An Impressive Show of Siskiyou Wildflowers for My Sister from Georgia

    My sister Laura, who lives in Atlanta, is a wildflower enthusiast, a botanical artist, and, though she's not a scientist (she repeatedly said she wasn't), she's also not an amateur (she bristled when I called her that), but certainly she's an astute and knowledgeable botanical observer. When she planned a visit here in mid-May to see the wildflowers I have been raving about for years, I set out to prove I had not been exaggerating.

    For weeks I was checking out the trails for the best wildflowers. I chose a different hike for each day she would be here—Bolt Mountain at the south end of the Applegate Valley; Lower Table Rock outside of Medford; the East Applegate Ridge Trail in the center of the Applegate; and Baldy Peak, in the southern part. The displays were amazing. Fingers crossed they would not have faded before Laura got here.

   They did not disappoint. We saw 98 species on the four trails. Forty-one of those species were unique to a particular trail. We marveled everywhere we hiked.

    We called flowers by name as we hiked—an astonishing 35, 40, up to 50 species on each trail. Some of the Siskiyou flowers were familiar to Laura from their East Coast relatives (Indian paintbrush, vetch, columbine, etc.), but many were completely new to her (rough eyelash, tarweed, mission bells, fritillaria recurva, among others). She was a quick learner, recognizing flowers on one hike she had only learned the previous day. She hunkered over flowers with her magnifying glass. She carefully pulled apart partial blossoms to examine their parts. ("I feel like a gynecologist," she said.) 

    We saw the very unusual woolly Oregon sunshine on the Baldy Peak trail. I jumped up and down in excitement to recognize on that trail a rough eyelash, which I had never seen before. Laura especially loved the Siskiyou iris, with its creamy petals and purple veins. When she took a picture of a fritillary (recurva) from underneath, with the sun shining behind it, we discovered a phenomenon I had never known: the petals are transparent, like stained glass. When the sun shines through them, they glow yellow, as opposed to the opaque red they present when viewed from the top. It was extraordinary.

    The spreads were spectacular—lupine and mule's ears on Baldy Peak; sea blush interspersed with goldfields on Bolt Mountain; tall blue-eyed Mary and bi-colored vetch on Lower Table Rock, where wildflowers stretched to the horizon on the flat the top of the mountain. 

    Each day, we returned to my house with my list of identified flowers and photos of the unknowns, then opened books and websites to find the names of the latter. We identified the flower Laura had called a DYC (damn yellow composite) that was so widespread on Bolt Mountain I was embarrassed not to know it—nodding microseris. We identified the unusual Hooker's Indian pink on Bolt Mountain and the singularly distinctive summer snow (leptosiphon parviflorus). We learned to distinguish between blue dicks and ookow (count the stamens; six on blue dicks; three on ookow) and between mule's ears and balsam (by the leaf structure). We made guesses, dug deeper, changed our minds, narrowed down the possibilities, consulted with Siskiyou wildflower experts, finally made indisputable identifications. We worked late into the night, then got up the next morning for another hike and more new flowers. 

    The Siskiyou wildflowers put on an A+ performance. 

    Laura said she didn't know anyone else she could "geek out with" over wildflowers as we were doing. It was a sisterly thing and lots of fun.

    Laura enjoyed everything during her visit: the massage; the yoga class; brunch at the Jacksonville Inn; dinner at the Lindsay Lodge; buying wine from an Applegate winery to give as gifts back home; working the jigsaw puzzle she had brought to me; buying dresses together at a shop in Jacksonville; hiking with my friends—but nothing could equal the impressive show of the Siskiyous' wildflowers. 

    I was so pleased.
    Next time, I told her, she should come in July, for the high-country flowers. What a good time we will have geeking out over even more Siskiyou wildflowers. I can't wait.