The wildflower show at Kah Tai Prairie Preserve in Port Townsend is one annual event that has not been canceled or postponed this year.
This family-friendly show is now happening daily, from dawn till dusk. Admission is free and open to the public.
For thousands of years, this natural drama has been playing out uninterrupted in an open-air theater. The venue was once much larger, spreading throughout the two miles between North Beach and Kah Tai lagoon.
James McCurdy, one of Port Townsend’s first generation of white settlers, is often quoted from his journal, recording his experience of the show in the 1870s: “Scattered trees dotted Kah Tai Valley, giving it the appearance of a beautiful park. Myriads of wild flowers transformed the valley floor into a many-hued carpet.”
Today, the stage has shrunk to just 1.4 acres, bordered by a low white chain fence next to the parking lot at the Port Townsend golf course. The fact that this wildflower meadow still exists is one of our town’s greatest miracles.
A dedicated support crew, currently directed by botanist Dixie Llewellin, has worked hard over the past four decades to protect and restore this rare remnant of short-grass prairie. Now you too can marvel at the kaleidoscope of native plants in full bloom this week. Blue camas, spring gold, gleaming yellow buttercups, deep purple broomrape, chocolate lily and snowwhite chickweed are just a few of the wildflowers on center stage this week, nestled in a thick swath of fescue grass.
The cast of characters includes more than 90 species of plants. More than two dozen of these species are indicators of Cascadia prairie, a type of plant community that historically occupied more than 2 million acres in glacial basins stretching from central Oregon to British Columbia. Less than 2%, or about 40,000 acres, remain in the region today. Many of these species are not found anywhere else on the Quimper Peninsula, except in scattered patches on side streets in the San Juan valley.
Until the late 20th century, native people harvested root crops throughout the valley each year, playing a vital role in the prairie’s ecology. After the golf course was established in 1923, no one paid much attention to this neglected piece of land. Fifty years later, in the spring of 1973, local naturalist Gerry Bergstrom was out for a walk and noticed some three-flowered avens blooming in the rough, an area of un-manicured grass and shrubs next to the parking lot at the golf course.
“I started looking around and there were a couple other species that you just wouldn’t expect to find where I was finding them,” she remembered, as she recounted her discovery more than a decade later. Gerry’s observation led to the designation of Kah Tai Prairie Preserve, which was approved by a vote of the Port Townsend City Council on Jan. 6, 1987. Since then, the Olympic Peninsula Chapter of Washington Native Plant Society has managed the site.
If you want to witness this impressive drama, be sure to visit during the next couple of weeks to enjoy peak performances. To minimize impacts to the plants, walk around the perimeter outside the boundary fence. Once you recognize the plants, take time to notice if anything similar is blooming along the roads or in vacant lots near where you live. You just might have a little patch of prairie near you that no one recognized before.
