Dog Mountain

While down in the Columbia Gorge to do a lecture on our native orchids we had the opportunity to do some hiking, a short hike at Dog Mountain and then a longer hike at the Weldon Wagon Trail, but both shorter than we would have liked due to time constraints.  At Dog Mountain we were looking for native orchids and found three but found other wildflowers to photograph as well.  At the Weldon Wagon Trail we also found two orchids, one of them quite rare.

On the way to Dog Mountain we stopped briefly at another spot where Phantom Orchids grow

but did not find any that were even up yet.

We did photograph a Lupine and its leaves.  My wife also photographed a native gourd on a old fence:

probably Arctic Lupine, Lupinus latifolius;

Coast Manroot, Marah oreganus,

the gourds very bitter and inedible.

At Dog Mountain we only hiked part of the trail,

but we found a wildflower Paradise:

Mock Orange, Philadelphus lewisii,

 Nine-leaf Lomatium, Lomatium utriculatum,

lots of Checker Lilies, Fritillaria affinis,

Rusty Popcorn Flower, Plagiobothrys nothofulvus,

Slender Woodland Star, Lithophragma tenellum,

 Western Groundsel, Senecio integerrimus var. ochroleucus,

 Vanilla Leaf, Achlys triphylla,

also known as Deer's Foot and Sweet after Death,

Hooker's Fairy Bells, Disporum hookeri,

a few Western Trillums, Trillium ovatum, fading and turning pink,

Howell's Violet, Viola howellii,

Pacific Dogwood, Cornus nuttallii,

Great Hound's Tongue, Cynoglossum grande,

And the orchids, two of the earliest to bloom:

the Western Fairy Slipper, Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis,

and the Striped Coralroot, Corallorhiza striata var. striata,

including some of the darkest colored flowers we've ever seen.

The mushrooms were getting started but I did not have time to try and identify them..