Pacific Northwest Paintbrushes

When we were staying in Roslyn back in May, enjoying the sights and the fey spirit of Northern Exposure, we decided to rent an episode of the show at the local video store. Watching it while we were actually staying where it was filmed seemed like it might make it just a little more real.

While we were browsing the episodes at the store, we got into a conversation with the owner of the place, a young woman with a pleasant demeanor. We asked her some questions about when the show was being filmed and told her our story of gypsy innkeeping and mentioned the places we had seen along the way. Our conversation turned to wildflowers; the video storeowner mentioned the variety of species she had been seeing in the neighborhood recently. Many of them were things we had already seen on our trip, but one, Indian Paintbrush, gave me a buzz. An Indian Paintbrush up here, in Washington, on the eastern slopes of the Cascades just had to be something different, something I had never seen before.

She gave us directions to where she had seen it, and we were off. The video of Northern Exposure could wait.

That Paintbrush was the first we saw of the season, as well as the first of many new varieties we'd find in the weeks to come. Like its cousin Pentstemons, there are a number of species of Paintbrush (Castillea) in the Pacific Northwest you'll not find anywhere else; we began seeing them almost everywhere we went.

There was a paintbrush or two on the coast of Washington, at the southern end of the Long Beach Peninsula. There were paintbrushes along the Columbia River Gorge and on the eastern side of Mt. Hood along Route 35. I found them on the switchbacks zigzagging up the side of Tongue Mt near Mt. St. Helens, and on Saddle Mt. in Oregon. They were abundant on Mary's Peak, and cascaded down the side of the hill at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. They shared the spotlight with lupine over much of Paradise Meadows below the glaciers of Mt. Rainier. And of course I had my usual difficult time identifying most of them. There were, however, at least two that were very easy, not to mention very striking.

A couple or three of the paintbrushes, Common Paintbrush (C. Miniata), Hispid or Bristly Paintbrush (C. hispida), and perhaps Suksdorf's Paintbrush (C. suksdorfii) seemed to be the most common. The latter two, Bristly and Suksdorf's Paintbrush are found only in the Pacific Northwest; Common Paintbrush is what we called Giant Red Paintbrush in the wet mountain meadows of California. It can be found throughout the mountains of the Pacific states.

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