Pictures of the Week. 6.15.13

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006, Upper Skagit River watershed. It took me almost a day and a half of walking to get to this spot. Almost a day of this walking was off trail bashing through thick brush and getting my hands and forearms scratched and filled with thorns. 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. Sunset from a spot near where the previous photo was taken. 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. Day 2 of a four day trip. 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. Day 3 of a four day trip. 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. Day 3 of a four day trip. The boulder perched near the top of the waterfall is well over 5 feet tall. 

Somewhere in North Cascades National Park, summer 2006. Day 3 of a 4 day trip. The "stripes" on the mountain are dikes or sills. Dikes and sills are formed when superheated water carrying dissolved minerals are injected into cracks in the rock. As the water cools, the minerals in solution, in this case probably mostly quartz, precipitate out leaving a deposit. Dikes form in vertical cracks and sills form in horizontal cracks. The reason I don't say whether these "stripes" are definitely either dikes or sills is that I don't know. These mountains have experienced so much folding that the deposits pictured may originally have been horizontal now moving to vertical or vice versa. 

Naked broomrape (Orobanche uniflora). This plant is completely parasitic. The leaves around the flowering stem are saxifrage leaves. The broomrape is feeding off the saxifrage plants as it has no leaves of its own and cannot produce its own food. 

Naked broomrape (Orobanche uniflora). This photo was taken in the mountains but it is also common on the beach. 

Common butterwort (Pinguicula vulgaris). This plant grows in wet areas.  It is insectivorous, meaning it eats insects. This is how the plant to obtains important nutrients that are not available in wet areas which are typically nutrient poor. The little black dots on the leaves are gnats that get caught in a sticky substance on the leaf surface. Once an insect is trapped, the leaf curls up around it and digests it. Apparently, only smaller insects are vulnerable to this plant as I have seen ants walk across the leaves without even slowing down, though you could see the sticky substance on the leaves clinging to the ant's legs as they walked. 

I have often found this plant in seeps on rock walls. Sometimes I have seen them in small sphagnum type wetlands formed around seeps on flat ground but I have not seen them in larger wetlands, though this does not mean that they are not there.