Common Yarrow

Common yarrow grows almost anywhere the sun reaches the ground on Mt. Hood: road edges, trailheads, rocky openings, burned slopes and high meadows. Its leaves are cut into many short, narrow segments, which makes them look soft and feathery, and the plant is aromatic.

What looks like one flower is really a flat-topped cluster of many small flower heads. Each head is a tiny daisy, with a few short white rays, now and then pink, around a center of pale disk flowers. Bumblebees and other bees, flies, beetles and wasps all visit.

Yarrow is a survivor. It spreads by underground rhizomes, and when fire or digging breaks those rhizomes into pieces, the fragments can send up new shoots. That helps it move quickly into disturbed ground, and it often increases for a year or two after a fire. Most grazing animals leave it alone, though deer sometimes eat the flower heads, and young sage-grouse chicks depend on it in sagebrush country.

Yarrow is native across North America, but some populations came from Europe, and the native and introduced kinds are very hard to tell apart. It blooms over a long season, so it is a good flower to learn early in the hiking year.