The view to Mt. Shasta is paved with phlox

Yreka Phlox (P. hirsuta), that is.  Here's this year's bouquet to the mountain, from its home on China Hill on the NE side of Yreka:

Late Season in the Eddys

Leopard lilies flame above the dry skeletons of corn lily on the Parks Creek/Deadfall Lake trail section of the PCT.

Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), bog lily, tall onion and yarrow still bloom in the fen fields at the top.

Prostrate yew, Pacific rhododendron, sneezeweed, cobra lilies and leopard lilies grace the flank of a spring on the Caldwell Lakes trail nearby.

Gentian bursts blue from the cobra lily fen.

Bistort maybe?  and Cirsium andersonii (Anderson's thistle) in the decomposed granite of the trail.

Sex In the Sagebrush

Back at Willow Creek Mountain, these two furry and charismatic megamoths, Hemileuca hera marcata, engaged in a long, meditative exchange of bodily fluids as they clung to their caterpillar host food Artemisia tridentata. I love the ferny black antennae, furry orange bodies and striking patterning of these beauties.

More delicate, but just as striking, the rare endemic Greene's Mariposa Lily at Little Shasta Meadows Botanical Area on Willow Creek Mountain.

Return to Little Shasta Meadows

After an astonishingly wet winter and a fairly long, easy spring, we escaped the heat of Yreka (84-degree day, heavens!) by heading up to the high country on the east side.  We caught Little Shasta Meadows in that awkward stage, between the yellow bells and lewisia and before the camas and mariposa lilies.  Instead, the meadows were filled with buttercups and larkspur--and showed the promise of what is to come a little later in the season.

Most of the snow has melted, making creeks run cold and fast.  Here a little water backs up

 into a calm pool just right for incubating tadpoles and mosquitoes.

A few of the camas lilies are beginning to bud open.

And pedicularis, which loves to have its feet wet, pops up in amongst the buttercups.

Pearl marble butterflies keep other pollinators company on a native mustard.

Mid-Summer on the East Side:

From mountain meadows to the mountain top we go.

Sophie romps through the lush meadows at Martin's Dairy Campground where the creek still runs strong.

We found butterflies meeting to muddle in the
drying headwaters of the Little Shasta River.

Cascade Calicoflower specializes in sites that start wet and slowly dry through the summer.

Greene's Mariposa Lily is a rare native endemic that prefers dry sites on Willow Mountain.

Mountain Pride or Cliff Penstemon wreathed
the Goosenest crater.

Dwarf Hulsea or Alpine Gold loves the loose volcanic gravels atop Goosenest.

Hiking the trail to the top of Goosenest afforded a view of the north slope of Mt. Shasta,
with Herd Peak in the middle distance.

Swimming on the 4th of July

it was hot.  It was the 4th of July.  So we did what all good patriots do and found a swimming hole.  This hike took us from Toad Lake to Porcupine Lake in the Shasta-Trinity NF, and the flowers were blooming like firecrackers in the high mountain meadows.

Daisies and asters, tiger lilies and corn lilies, a small endemic epilobium and tall bear grass, the meadows were blooming red, white, blue, yellow and orange.

And bookending the meadows were these two pools of cool blue water.

An early, dry summer at Little Shasta Meadows

At the end of June, we took a mid-week overnight to see how the meadows were doing and found things pretty dry.  The camas had already come and gone and one brave mariposa lily was showing its face at the Special Botanical Area.

But what we did find in abundance was downingia.  I identified this earlier as D. insignis, but this is our own Cascade calico flower, D. yina.  Below, it forms a small blue "lake" in the drying mud between FS Rd. 70 and 46N09.

This white hyacinth, Triteleia hyacinthina, was having a good year.  And someone else found this puffball type fungus with an interesting pentagonal honeycomb structure.