THE CANADIAN AND HUDSONIAN LIFE ZONES ARE REPRESENTED IN THE RESPECTIVELY HIGHER FOREST BELTS THAT LIE ABOVE LUSH RAIN FORESTS.
The Hudsonian meadows, in depressions above 3,500 feet, are knee-deep in grass in July and August, and flowers form a medley of color. Aster, pedicularis, arnica, shootingstar, cinquefoil, and false-hellebore are among the conspicuous flowers there.
Stream margins and marshy ground are preferred by such plants as marshmarigold and globeflower.
MEADOWS AND CLUSTERS OF TREES OF THE HUDSONIAN ZONE.
Higher in the Hudsonian zone there are prairielike meadows where flowers bloom in profusion. Extending 60 miles across the north and east sides of the park there are thousands of acres of this meadowland on the ridges. Hurricane Ridge is in the midst of this and presents some of the finest flower displays. Some slopes in early summer are white with avalanche lilies, one of the most abundant and widespread of the mountain flowers. Near timberline they grow among the trees, as well as in the open. Other meadows are yellow with pure stands of glacier lily, one of the earliest of spring flowers. Impatient with winter, it pushes through the thinning snowbanks. Where soil is deep, subalpine lupine blooms profusely. Among the most common and conspicuous in rich meadows are larkspur, buttercup, cinquefoil, paintbrush, arnica, tiger lily, and mountain buckwheat.
Several plants found in the mountains in the northeast part of the park, where rainfall is lighter, are more typical of the hot, arid lowlands of eastern Washington and Oregon. Some of these are nodding onion, woolly eriophyllum, and barestem lomatium—their presence in the mountains may be due to the fact that the broad ridgetop meadows in the northeastern part of the park are remnants of a lower plain where these plants grew before the Olympic Mountains had risen to their present height. As the mountains were pushed up, these plants could have continued to grow and reproduce despite changing conditions.
On hillsides where the rock has weathered only into chips, or where little soil has formed, carpets of spreading phlox and rosettes of Lyall lupine are most conspicuous in early summer. Some plants grow on talus slides, on rocks broken and tumbled from peaks above, and on rocks laid bare by retreating glacial ice. Lichens and mosses, pioneers among plants, etch the rock with weak acids and thus start the slow conversion of rock into soil. Some flowering plants are pioneers, too. Common ones growing in crevices and soil pockets among the rocks in the Hudsonian zone are smooth douglasia, alumroot, and bluebell. Eventually, a flowered meadow or forested slope develops where first there was only bare rock.
The Arctic-Alpine zone is the region above timberline. It corresponds to the arctic meadows of northern Canada. In the Olympics its lower limit is about 5,000 feet and its upper limit is the tops of the peaks.