The leaves of broadleaf stonecrop certainly stand out among western Washington plants. Sometimes deep red, sometimes puce, and other times an unnatural hot pink, the color of the lower portion of the stem starts to fades about half way up and becomes chartreuse, an unresolved mix to the top, the yellow from the flowers above fighting the natural inclination of plants to be green. The stems themselves, like the leaves and flowers, are often artistically colored. These are the flower stems, the tops of which are crowned with clusters of small but intensely yellow star-shaped flowers. From among these ground-hugging sets of leaves, stems up to 7 inches in length begin to rise in early summer. Similar to other types of stonecrop, broadleaf stonecrop leaves also change color in response to sunlight exposure, taking on a red coloration in areas that experience intense sun. Even in winter, the youngest leaves tightly bound at the very center of each rosette generally retain their summer color. During the winter, the older leaves on the periphery of each rosette take on a wine-red coloration, though still softened by the persistent powder. Spring through fall, the leaves are mostly blue-tinged green, or glaucous, thanks in part to a strange white powdery substance that covers them and gives the plant an almost silver cast. The tightly-packed leaves are evergreen in the sense that they persist throughout the year, but they aren’t ever exactly green. Individually, a plant can spread a foot or two across, but much larger mats comprised of multiple interwoven plants are frequently found. This is a stonecrop stronghold, a sedum kingdom, a jumbled boulder field with an open window to the blue sky above.īroadleaf stonecrop are ground-hugging perennials which form thick mats of tangled rhizomes, rooting where possible and forming numerous basal rosettes of succulent leaves. In this pocket of open land, the rocks are overrun with a plant that I didn’t really expect to see here in the middle of the thick forest, broadleaf stonecrop ( Sedum spathulifolium). Exploring beyond the campsite, we come to a rock-filled area at the bottom of another steep slope, a place too unsettled for big trees.
Among these trees, miles upriver from the trailhead, even further from the shoreline, past the blowdown, we find a campsite. Along this short stretch of trail there are five or six huge trees down, probably all victims of the same wind storm. This is not an unusual sight and coming up the Duckabush River on the eastern edge of Olympic National Park, we have seen a lot of big trees on the ground. From this crown, gnarled roots reach back for the hold they were unable to sustain, grasping at straws. Looking uphill I can see the flared root crown, where trunk once met ground. Far downhill, branches of a former canopy touch the river that we have been following. We have just ducked under a fallen giant, the corpse of a massive Douglas-fir recently toppled and resting on a steep hillside.
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