As the day length contracts, and the mountain flowers go to seed, gentian flowers bring a jolt of vibrancy and beauty to drying tawny meadows in late summer. In our region, the petals range from otherworldly azure to blue purple but can also be red and white in other regions of the world. The most common local mountain gentian in our region is explorer’s gentian (Gentiana calycosa) which has a beautiful green window in the floral tube below the five petal lobes. A great place to see it, is along the Pacific Crest Trail at Big Red Mountain on the Siskiyou Crest, where the flowers are nestled within tufts of green beargrass leaves.
Two other local gentians are globally rare and are only found in the Klamath-Siskiyous in Oregon and California. Near Oregon Caves and Grayback Mountain in Oregon, Klamath gentian (Gentiana plurisetosa) lives in a handful of mountain basins. The petals have gorgeous long purple threads or bristles, difficult for insects to navigate, but athletic bumble bees are regular visitors. And in the Illinois Valley and the Smith River Watershed, living with cobraliles and western toads, the spectacular Waldo gentian (Gentiana setigera) blooms under September skies in fens, including at Eight Dollar Mountain.
Worldwide, gentians are important in traditional medicine and for brewing bitters. These late season flowers are more than gorgeous farewells to summer, they also provide essential pollen and nectar for pollinators. Poets like Emily Dickison, Bryant, and Ralph Waldo Emerson incorporated gentians into their prose, but dare we say, none of their work compares to quietly sitting next to a patch of gentians in September.
