Coral root:
At sunrise I started my hike. The trail in front of me was
short--less than five miles--but it promised to be dusty and full of elevation rise, so an
early start was needed to avoid the heat. I had obtained permission from
the Forest Service to collect plants for herbarium specimens, so I brought my collection equipment with me in addition
to camera gear, food, water, binoculars, navigation tools, field guides, and so on. In short, I was loaded down!
This is Corallorhiza maculata in fruit. All the Corallorhiza I saw on this trip were
well past flowering, but here
is photograph of Californian plants for you.
As a side note, it was right around here that the previous evening I found a
broad ant trail about a hand-span wide and a few meters long.
The reddish ants were all heading the same direction. Unlike most ant
trails which have no clearly defined beginning and end, this was a huge phalanx of ants
on an errand of mischief. I later found out, via my trusted source
Phil Ward, that these were Polyergus ants (probably P. breviceps) on a slavemaking raid of another colony, where they'd steal pupae that would be forced
into a life of servitude. Crazy!!
