and seem to stay nice looking for longer in the season than the common bleeding heart.

Oxalis oregana

This Oxalis looked almost like a body of water it was growing so densely around these logs.

 Castilleja miniata

Penstemon rupicola

This common red paintbrush growing out of the rocks can be found at some native plant nurseries, but be aware that it needs to be companion planted with some other particular plant species. One of these species is this penstemon growing on the rocky cliff.

talus slope