This delicate flower is about 1/2 inch across.
Bill was walking on opening weekend of deer season, August 14, 2010, deep in the coyote brush in South Flat, about 30 feet from Holmes' fence. Being the alert hunter he is, he was looking down on the ground and saw a flower stalk, about three feet high, with a hundred white blossoms on it. This is the Rancho Hondo Orchid Mom saw about 20 years ago in Zweng Pass! It is the Elegant Piperia.
Piperia elegans is a monocot (first leaf out of the seed is a single leaf with parallel veins; most plants are dicots, have two leaves sprout first from the seed, and the leaf veins are branched), a species of orchid known by several common names, including elegant piperia, coast piperia, hillside rein orchid, and hillside bogorchid. This is a showy flowering plant native to western North America. It grows from a caudex tuber and in the fall sends up a thick stem just under a meter in maximum height. The stem is topped with a cylindrical spike inflorescence of densely packed flowers with 1.3 cm curving white to greenish-yellow petals. Coastal individuals are noticeably thicker and have more flowers than those that grow further inland; it is uncertain if these are variants, subspecies, or even separate species. They are both currently treated as P. elegans. Other species of Piperia, notably the endangered species P. yadonii are quite similar in appearance to some populations of this species.Plant is found growing terrestrially in the coniferous forest and coastal buffs of Oregon, California, and British Colombia at elevations of 500 to 700 meters
A close-up of the flower spike.
 |
 |
The flower spike is about three feet tall. Note how close it is to the brush. |
The leaves are whithered and brown when the flower stalk grows. (Just to the left of the stalk is a cut-down coffeeberry) |
http://orchids.wikia.com/wiki/Piperia_elegans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piperia_elegans