The Inevitable

So I recently made my obligatory early-summer trip to the Gold Creek trail! I will start with close-ups and move on to landscapes.

First up is a cool flower that I found in the forest. It was pretty small and I almost missed it; I only noticed it as I was packing up from taking a different picture. It's Western coralroot (or Pacific coralroot), which I've seen referred to as Corallorhiza maculata ssp. mertensiana, or just Corallorhiza mertensiana. (And there are others. Seriously. Sometimes plants seem to have almost as many scientific names as common names!)

Coralroots are interesting because they are saprophytes - instead of producing food and energy via photosynthesis, they derive it from dead and decaying organic matter. Hence saprophytes generally lack green leaves (i.e. chlorophyll).

Below is a bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) flower. I've noticed that they often grow alongside, or among, deer fern (Blechnum spicant). I don't know whether this is just because they prefer similar environments, or because they have some sort of special relationship. Regardless, I wanted an image that showed the two growing together. Below is my best result: you can see the leaves of deer fern in the background. I used f/11 to achieve this effect; wider apertures would have obscured the shape of the fern leaves.

Here's another look at bunchberry, with a couple old-ish trees in the background. Since I was at a reasonable distance from the flowers, I was able to open up to f/4 and still get enough shape in the background.

Below is some sort of spring-beauty or miner's lettuce. I found them growing on a rock and held the camera very low to achieve this shot. In this instance, I used f/4.2, which was as wide as my lens would let me at this focusing distance, to blur the out-of-focus flowers as much as possible. I think this one has a somewhat surreal aesthetic.

Below is youth-on-age (Tolmiea menziesii). I've done closeups of these before, but this one is better. The very selective-focus appearance notwithstanding, I stopped down a bit to f/5 to get more of the foreground flower in focus.

The next flower is one I haven't yet identified. I suspect it might be a speedwell of some sort (genus Veronica). This one was very small and I was very close to it, so I used f/5.6 to get more detail in the foreground.

On to some landscapes. Below is a view down to Gold Creek with some fern (bracken fern, I think) in the foreground. I put the tripod down below the level of the ferns for this perspective. I used f/29 to get everything in focus as much as possible.

Below are two views across the valley, with vine maple in the foreground. I really liked how colorful the vine maples were, as they were covered with red seed pods. I am not sure which orientation I like better, so I am posting both. The vertical one is a bit busy; the horizontal one is better on this count but doesn't have much going on in the center. F/29 and f/25, respectively, to get everything in focus.

Finally, a little meadow of Sitka valerian (Valeriana sitchensis). F/22 to get everything in focus. I used my wide-angle lens and got fairly close to the flowers in order to achieve a better sense of depth.