Kniphofia on Mt. Hood?

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:52:30 PST
Ellen asked,

>Jane - do tell more about this Kniphofia colony on Mt. Hood - species or
>hybrid?  And do people commonly truck their garden waste up to Mt. Hood?
>Sounds like a deliberate introduction to me..

I don't know what it is, apparently just the usual "red hot poker" of old 
gardens. It's up above the Clackamas River drainage and I was told about it 
by a Forest Service botanist. It isn't actually on Mt. Hood -- the Mt. Hood 
National Forest extends far beyond the mountain itself and is logged and 
used for various kinds of "recreation" (i.e. off-road ATVs) not permitted 
on Mt. Hood itself. The plant may have got there through dumping, which is 
a problem around here, or we also speculated it may have been introduced by 
heavy equipment that had been used to grade an old garden, and then brought 
up to work on forest roads. This is how the horrible Scotch broom gets 
spread wherever logging occurs. There's a single Rhododendron macrophyllum 
in a logging area behind my own property that I think must have arrived via 
bulldozer, because this is below the normal elevational limit for that species.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA



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