The Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion of SW Oregon and northern-most California contains some of the most diverse wildflower and serpentine plant habitats found anywhere on earth. See below for plant list. At the heart of the region is the Kalmiopsis Wilderness area. Due to major portions of the area’s predominant serpentine rock base--with exposed iron oxide, lateritic soil types -- this area, including Rough and Ready Creek, was once aptly described by conservation advocate Kelpie Wilson as Oregon’s “red rock rainforest." Indeed, people visiting the area for the first time quickly discover that this area looks quite unlike any other place they have ever been to in Oregon. Due to its particular geology and geographic location, the area's overall character has the unusual combination of both forests and wetlands, mixed with elements of desert landscape habitats.
|
|
The more interior “Kalmiopsis area” (whose name sake is a small, endemic, red, Rhododendron like wildflower) is a Congressionally protected Wilderness area. However, the vast majority of the Kalmiopsis’ “wilderness-like” surrounding federal lands are by no means similarly protected. The region’s pockets of old growth forests--gracing stream side benches and on other more moisture retaining soils—are still threatened by road construction and commercial logging. However, by far the greatest threat to the area’s ecological integrity are proposals to forever change the Klamath-Siskiyou’s present wilderness-like character with the extraction of mineral deposits such as chromium, silver, nickel and cobalt that multi-national corporations now advocate be entered and removed on an industrial style scale.
Rough and Ready Creek—an exemplary portion of the whole
One of the most easily accessible portions if the south Kalmiopsis, and one of the “crown-jewels” in the greater Klamath-Siskiyou region, is the Rough and Ready Creek watershed –a tributary of the Illinois River, and ultimately the Rogue River. The greater Rough and Ready Creek area has the highest plant diversity of any watershed in Oregon.
Rough and Ready Creek offers easily accessible exploration of the region’s remarkable botanical and wildflower diversity. It is also an easy jumping off place on the way to the redwood coast and other places in the broader Klamath Siskiyou Mt. range. Here you can easily stop and take a stroll beginning at a small Oregon State Park known as the Rough and Ready Creek “Wayside”.
Unquestionably the most accessible gateway to the greater Rough and Ready watershed, this botanically diverse, “forested-desert” is located just off Hwy. 199 about 4.5 miles south of Cave Junction, SW of Grants Pass, Oregon.
Rough and Ready Creek and the ongoing botanical quest to learn all of what is there
Impressed with the Rough and Ready areas unique natural and botanical diversity, numerous professional and amateur botanists over the decades have sought to identify, name, and catalog the varied wildflower and plant species that live and bloom in the greater Rough and Ready Creek area. Over the years, this has resulted in the development of a variety of independently produced plant species lists. A comprehensive plant list specific to the entire Rough and Ready watershed has been generally lacking or otherwise out-of-date due to new research resulting in names changes, differences in previously published botanical floras, and associated references.
In a previous, and noteworthy attempt to help remedy this situation, the Native Plant Society of Oregon in 1994 published in their outstanding “Kalmiopsis” journal as a description of the area by Darren Borgias, which included a extensive list of area plants compiled by long time Rough and Ready conservation and wild land enthusiast Barbara Ullian.
|
|
Conservation organizations and the public, which have long advocated for Rough and Ready areas’ full protection, have endeavored to learn all that is here. Oregon Wild thus greatly appreciates the previous contributions that numerous botanists, naturalists and others have made over the years to further document and describe Rough and Ready Creek’s diverse plant species—thus contributing to humanity’s greater natural history and scientific knowledge of this remarkable area, and, of course, making our recent compilation of their previous works, possible.
Compliling all of the known Rough and Ready plant lists previously compiled
Thus, with the past efforts of previous “compilers” Oregon Wild has recently compiled (and conducted our own botanical investigations) at Rough and Ready Creek. Attached here is a 2015 revision of previous Rough and Ready lists. This 2015 compilation is our most thorough attempt to assemble one master species list, in hopes that it can be referenced and expanded upon now by others. A second list (same species) is in a one column format, where some of the species are bolded. These the species found near the 34 mile post in the immediate area of the Rough and Ready Wayside off of Hwy. 199.
|
|
|
|
Much of this task was not just the gathering of other prior Rough and Ready plant species lists, but the additional time-consuming effort of reviewing and updating the scientific nomenclature for all of the previously listed scientific names. Plants are arranged in these updated lists by their most recently established (or revised) plant family names as also most recently adopted by OSU and the Oregon Flora Project.
Also, the common names (which are, of course, not standardized) are also included opposite the most recently accepted scientific names. In addition, previous (no longer accepted) scientific names as contained on previous lists are also noted in parentheses.
While Oregon Wild’s newly compiled comprehensive list is for species located throughout the entire, multi-thousand acre watershed, species names that are bolded in the text have been specifically identified within the adjacent Rough and Ready Wayside State Park area. Like most other plant species lists, this one too is a “work and progress,” knowing that other species will likely be discovered and added by ourselves and others over time.
|
|
