Please help me id this amazing succulent. They are very difficult to not take notice of, because their leaves look like plump red wild berries. They only grew in a very specific area near the glacier in BC (within about 100 meter range.) I do not see them any further before or after that area during the hike. Flower: One photo is of the succulent with yellow-5-petal, star-shaped flower. Fruit: 2nd photo is the succulent with orange fleshy fruit. I don't know if they thrive from melted glacier mud, or they could be an ancient plant seed that came out of melted glacier.
It looks like Sedum sp. to me, however the fruit looks rather strange. Hopefully someone else will chime in with his/her opinion.
"Sedum divergens, commonly called spreading stonecrop, Cascade stonecrop, and Pacific stonecrop, is a low growing flowering plant of the genus Sedum. It is native to western North America from Alaska to northern California. This plant is common in the lava beds of Northwest British Columbia where it is one of the food plants of the Nisga'a first nation." (Wikipedia) Thanks for the clue!
And thank you for posting. Your pictures, showing those orange "fruits" are quite unique. On the Net there are hardly a few Sedum pictures showing "fruits" like this, one of them is http://onh.eugraph.com/plants/sedumd/index.html I still wonder what those "fruits" could be, have never seen anything like that on my Sedums, but of course I have only a few of the 600 Sedum species. I wasn't able to find on the Net an explanation what it could be. Is it possible they really are fruits?
If you hike up Wedgemount lake and walk towards the glacier, you will find them. It is a very difficult hike, 3-4 hours steep slope (like 2x distance of grouse grind), 3 hours to climb back down. Make sure you have full hiking gear and very good hiking shoes. The way down requires a somewhat acrobatic person. Bring a hiking pole and at least 2 Liters of water and nutrient bar. There are more rare plants you don't see on the typical west coast mountains, such as some very unusual mosses. I wish I brought my micro lens to take photos of these.
I am trying to understand the orange fruit comments -- all I see are the succulent leaves in different colours. Fruits on Sedum are dry, called follicles.
When you look closely you will see on the 2nd picture, on the right, star shaped, orange-red objects that do not look like leaves. The OP describes them as "orange fleshy fruit". They don't look to me like fruit, either. What are they? They can also be seen on the 3rd picture in the link to the Olympic Natural History Photos page in my previous post.
They look like immature fruit to me. They will ripen to a dry fruit. You can see the development on this image.
Thanks. From the Olympic Park site, I guess this is the image that shows this the best? Immature fruits, in that case.
