RHH's photos with the keyword: anderson lake state park

Anderson Lake State Park is on the northeast end of the Olympic Peninsula, not far from Olympic National Park. It is a popular fishing lake but closed at present due to toxic algae. We went not to fish but to see the wildflowers when we were on the Olympic Peninsula.

This is one of my wife's photos and I believe it's a frond of the Bracken Fern, Pteridium aquilinum, photographed at Anderson Lake State Park on the Olympic Peninsula. This was one of the best photos from our visit to the park, at least I thought so.

We went on a hike with the Washington Native Orchid Society April 24th at Anderson Lake State Park on the Olympic Peninsula. We went to see these native orchids in bloom, but saw a number of other interesting flowers as well. This native orchid is known as the Western Fairy Slipper and is different from the Eastern Fairy Slipper in that the hairs on the lip are white, not yellow, the color is a darker pink, and the front lobe of the lip is heavily spotted in brown. Two photos of the eastern variety are shown below, along with another older photo of this variety. Though these are known as the western variety, their range often overlaps with the other variety and occasionally they hybridize. We found about two dozen of them growing in shaded but open, rather dry wooded locations around the lake. This was published in the April, 2011, issue of Orchids, the magazine of the American Orchid Society, in an article titled "Taking Aim."

We were looking for native orchids on our recent hike at Anderson Lake State Park, especially Fairy Slippers, but found these rare and unusual plants, called Vancouver Groundcones (Boschniakia hookeri). These plants, which belong to the broomrape family, are parasitic but grow on the root of only one plant, Gaultheria shallon (Salal). They penetrate the roots with rootlike extensions called haustoria and draw their nutrients from the host plant in that way. These plants have no chlorophyll and look very much like a three to five inch yellow pinecone standing up on end. This particular example is in bloom.

This flower was photographed on a sunny hillside near Anderson Lake in the State Park of that name on April 24th on a hike with the Washington Native Orchid Society.

Photographed in shady woodlands near Anderson Lake in the State Park of that name on April 24th on a hike with the Washington Native Orchid Society.

Photographed in the woods near Anderson Lake in the State Park of that name on April 24th on a hike with the Washington Native Orchid Society.