Ten Taypo and Hope Creek Loop

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

(Map link.)

After returning to the Rhododendron Trail the previous week to see how the budding parasitic plants were getting on, but missing most of them, I prepared a little more to find them and returned. I noted the actual locations I found the plants, then for good measure checked out where everyone else had been finding monotropes (that is, subfamily Monotropoideae, which includes snowplant) around the park. I'm less interested in the wintergreens (genus Pyrola) or the other wintergreens (genus Chimaphila), but there were plenty of more interesting points left. They seemed to cluster around the Hope Creek Trail. That was a nice find. I'd rather not do the same trail three times in a month. I need variety! And since I've done Hope Creek in the past year, I elected to change the direction and loop counter-clockwise. It may delay the gratification, but will be a little different experience.

Of course, there's a whole lot of redwoods big and small.

Details of the salal as it goes to seed.

The rhododendrons start up very quickly and are still blooming.

They are on the downhill slope, past their prime, now.

As I've never geocached for plants, I thought a little about what to expect. In actual geocaching, someone makes a great effort to get the correct coordinates. In this, the coordinates are not so carefully obtained. Thinking about my own: I match up pictures to a track based on time. Hopefully, I have the correct offset to compensate for the inaccuracy of that set time. If not, the actual point will be shifted along the path somewhere. These show up on iNaturalist with no accuracy information and I had a few other points that were the same. They could easily be a couple hundred feet off. Other points claimed to be within a few meters of the actual place. I suspected these came from devices that could get a location directly. Also, that these would be underestimating how far off they might be. I have regularly watched a device jump around by 30 feet while claiming 12 foot accuracy. Then there's some claiming accuracy of a few kilometers. These were probably set manually by a user from memory and they may have been very sloppy about that range. All of this works against actually finding the plant, however there is one really important thing working for me. Everything that has been marked is probably visible from the trail.

Still loads of leopard lilies hanging, bright and happy, with plenty more coming.

I actually came to the first point before the intersection. This one was marked with accuracy of 158 meters and... I came up with nothing. This particular one would have been a species I hadn't seen, and I still haven't seen it. So not an auspicious start. I took the right at the junction. I was moving quite slowly, trying to examine all the nearby underbrush and remember to take in the majesty of the redwood trees.

These redwood trees.

Some more redwood trees.

New redwood trees, barely bigger than the (very tall) rhododendrons, too.

And there are so very many lilies along the trail.

And then I came upon a hillside looking rather barren except for quite a lot of funny looking plants sticking up out of the dirt. They weren't anything I had marked in the GPS, not that it matters. What matters is what is actually there. No delayed gratification after all. Victory!

A few of many California pinefoot.

Some of the specimens were on the tall side for this plant.

There's the littlest bit of fuzz on the petals.

More flowers just stretching out, looking for pollination.

I tried to interest a pair of kids in the odd little flowers, but they weren't having any of it. Then along came a group talking of keys and pointing out the fuzz and also there for those particular flowers. They left the other direction with hints that there would be another sort of similar flower somewhere on the loop, off to the CREA Trail to find ghost pipes. I continued on the other way and promptly found another cluster. Double victory!

More California pinefoot, one just starting out.

Close up on some top flowers, which seem to be likely to have 5 petals while other flowers are likely to have 4.

More of them, going strong.

Okay, so they were the same victory over again and I was actually looking for more than one species of flower. Still nice to find. I eventually got going up the hill. I found that this climb seems more gentle than the one on Hope Creek.

The bog wintergreen is another monotrope, although it has a few green leaves around the base to get a little of its own food.

And all along the way, there are spots choked with leopard lilies.

I got to the top where a post marks the continuation of trail without noting the change from Ten Taypo to Hope Creek. I hadn't found any more flowers on my wish list. With my day not filled with plans, I gave continuing down the old road away from the maintained trail a chance. There does seem to be a channel that someone is keeping open. Seeing that no one has cleared the moss off any spot on a big log crossing it, that someone is probably not humans. Maybe it's the elk that the people talking of keys said would come by eventually at top all the delightful lilies.

Admittedly, it is not very open, but there is a brushy track to walk along the old road.

I looked out over more tall, blooming rhododendrons while lunching on the log, then went back to maintained trail. I missed out on a few more locations noted to have goal flowers, but with ridiculously large accuracy estimates.

Trail follows what was once an improved (with gravel) road. Now it is lined with lilies.

Still a few rhododendrons that are in prime blooming form.

Pretty big trees.

I was getting closer to a cluster of points, some with reasonable accuracy estimates. I'd been looking a lot, but started looking even more around the duff for interesting flowers. I just came up with some corralroot.

Pacific corralroot is parasitic, but an orchid rather than a monotrope.

The squirrel said "hi" and "get going".

Then, well past the point and probably by a different point, I finally found something. Something a little different from the first. Something on my list of hopeful sightings. Victory again!

A small collection of fringed pinesap plants.

A little closer look at these flowers.

I headed down and although I continued to look for either more of the same or the one last flower on my list, I found no more.

There's plenty of rhododendrons still to see.

*photo album*




©2021 Valerie Norton
Written 19 Jul 2021