Copyright by Harris & Ewing, Washington, D. C.
Professor Charles Vancouver Piper

XVI. THE FLORA OF MOUNT RAINIER
By PROFESSOR CHARLES V. PIPER

Charles Vancouver Piper was born on Vancouver Island, at Victoria, British Columbia, on June 16, 1867. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1885 and since then has received degrees and honors from other institutions and learned societies. He was professor of botany and zoölogy at the Washington Agricultural College (now State College of Washington) from 1892 to 1903. He has been agrostologist in charge of forage crop investigations for the Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, since 1903.

He has discovered many new forms of plant life and has published many monographs and books in the field of botany. This account of the flora of Mount Rainier was first published in The Mazama (Portland, Oregon) in two articles, one in Volume II, Number 2 (April, 1901), and the other in Volume II, Number 4 (December, 1905). They are reproduced with the consent of the editor of The Mazama, and Professor Piper has revised and amplified them for this purpose.

Up to an elevation of 4,000 feet or more the flanks of Mount Rainier are clothed in a continuous belt of somber forest, broken only where glaciers and their nascent streams have hewn pathways, or where, alas, fire has left desolate slopes marked here and there by the whitened, weather-worn shaft of some old tree, a dreary monument to its destroyed fellows. This forest is composed in its lower reaches largely of Douglas spruce. Scattered through it in smaller quantities one finds Lovely fir, Western white pine, Western hemlock, a few Engelmann spruces, and on the stream banks cedar and yew, and now and then a little cottonwood.

At about the 3,500-foot level the character of the forest changes. The Western hemlock gives way to the larger-coned Black hemlock; the Douglas spruce and Lovely fir are replaced by the Noble fir; and the ragged-barked Alaska cedar greets the eye. Another thousand feet and the Subalpine fir replaces its two near relatives. From this point upward, the forest, now composed only of Black hemlock, Alaska cedar and Subalpine fir, to which in some places the White-bark pine must be added, is confined largely to the crests of ridges and straggles up the mountain in irregular broken lines. Between these timbered ridges extensive grassy slopes appear, veritable flower gardens when in their glory.

At 6,500 feet elevation the timber ceases to be. Scraggly prostrate firs and hemlocks, sprawling as it were on the earth for shelter, mark sharply the limit of their endurance. Here, too, the continuous carpet of grass and flowers ceases—and a soil of volcanic sand or powdered pumice supports a very different vegetation. At 10,000 feet the toughest mountaineer of all the flowering plants, Smelowskia ovalis, still appears. Far above this, however, even to the crater's rim, lichens trace their hieroglyphics on the rocks; and on the steam-warmed rocks of the crater two mosses find lodgment, Hypnum elegans Hooker?, and Philonotis fontana Bridel, the latter even in fruit.

Few plants grow in the dense shades of the lower forests, and these are mainly ericaceous. Most plentiful are >Vaccinium ovalifolium, V. macrophyllum, Gaultheria ovatifolia, Menziesia ferruginea, Pachystima myrsinites, Cornus canadensis and Clintonia uniflora. Here, too, occur several weird-looking whitish or reddish saprophytes, Monotropa hypopitys, Pterospora andromedea, and Corallorhiza mertensiana.

On the drier portions of the grassy slopes Lupinus subalpinus, Castilleja oreopola, Potentilla flabellifolia, Pulsatilla occidentalis, Erigeron salsuginosus, Polygonum bistortoides, Phyllodoce empetriformis, Cassiope mertensiana and Vaccinium deliciosum are the most attractive plants. Where the ground is springy Veratrum viride occurs in great clumps and Dodecatheon jeffreyi, Caltha leptosepala and Ranunculus suksdorfii are plentiful.

In the shelter of the Alpine trees Rhododendron albiflorum, Ribes howellii and Arnica latifolia flourish. Along the rills Gentiana calycosa, Arnica chamissonis and Mimulus lewisii form banks of color. On the cliffs Chelone nemorosa, Spiraea densiflora, Polemonium humile and Castilleja rupicola are perhaps most conspicuous.