Padden Ridge

On April 11th we were out with our youngest son, Edward, who was on holiday from school and among other things we hiked the trails at Lake Padden together.  These trails follow Padden Ridge above the lake which is just south of Bellingham, Washington, and in the Chuckanut Mountains, a range of hills that connect the North Cascades with Puget Sound.

It was a beautiful day and a good hike and though we were looking for Fairy Slippers and did not find any, we found plenty of other things to enjoy and photograph including some early wildflowers, including especially the Western Trillium, Trillium ovatum, some of the best we've ever seen, and the Skunk Cabbages, Lysichiton americanus, which were growing in the wet and boggy areas.

The pictures also include a few from another excursion I made on April 28th while looking to see if the Striped Coralroots, an orchid, were blooming (they were not).  That second excursion was on a wet and gray day and I did not take many pictures, but the first hike was on a beautiful sunny day.  Where I'm able I've added identifications to the plants and critters we photographed.

 Western Trillium (Trillium ovatum)

 Pacific Bleeding Heart (Dicentra formosa)

 Skunk Cabbage (Lysichiton americanus)

Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus)

Noble Polypore (Bridgeoporus nobilissimus)

Meadow Waxy Cap (Hygrophorus praetensis)

Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor)

Marasmiellus candidus

 Red-banded Polypore (Fomitopsis pinicola)

Brown Creeper (Certhia familiaris)

Dusky Arion (Arion subfuscus)

 

 Oregon Forest Snail (Allogona townsendiana)

Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum)

 Giant Rattlensnake Orchis (Goodyera oblongifolia)

The Trail and the Trees

Humor
(some had put stones in every hole in the stumps and piles of stones everywhere)

Lake Padden and Padden Ridge

Lake Padden is in a popular recreation area south of Bellingham and in the Chuckanut Mountains.  The lake itself is of little interest to me, since the area around it is little more than a city park, but to the southwest of the lake, between it and Interstate 5, there is a wooded ridge whose trails I hiked the afternoon of May 24th.

I found several native orchids, the Western Spotted Coralroot and the Striped Coralroot, and found a few Western Fairy Slippers as well, one of which I photographed.  The ridge was one of the best sites I've found for Striped Coralroots.  I found some yellowish plants there but not the yellow-stemmed form I hoped to find.

There were not a lot of wildflowers blooming beside the orchids.  I photographed three, a very pale Pacific Bleeding Heart, the Pacific Waterleaf, and the Leafy Mitrewort.  I also found one Fly Agaric mushroom and some that I believe to be White Chanterelles, but I am not very good at identifying mushrooms and stand to be corrected.