One of the best things about receiving a gift of a book like Plants and Animals of Mount Rainier and the Cascades is that it makes you realize how many flowers you have never seen, or, at least, have never taken a picture of. That, in turn, encourages you to start paying more attention than you have before. None of the flowers pictured here standout like the flowers in the previous entry. Several of them are found at lower elevations in dense forest and are easy to overlook unless you are looking for them.
Although this Mountain Daisy was easy to identify, it was a single flower in a bed of lupine and Indian Paintbrush.
Sometimes you find plants/flowers you’ve never seen before, but instead of identifying them quickly you’re left wondering if they’re really what you think they might be. For instance, looking through the book I thought this was probably a Pine Sap, a flower I’m sure I’ve never seen before.
This looked quite different from the picture in the book, but an online search revealed a photo that looked exactly like this, so if whoever posted it identified it correctly it must be a Pine Sap.
I had some of the same problems identifying this flower. These are salal flowers, as noted by Mike and Brighid.
I’ve seen this flower
quite a few times before but didn’t remember it was called Penstemon until I looked it up in the book. If I look it up three more times I might remember its name when I see it again.
I might have seen this flower before
but i’m sure I’ve never heard the name Sitka Valerian before.
I also discovered this very small flower (the picture is at least two times its actual size)
by a hot springs, but was unable to find it in the book, or anywhere else for that matter.
Beginning flower-watching reminds me of beginning birdwatching where you spend more time trying to find the name of species than you do actually finding them. Still, it adds another dimension to something I love doing so it’s hard to complain.