Leaves of Keddie Cascades, Part 1

 It's been a very busy week for me.  My last post was Monday, following a hike on the Keddie Cascades Trail.  Here I am on the brink of another weekend adventure, but just now getting around to sorting my photos from last weekend.  I set out to look for colorful leaves.  The photos I got of leaves will take up two series, or maybe three.  But a funny thing happened early in the trip.  I got distracted by a mushroom.  I started seeing an interesting variety of fungi, and it was as if my brain had a toggle switch.  Suddenly, I wasn't seeing leaves any more; I was only seeing fungi.  After a hearty dinner, I plan to continue this narrative, and show the results of the brain shift.  To punctuate the very satisfying hike, I also found a Helgrammite under the same rock where I have found one every time I have looked for the past three summers.  It's nice to feel I can count on consistency from Mother Nature.
Sat. a.m.  When I began the hike, I was on the lookout for the color red.  Maybe Dogwoods, maybe Umbrella Plant, but the first to get my attention was a nice patch of wild grape.  I think it is not the California Wild Grape, but a remnant of planted grape vinyards from the homesteads that occupied this area over a century ago.

The first glimpse I got of Umbrella Plant by the edge of Spanish Creek was not encouraging.  Most of the large leaves had turned a rusty brown and were disintegrating without achieving the bright reds and oranges that make them famous this time of year.  I took a couple of photos from 100 feet away, but did not go down by the creek.

Then, at one of my favorite sunny spots I saw a young Sugar Pine whose leaves are called needles.  I photographed this very tree when it was a seedling a couple of summers ago.  Nice to see that it has not gotten washed down the loose, gravelly slope.

Nearby was a group of leaves of White-veined Wintergreen.  This is easily confused with Rattlesnake Plaintain, which I hoped to encounter along the trail for comparison photos.  The Wintergreen is in the Wintergreen family, Ericaceae, which includes Manzanita, Madrone, Snow Plant, and many other well-known shrubs.  The "Plantain," however, is acgtually an orchid.  This is obvious when it is flowering, but in the fall it can be tricky.

Sure enough, a few yeards further along the trail I came across the orchid.  The leaves were somewhat obscured by fallen pine needles and oak leaves, so I scraped aside just enough to be able to identify the orchid in a photo.  Note the difference in venation of the leaves.

Then I came across a nice patch of leaves of the Pacific Starflower.  This is not an evergreen, so I was surprised to find them still looking pretty healthy and green.

Then I came to the best stretch of Dogwood along this trail.  Their color had passed the peak of redness, at least for this location.  The pink leaves still stood out against the background of large Douglas-fir trunks in the shade.  I decided to get a few close-ups rather than any panoramic shots.  The venation of dogwood leaves is a giveaway. 

So, now I'm going to gather up another set of photos of the leaves I found along the trail, then transition to the fungi.  When I was startled to see a bright red fungus, probably an Amanita, at eye level, my mind radically shifted toward looking for fungi.  That's about all I photographed on the rest of the walk.  Funny how that works.  I don't remember looking at colorful leaves during that period.  Just mushrooms.