Wednesday evening, May 16th, after both of us were finished with the day's duties, my wife and I visited Sehome Hill Arboretum in Bellingham. The 180 acre city park is not a true arboretum but a hill covered with second growth forest that is fairly rich in native flora. The area is next to the campus of Western Washington University and the University is partly responsible for the park. It is laced with trails and we spent several pleasant hours there, wandering around and looking for things to photograph.
Western Spotted Coralroot
Among other wildflowers we found three native orchids, a Fairy Slipper (Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis) that was past its prime, and two Coralroots, the Western Spotted and the Striped Coralroots (Corallorhiza maculata var. occidentalis and Corallorhiza striata var. striata). The former we found in only one location and there only one spike, the other we found in quite a few locations and in one area around a dozen spikes, all of them fresh and newly opened.
Striped Coralroot
I have to go into work tomorrow and figured I would visit Larabee and the area south and east of there along the new trail system.
ReplyDeleteThat is the first place I ever saw Striata.
The Striped Coralroots will probably be done or close to it in the area of Larrabee, though we found one perfect spiked at Sehome. That, by the way, is by WWU and is a decent place for a walk. If you poke around in the woods, I'm sure there were more C. striata. The mosquitos were bad there, though. As to the area south, the Oyster Dome trail always has some C. maculata.
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