Mystery Flora: Rosario Bloom

The problem with putting together posts like this is that they make me itch for summer. Right now, it’s butt-ass freezing cold (by Pacific Northwest standards), peeing down rain, and the whole region seems permanently cloud-locked. Wah.

For you, my darlings. For you, I’ll torment myself. Besides, I’ve just hit Chapter Three, “The Coast Range Episode,” in Evolution of the Pacific Northwest, and it’s nice to look at these rocks again with a slightly better understanding of their context. Still. Suffering. Wanna get out and play – and find you more mystery flora before we run out.

This solo plant enchanted me. There’s a portion of the head that overlooks Rosario Bay that’s been stripped of soil. It’s just bare rock, contorted into wild shapes by the forces of colliding plates, overlooking the tide pools. A few determined plants cling to cracks here and there. And there was this delicate peach-colored flower (or remnants of a flower – I’m not sure we didn’t come upon it after most of its bloom was gone). It’s ethereal, ghostly, a hint of subdued color amongst the dark rock.

Mystery Peach Flower 1

It looks vaguely like Mount Hood Pussypaws, but the leaves are completely different. Also, not red, but that doesn’t mean anything, considering we may only be looking at the echoes of a bloom.

Mystery Peach Flower 2

I love finding things like this. There’s something about the scrappy little survivors clinging to a cliff that makes me cheer. Life, they say, will hang on wherever it can, no matter how difficult the conditions. And plants like these don’t rudely hide the geology. They merely enhance its aesthetic value.

Mystery Peach Flower 3

Those damned lichens, on the other hand…

Anyway, there’s your mystery flora, my darlings. Those of you who want to see more of Rosario can visit here and here for more pictures of the rocks and a focus on the geology of the area, which is truly wild. I’ll leave you now with a lovely ocean view, taken from a vantage point that’s practically on top of these flowers’ heads. At our feet is the cliff to which they cling. Before us, the San Juans and the sea.

Rosario

You see now why I’m chafing for summer. Oy.

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Mystery Flora: Rosario Bloom
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10 thoughts on “Mystery Flora: Rosario Bloom

  1. 1

    Armeria maritima, sea pink, in typical habitat on barren sea bluffs. Funny fl. color though, they’re usually more purple in my experience.

    BTW — They now sell these in pots at the garden shop for use I home landscaping.

  2. 5

    Lovely pics. I always say one needs at least a botanist, a geologist/geomorphologist, and a climatologist on hand at all times when one is out-of-doors, tho even they can be occasionally stumped with some of nature’s many adaptations and presentations.

  3. 9

    Winter is quite good in its way though. I was at Golden Gardens yesterday with the cold and wind and rain – but it’s beautiful, up at the north end where few people go in that kind of weather. Stormy, dramatic…It’s good.

  4. 10

    I am teh suck at bird photography, and most of the ones I’ve shot are so dead-easy to identify even a nimrod like me can do it. I’ll see what I can do for you over the course of the next few adventures, and if I come across any decent unknown bird photos in the meantime, I’ll get ’em up there for ye.

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