Plants of the National Parks
Meet the 21 plants we've written up, like the Avalanche lily, and the national parks where you'll find them.
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Plant Avalanche lily
Erythronium montanum
A white mountain lily that blooms at the very edge of the melting snow, chasing the snowline uphill all summer as the drifts pull back.
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Plant Beargrass
Xerophyllum tenax
A mountain plant that is not a grass but a lily, sending up a tall creamy plume only every few years, its tough leaves woven into watertight baskets and hats.
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Plant Bigleaf maple
Acer macrophyllum
A Pacific Northwest maple with the largest leaves of any maple, often draped in moss and ferns in the rainforests of Olympic and North Cascades.
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Plant Claret cup cactus
Echinocereus triglochidiatus
A low, mounding desert cactus that bursts into bright red, cup-shaped flowers each spring at Arches, Canyonlands, and Big Bend.
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Plant Coast redwood
Sequoia sempervirens
The tallest tree on Earth, a fog-loving evergreen of the northern California coast where trails at Redwood run beneath 300-foot trunks.
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Plant Creosote bush
Larrea tridentata
The scraggly desert shrub whose leaves make the smell of desert rain, and whose slow-spreading clone rings are among the oldest living things on Earth.
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Plant Douglas-fir
Pseudotsuga menziesii
One of the tallest trees on Earth, not actually a true fir, whose cones carry little three-pointed flaps a Native story calls the tails and legs of hiding mice.
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Plant Engelmann prickly pear
Opuntia engelmannii
A wide, flat-padded cactus of the southwestern deserts, spreading in low clumps with yellow flowers and purple fruit at Big Bend, Saguaro, and Arches.
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Plant Giant sequoia
Sequoiadendron giganteum
The largest tree on Earth by wood volume, growing only in scattered groves on the west slope of California's Sierra Nevada.
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Plant Great Basin bristlecone pine
Pinus longaeva
The oldest known single living tree on Earth, a twisted, high-mountain pine that grows in the thin, cold air of Great Basin National Park.
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Plant Indian paintbrush
Castilleja miniata
A scarlet mountain wildflower that steals water and food from its neighbors' roots, and whose bright color comes from leaves, not petals.
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Plant Joshua tree
Yucca brevifolia
A spiky, branching yucca of the Mojave Desert, the plant that gives Joshua Tree National Park its name and its strange, arm-waving skyline.
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Plant Ponderosa pine
Pinus ponderosa
A tall western pine whose sun-warmed bark smells like butterscotch and vanilla, and which drops its low branches so ground fire can pass safely beneath it.
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Plant Quaking aspen
Populus tremuloides
A white-barked mountain tree whose flat-stemmed leaves shiver in the lightest breeze, turning whole hillsides gold each fall.
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Plant Saguaro
Carnegiea gigantea
The tall, arm-raising cactus of the Sonoran Desert, found in the United States mainly around Tucson at Saguaro National Park.
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Plant Sitka spruce
Picea sitchensis
The giant of the coastal fog belt, whose light, strong wood built early airplanes, with needles sharp enough to prick your finger.
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Plant Snow plant
Sarcodes sanguinea
A bright red, leafless stalk that pushes up through melting spring snow in the conifer forests of Lassen Volcanic, and makes no food of its own.
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Plant Spanish moss
Tillandsia usneoides
Not a moss at all but a flowering air plant that drapes in gray strands from the branches of trees at Congaree and the Everglades.
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Plant Subalpine lupine
Lupinus latifolius
The blue lupine that fills Mount Rainier's Paradise meadows in summer and quietly rebuilds raw volcanic soil by pulling nitrogen from the air.
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Plant Western red cedar
Thuja plicata
The great rainforest tree of the Northwest Coast, called the tree of life, used by Coast Salish and other nations for canoes, longhouses, and baskets.
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Plant Western sword fern
Polystichum munitum
The knee-high fern that carpets the Northwest rainforest floor in deep green all year, each leaflet marked with a little hilt like a tiny sword.