It’s
been several weeks since the last update so what has changed? While the red
flowering currant and blue-eyed Mary may be at their peak now, several other
species are just beginning. The first rufous hummingbird found the flowering currant on March 11.
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| Red flowering currant this week. |
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| Blue-eyed Mary in a bed of camas. |
The
next species to flower was buttercup, Ranunculus
occidentalis. It bloomed on February 14. While this is early for buttercup,
the earliest first bloom date in over thirty years of recording was January 16
in 2009. However, that was a lone plant and the next individual to flower that
year was two months later in mid March. This points out one of the problems of
looking at first bloom dates. Do they indicate the start of the species
blooming that year or are they reporting an anomaly? The latest first bloom
date for buttercup is April 3, 1990.
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| buttercup sharing space with camas. |
February
21 had two species show their first flowers of the year: harsh paintbrush (Castilleja hispida) and desert parsley (Lomatium nudicale). This is the earliest
recorded date for both species. For paintbrush, it was six days earlier than
last year February 27, 2015 that was the previous earliest bloom date. For the
desert parsley, this was off the charts early. The previous earliest date was March
22, 2015, 31 days later! And this wasn’t just one plant. Three individual
plants in the same general area all bloomed with in a day or two of each other.
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| Paintbrush and Roemer's fescue. |
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| Lomatium blooming very early |
Pacific
sanicle (Sanicula crassicalis)
bloomed two days later on February 23. This was also a week ahead of the
previous earliest first bloom, March 3, 2015. Similar to the desert parsley and
paintbrush, the previous record was in 2015. The latest first bloom for sanicle
was April 14, 2000.
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| Pacific sanicle in bloom |
It’s
a leap year and two species celebrated by blooming on February 29: fawn lily (Erythronium oregonum) and prairie
saxifrage (Saxifraga integrifolia).
The earliest and latest bloom dates for fawn lilies is February 14, 2015 and March
25, 1985. For the saxifrage the corresponding dates are February 27, 2010 and April
15, 1982.
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| This patch of fawn lilies was the first to bloom the last few years. |
As
of this writing, only two other native species have bloomed: chocolate lily (Fritillaria lanceolata) on March 7 and shooting
star (Dodecatheon pulchellum) on
March 11. Earliest and latest for these two species are: Chocolate lily March 5,
1992 and April 10, 2008 and shooting star February 28, 2010 and April 3, 2009.
For the shooting star it is interesting the extremes occurred in back to back
years. Also for those two species I’ve only found two plants of each in bloom
so far.
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| One of two chocolate lilies blooming |
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| One of two shooting stars blooming |
While
there are several hundred fawn lilies and several dozen paintbrush and
buttercups, the island is far from colorful. The flowering currant and
blue-eyed Mary still provide the majority of the color with fawn lily a distant
third. But how patriotic: red currants, white fawn lilies and blue-eyed
Marys.
(Unlike the last post, all photos are from 2016.)
