RHH's photos with the keyword: californicum

These are the berries of Desert Mistletoe, photographed along the trail to Lost Palms Oasis in Joshua Tree National Park.

This is the orchid we were looking for on the California-Oregon border. It has a very limited range in northern California and southern Oregon and grows in wet areas with a serpentine substrate. It is threatened by illegal collecting and by loss of habitat.

The California Lady's Slipper grows to four feet (120 cm tall) and has numerous flowers. These were photographed in northern California, but it also grows in the Siskyou region of southern Oregon.

This is the California Lady's Slipper, a native of northern California and southern Oregon. It grows to four feet (120 cm) tall and has numerous flowers.

This is a closeup of the strange habit of a strange parasitic plant, Desert Mistletoe. We found it in several different places in Joshua Tree National Park.

This is the Desert Mistletoe forming a huge clump on another tree and probably in the process of killing it. Mistletoe is parasitic and weakens and often kills its host.

Several times on our hikes in Joshua Tree National Park we encountered this strange plant which we recognized as a Mistletoe and later identified as the Desert Mistletoe. Mistletoe is a parasite and in this case was growing on an old Juniper.

This tiny butterfly was photographed in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. It is the tiniest butterfly in the world and a common insect in the western USA. It is expanding its range, too, reaching as far a Hawaii and the Persian Gulf. Here it is perched on the flowers of the Desert Mistletoe.

Another of my wife's photos, taken in a natural area along the Columbia River. The butterfly is the California Hairstreak, Satyrium californicum. I was looking for a rare orchid but could better have spent my time photographing butterflies as she did since I found nothing.

As the name suggests, this Lady's Slipper is found primarily in California. It ranges from the north of that state into southern Oregon and is not found in Washington at all. It is a serpentine endemic, growing only in serpentine soils, soils that have high concentrations of heavy metals from the weathering of serpentine rock. It is often found growing with another serpentine loving plant, the carnivorous Cobra Lily. It is a tall plant and is often found with upwards of fifteen flowers on a stem and the flowers range from this greenish color to yellow. These were photographed in northern California. nativeorchidsofthepacificnorthwest.blogspot.com/2012/07/three-native-orchids-in-northern.html

Cypripedium californicum is one of our rarer native orchids and does not grow in Washington State, but only in a very limited area of southern Oregon and northern California. It is also one of the most interesting of the native Lady's Slippers, first because it grows only in serpentine areas (serpentine is a green and black rock rich in heavy metals like nickel and cadmium), and second, because it can bear as many as twenty flowers on a flower spike. The plant grows to about four feet tall and the individual flowers are around two inches in size. They are often found growing with a carnivorous plant, the Cobra Lily, Darlingtonia californica, and are usually in wet seepage areas, just where we found them along a Forest Service road near the California-Oregon border. They do not all have the pink color around the opening of the pouch. and the flower color varies from the bronze-green color of these flowers to a yellowish-green. ronaldhanko-orchidhunter.blogspot.com/2012/08/orchid-hunt... nativeorchidsofthepacificnorthwest.blogspot.com/2012/07/t... nativeorchidsofthepacificnorthwest.blogspot.com/2012/07/c...