Streptopus Lanceolatus, Rosy Twisted-Stalk

Day 258: Rosy Twisted-Stalk (Streptopus lanceolatus) doesn't seem to be as abundant these days as it was thirty or forty years ago, at least not in the areas which I commonly hike. This, of course, is anchored in purely personal recollection, and therefore subject to question as an actual record, but I am attuned to this kind of thing and trust my memory when it comes to plant phenology. There have been no suggestions that the species is moving toward "threatened" or "endangered" status, only a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there should be more of it in this "pocket ecology" or that. Is it truly in decline, or is my mental database losing its integrity? Unfortunately, my "notebook" has long been maintained solely between my ears, with the occasional photograph to support it. This is just one of the lessons I've come to appreciate in my advancing years: "If only I'd known then what I know now" or as it is sometimes stated, "Hindsight is so much clearer than foresight." Streptopus has taught me that, but rather too late to do anything about it.

Finding Rosy

Day 232: When Team Biota first started working with the Park's former Plant Ecologist, he tasked us with finding both rarities and plants which occurred in "non-Biek" locations, i.e., sites not listed in David Biek's "Flora of Mount Rainier National Park." We far outstripped his expectations, bringing him documentation of numerous species throughout the years of his tenure. Arnie is retired now, but Team Biota is still hard at work.

During an early-season survey last spring, we encountered a single specimen of Rosy Twisted-Stalk (Streptopus lanceolatus) and took appropriate photos, but both Joe and I failed to GPS-mark the coordinates because at the time, we didn't realize it was in an unrecorded spot. When we reported it to Arnie, we had to admit we'd both dismissed it as nothing special, so the following week, we went back, thinking we'd remember where we'd seen it. As things turned out, we spent the next several weeks combing the area for a flower, a leaf, a bitten-off stem...anything to prove that little Rosy wasn't a figment of our combined imaginations. We found nothing, not a trace, and 2018 concluded without evidence of the plant's presence, so as soon as the snow melted back from the site this year, we began searching anew. Today, we found our elusive prey and, with the gods of botany smiling benevolently on our diligence, we not only located our original specimen but a second, larger population as well.