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.