Natural History Wanderings

Oregon Wildflowers has two new posts for Coyote Wall in the Columbia River Gorge for 3/17/16

1. We hiked to the top of Coyote Wall then loop east and back to do a figure eight. Almost 8 miles of glorious spring wildflowers and lots of water running. We counted 27 different flowers. The yellow bells are magnificent this year and the show of grass widows above is quite striking yet. Others we saw were Pungent Desert Parsley,Broomrape,Prairie Stars,Gold Stars, Shooting Stars,Yellow Monkeyflower,Oaks Toothwort,Fiddlehead,Columbia Desert Parsley,Buttercups,Big Head Clover,Vetch,Glacier Lilly(1),Salt&Prpper,Meadow Hemophila,West Saxifrage,Bittercrest,Blue Eyed Mary,Popcorn Flower,Bracted Verbena,Balsamroot,Filaree,Bigroot and Whitlow Grass.

2. several dozen varieties of wildflowers . In particular, they note that the combination of yellow bells and grass widows is stunning.
The grass widows are past peak at lower elevations but still in full bloom at higher elevations, so there is still time to see them before they are finished for the season.