Kniphofia on Mt. Hood?
Jane McGary (Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:52:30 PST)

Ellen asked,

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