A Rare Find
Lewisia and Rogue River Thrills
By Rachel Foster 6/9/05

Last year, my spouse and I viewed the banks of the Rogue River from a raft, marveling (between regular soakings) at the variety of terrain and vegetation. This May we returned on foot, to take a closer look.
Hiking the Rogue River Trail in spring is a feast for plant fanciers. Within the first few miles we saw scarlet larkspur, banks of lavender-pink cat's ear and yellow Iris innominata veined in purple. The color of the iris changed constantly as we moved down river, to our endless surprise and delight. The trail was constructed by Chinese labor in the late 1800s for pack mules. The gardeners in our group hike lagged behind, oohing and aahing over every new plant find.
By day three we found fewer novelties and the pace picked up a bit. But I was stopped in my tracks by a lewisia growing right at my feet. We were walking along an exposed portion of the trail in a narrow canyon, at a place called Inspiration Point. Plants were scarce on the sheer rock face of the canyon wall, so the vividly pink, candy-striped flowers the size of quarters, emerging on stems a few inches high from small, succulent rosettes, were hard to miss. In all, I saw fewer than a dozen plants, in company with the blue-gray native Sedum spathulifolium and some rock ferns.
The genus Lewisia, named in honor of Lewis of Lewis and Clark, grows only in western North America, and L. cotyledon is restricted to an area about 100 miles long and 70 miles wide in rocky and mountainous areas of northern California and southwestern Oregon. That makes it a pretty rare plant. When I got home I e-mailed a photograph and some questions to Loren Russell, alpine plant hound and Corvallis rock gardener par excellence. "What a thrill!" he responded. "You were fortunate to find Lewisia cotyledon var. howellii. Distinguished by the fluted leaf margins, this is probably the least common of the three varieties of L. cotyledon in Oregon. It's also quite representative of the commercial seed strains of L. cotyledon in local nurseries."
"Lewisia cotyledon is the showiest of the seven or eight species of lewisia native to Oregon," he continued. "A lewisia in full bloom is always beautiful, and I'm sure that many gardeners buy plants on impulse at a garden center, then aren't sure what to do with them." Loren went on to say, "L. cotyledon is easy to grow, and also easy to kill. It's important to understand that this is a succulent, able to store water and survive drought, and also that it is very subject to rot if the rosette or stem base stays wet."
So don't over-water, don't let other plants flop over the lewisia, do plant in well-drained soil. For beginners, my advice is to grow lewisias in containers, ideally hypertufa troughs. Large terracotta pots also work well, but pots smaller than about 10" diameter typically dry out too fast and so retard growth of the lewisia.
"Use very freely draining soil or compost and add 50 percent grit or gravel to a good planting mix. Plant high, leaving the rosette about one inch or more above the soil, then work gravel mulch under the rosette. Lewisias respond well to balanced or low-nitrogen fertilizer. To get a second bloom, I generally water with soluble 10-10-10 just after bloom, then a week later. If grown in containers or rock gardens with very good drainage, and if kept clear of fallen leaves and other debris, lewisias tolerate our normal winter moisture. Summer moisture is another matter."