#PNW native plants

[pnwnativeplants]

[mylifeinpixels]

Day hike grid

Lava plug rock formation 🪨

[pamietniko]

Cascadia ♥

Washington

[organicmatter]

my bleeding heart is very happy

[360nw]

Foxglove - Lincoln County, Oregon - February 2017

[whiskeyote]

Garden 2024 Pt. 1 (Early May)

[leeskic]

A few more from my rainy hike in the gorge yesterday 🌲💕

[akitadruid]

[coyote-mints]

Oregon sunshine (eriophyllum lanatum ‘Siskiyou’) in my garden

[dreamweavindaisy]

20x16 oil on canvas rainforest waterfall

[pnwnativeplants]

From Ranier National Park (Tahoma)

Ever wonder why subalpine vegetation is a little more sensitive to footsteps than the plants on your trails at home? Why are park employees so passionate about keeping visitors on trail even when it appears that they’re just stepping on dirt? Let’s get down to the root of things…

The beautiful & diverse vegetation you see is adapted to survive the harsh subalpine environment and has a limited growing season. Small and long-lived, these plants grow in dense patches to withstand the elements, over centuries merging to form lush subalpine meadows. Because they are covered in snow 9 months of the year, subalpine plants have a short period to grow, flower, pollinate and produce seeds. Can you imagine the stress you’d be working under with that kind of timeline? Now add in a million people crowding you on top of that. What might seem like a harmless step off trail has a greater impact than you might think.

It takes ~40,000+ plants and 2+ months to restore a small fraction of the damage that's been done from stepping off trail. Even then, it will take well over 10 years for the landscape to start mirroring what it once was. In a less heavily visited environment the vegetation could reseed itself, but our plants rarely have the chance to try. The harsh reality is that, if you are off trail, you are stepping on fragile vegetation or a bare patch of ground where a meadow is trying to regrow beneath your feet. This trampling causes nutrient loss in the soil and erosion that permanently impacts plant growth.

An increase in visitation means more people enjoying the outdoors, but also a greater impact to our fragile meadows. It can be easy to overlook the extraordinary lives of the vegetation at Mount Rainier, but educating others on what makes these plants unique is an important step in preventing meadow damage and encouraging everyone to stay on trail. It doesn't take much to destroy a meadow but can take a lifetime to bring one back.

NPS Photos showing before and after restoration projects at Paradise and Cougar Rock Campground, employees transporting plants in wheelbarrows, sorting plants, and volunteers planting at Paradise. ~ab/kl

[mylifeinpixels]

Pale Swallowtail 💗

[littlespacecaseart]

Before and after two and a half hours of adding line weight Dx

[organicmatter]

Trillium ovatum - photo by me

[friskeebiz]

[scottspencer4011]

TREEEEES!