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Erythronium oreganum, the Oregon fawn lily, is a beautiful species with colorful mottled leaves, which have much more colorful and prominent mottling than that on the the leaves of many other Erythronium species. The corms are segmented and edible, although they’re fairly uncommon and should not be picked by non-Indigenous people.
They usually have one flower, but occasionally you get an oddball like this one, which has two. Very strange!
I love Fritillaria affinis, called chocolate lilies or checker lilies, because they don’t look like much from above…
…but look at how beautiful they are from below! They’re almost like a stained glass window.
They are pretty rare now, and I have only ever seen them a handful of times. According to Plants of the Pacific Northwest (Pojar & MacKinnon), Coast Salish, including the Squamish, Sechelt, Halq'emeylem and Straits Salish people, used to eat these a lot, mostly steamed or boiled. Apparently they taste like rice, but a little more bitter. These days most people choose not to harvest them in order to protect the remaining flowers, because they’re very uncommon.
Epidendrum lacustre is an interesting species of Central and South American orchid. It’s found in the mountains at elevations of 1,200 to 2,500 meters. It’s typically found growing on trees or rocks (as an epiphyte or lithophyte), although I found this one growing on the ground beneath a wind turbine. The scientific name gives it the common name “lake orchid”, and refers to the fact that the type was found on a half-submerged log. They do tend to prefer wet, cloud forest environments, although this one was nowhere near a lake.