Where Will All The Flowers Grow?

If you are one of those folks who wake up one day to realize that spring is over, I’m here to help. As a color starved photographer recovering from winter I am out there as your personal flower paparazzi. From time to time I will send you a batch of flowers. You can search Google Maps using my GPS coordinates to get out there with your camera and witness the world in person (recommended). But before you go be sure to take a free flower book called Look Closely. It is a gift from Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks department as is their on-line flower guide called Fantastic Flora. Another great flower guide is simply called Southwest Colorado Wildflowers. 

Here is today’s bunch: 

Thanks to my hiking friend we discovered my first Spring Beauty of the season on the Goshawk Ridge Trail at 39.923108, -105.276800. Spring Beauties are often the first wildflowers to emerge here in Boulder. Small 1/4 inch flowers top a 2-4 inch tall, slender, arching plant with drooping narrow leaves. Meriwether Lewis collected the first specimens of this plant in 1806…

Spring Beauty (Claytonia rosea) on Goshawk Ridge Trail 4/4/2010

This tiny snapdragon is called a maiden blue eyed mary. It is a common plant throughout much of western and northern North America, where it grows in moist, shady mountain forests. This is an annual plant with small (1/8″) flowers on spindly reddish stems and narrow lance-shaped green leaves with edges that curl under. I found it sunning on a moist rock face in Gregory Canyon at 39.99688,-105.302791…

Blue Eyed Mary (Collinsia parviflora) in Gregory Canyon 3/21/2010

Erodium cicutarium, also known as Redstem filaree and Common Stork’s-bill is a miniature  member of the Geranium Family. It is not native to Colorado having arrived here with the Spaniards. The seeds, having corkscrew-tails to them, attached to animals’ fur and to the feathers of migratory birds, so that the weed preceded Europeans into as yet unexplored regions. Late in the 1800s when alfalfa was commonly imported from Arabic nations, alfalfa bales were invariably mixed with filaree, so that the act of feeding one’s cattle meant that grazing lands were seeded with filaree. Sorry folks, this pretty little plant is a noxious weed here in Colorado. This culprit is in Gregory Canyon at 39.998090, -105.296885…

Gregory Canyon Filaree (Erodium cicutarium) 3/21/2010

Wild Alyssum is a very common introduced mustard species that carpets large areas of fields and roadsides in the very early spring.  Alyssum’s name refers to its past use as a supposed cure for rabies: from the Greek “a” (“without”) “lyssum” (“madness”).  “Parviflorum” is Latin for “small flower”. It has been used  for clothing, fuel and medicine. I found this patch in Gregory Canyon at 39.997909,-105.298644… 

Gregory Canyon Yellow Alyssum (Alyssum parviflorum) 4/3/2010

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