Introduction

             Although there does not appear to be a clear consensus at this time, I think there are 9 plants that are endemic to the Olympic Mountains of Washington State.  Other sources I have found say 8 to 14, but I have found what I think are reliable sources listing 9 plants with their names.  This blog is dedicated to those lucky 9.

            Calling something endemic means that it is found only within the specified geographic area.  An organism can be endemic to the Mojave Desert or North America.  Islands are particularly prone to having endemic organisms.  Due to their isolation, the Hawaiian Islands have many such plants, birds, and even a marine mammal and a bat.  Isolation and the resulting difficulties communicating with similar populations is the key to creating a unique species in a particular location.  Take the endemic Olympic marmot.  Its nearest relatives are the Hoary Marmot in the Cascade Mountains and the Vancouver Marmot on Vancouver Island.  The Cascades and Vancouver Island are not too far away from the Olympic high-country where the Olympic Marmot lives.  You could easily travel from one to the other if you had wings, like a bald eagle, or long legs, like an elk.  However, if you have short legs, do not like to swim or run through dense forests, and are a tasty treat, it has been very difficult if not impossible to reach your marmot cousins for thousands of years.  In that time, the three types of marmots have genetically drifted apart and can now be considered separate species.  If you happen to be a plant with no legs and your seeds do not disperse very far, it can be even more difficult to cross breed with cousins across the Straits of Juan De Fuca or the Puget Lowland.

 

            There are two scenarios for how endemic plants come to be.  The first is that they were part of a larger population on the mainland but the isolated individuals were all that survived some event, like an ice age.  The second is that an isolated population adapted to slightly different conditions and so evolved into a separate species.

 

            You may have noted that several of the Olympic endemic plants are subspecies or even varieties of subspecies.  This brings up the question of what a species is.  In general, individuals may be considered the same species if they can produce viable offspring.  One of the great, and maddening, things about biology is that it does not follow rules very well.  Take the example of the domestic dog, Canis lupus familiarus.  You can clearly see that a domestic dog is different from a wolf, Canis lupus, and yet they can interbreed.  So the dog is considered a subspecies of the wolf.  However, within the group of domestic dog, you have Great Danes and Chihuahuas.  Both are considered the same species but their size difference makes interbreeding rare.  Should they be considered the same species?  A Great Dane can interbreed with a Labrador Retriever.  A Labrador Retriever can interbreed with a Beagle.  A Beagle can interbreed with a Dachshund.  And a Dachshund can interbreed with a Chihuahua.  However, a Great Dane and a Chihuahua will not naturally interbreed but their difficulties are physics and logistics rather than biology.  There are several wild organisms that can follow a similar series where each step of the series can interbreed but the end members cannot.   

Additionally, in biologist circles, there are splitters and groupers.  Splitters point to every variability within a population and say it is significant and denotes a new species or subspecies.  Groupers ignore the differences as insignificant and lump a great deal of variety together as a single species.  Molecular biology and DNA studies are helping to decide between the two sets of biologists.  So what are we to make of the species, subspecies, variety debate between biologists?  Two things, first, let the biologists argue it out and hope they let us know what they decide (it may take a while). Second, biological consensus changes.  New studies find new evidence that two populations are the same or find that they are different.  This list is not THE FINAL word on Olympic endemics.  I am not in a position to debate which of these plants deserve to be their own species or subspecies here.  I will rely on the biological community to determine this and attempt to use reliable sources.

1. Piper's bellflower, Campanula piperi

 

Blooms July to August

Found in cracks in bedrock in subalpine to alpine zones.

Frequently found in conjuction with Flett’s violet.  The bellflower tends to bloom later but they to overlap.

            The first of the endemics that I identified in the field, I was introduced to this small member of the harebell family after reading that “a person must spend a good bit of time in the alpine Olympics and do some searching, and have some luck, to spot the rare and lovely – and due to a very restricted growing area, endangered – Piper’s bellflower”.  I thought that I was such a person or at least was trying to be such a person.  It may have been more an issue of knowing what to look for since, soon after reading this, I almost put my hand on one while inching my way along a rock face trying to avoid a thick mat of mountain hemlock between Tull Canyon and Silver Lake.  I was slightly separated from my group, although I could easily hear them, and didn’t have much time to do much else besides get a few photos and be really excited.
 

            Although the bellflower usually has 5 petals, I have seen anywhere from 4 to 7 petals on a single flower.

The color is usually a light blue but it does range from dark blue to white.  The leaves are elongated with small teeth along the edges.  The entire plant is only an inch or 2 tall.  I find them huddled in cracks in bedrock in the alpine zone from the southeast corner of the Olympics up the east side of the mountains to the northeast corner and then west to about the north-central.

They may be growing farther west but I have not seen them there yet.

2. Flett's violet, Viola flettii

Blooms June to July

Found in cracks in bedrock, occasionally on talus slopes in subalpine to alpine zones

Frequently found in conjunction with Piper’s bellflower but tends to bloom sooner but they do overlap.

Flett's violet (left) and Piper's bellflower (right) side by side with the violet already bloomed and the bellflower not yet showing its buds.  Whenever I find a Flett's violet, I look around for Piper’s bellflower and vice versa.  They seem to hang out in the same outcrops and cracks.  They are not always found together but they do enough of the time that it is worth it to check around.

             I think the violet that is most likely to be confused with Flett’s violet is the Hook violet (Viola adunca).  The two violets look somewhat similar and, although Flett’s is more in the alpine, their habitats can be very close.  The easiest way to tell them apart is the color of the center of the flower.  Flett’s is yellow and Hook is white.

            The leaves are frequently called kidney-sized, but I’d say they are more heart-shaped.  We agree that the leaves are dark green with purple veins, and finely scalloped (or maybe serrated) edges.  The flowers are lavender to reddish purple with yellow in the center.  The petals can also have darker purple veins.

3. Olympic rockmat (Henderson's rock spirea), Petrophytum hendersonii

Blooms July to August

Found in bedrock cracks and talus slopes although I have not yet found any in talus.

 

            The Olympic rockmat appears to be closely related to the Tufted rockmat (P. caespitosum) but there is no overlap between the ranges of these cousins.  The Olympic is, of course, found only in the Olympic mountains while the Tufted is found in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains of eastern Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and points to the south and east.  Additionally, the leaves of the Olympic rockmat has three veins underneath while the Tufted has only one vein, and the Olympic has 35 to 40 stamens in each flower group compared to the Tufted having about 20 stamens. 

            This plant is also only a few inches tall.  The woody stems are densely covered with paddle-shaped hairy (top and bottom) leaves.  There is frequently a gap of approximately 1 inch between the top of the leaves and the bottom of the flowers.  The tiny flowers are in a conical cluster about 1 inch long looking not unlike a off-white cotton ball.  Multiple clusters of flowers can be found above a mat of leaves.  I am unclear if this is considered a single plant or multiple individuals.

4. Webster's senecio, Senecio neowebsteri

 

Blooms in August to September

Found on open talus slopes

Webster's senecio habitat: open, loose, talus slopes

5. Olympic Mountain synthyris, Synthyris pinnatifida var. lanuginosa

Still looking for this one.... but here's the lowdown on it as near as I can tell.....

Synthyris are also called kittentails because the flower clusters look a little like the tail of a kitten when the kitten is alarmed.  The flowers are deep blue to purple with the long stamens giving the cluster of small flowers a fuzzy look.  The leaves are fern-like in shape (highly lobed) and a greyish-green in color.  The Olympic variety, lanuginosa, is noticeably hairier than the other 2 inland varieties and white-woolly all over. 

Of course, unless you are confused as to which mountain range you are in, you are not likely to confuse the 3 different varieties of S. pinnaftifida.  If you are in the Olympics, you are looking at variety lanuginosa.  If you are in Idaho, Montana, and points south or east, well, it could be variety pinnatifia or variety canescens, but it ain't lanuginosa.  To me, the flower most like to confuse with the Olympic Mt. synthyris is the silky phacelia (Phacelia sericea).  They have similar blue puff balls of small clustered flowers and grey-green, deeply lobed leaves.  I'm working on a description to tell them apart.

6. Olympic Mountain milkvetch, Astragalus australis var. olympicus

Olympic Mountain milkvetch is said to be one of the more threatened of the endemics.