Scott and I were blown away with the amazing wildflowers lining almost the entire trail (minus the parts completely under snow). I took dozens and dozens of pictures of flowers. I narrowed it down to these twenty for the blog, but there were many more varieties that I didn't fit on this collage and many more varieties I didn't even take pictures of. We have some stories and made up names that go along with some of these flowers you could ask about if you are ever interested in our imaginative eccentricities. If you happen to know the real name of any of these flowers, we'd love to become educated.
The following is a picture showing an example of how the wildflowers were growing rampant along the path. It also is a good shot of a funny stand off we had with a deer. We were on the trail traveling in the opposite direction of the deer when we ran into each other. He cocked his head and looked at us as if humans were the strangest thing he had ever seen. Both parties, us and the deer, stood looking at each other for about 25 seconds before he decided to finally give way and casually strolled off the path.
10 comments:
Beautiful Pictures!!
That deer is really funny!
Someday I'd like to try that minus the getting lost part. The only flower I know is the third row down far right: Columbine. The bottom row, second in looks like a snap dragon to me. I love wild flowers. It's so nice that they just pop up and beautify the world.
OK, I feel a challenge coming on. Once I've caught up in my own blog (which is still 2 1/2 weeks behind), I'm going to identify your flowers for you. When my mother's mother died, I inherited all her nature books, and I have a great one that helps identify North American wildflowers.
Woo hoo! I'd LOVE for you to identify them for me Amy. Thanks, Kristen, for your input. It's much appreciated!
The deer photo gave me a good laugh. Thanks, cuz I really needed it today.
Hello, how do you do?
OK, I've spent my relaxing afternoon trying to identify your 20 flowers. If you take each row starting at the top and number them 1-5, then the next row 6-10, etc., here's what I got:
1.Mountain Bluebells, similar to Virginia Bluebells
2. Some sort of Pea flower
3. Mountain Phlox
4. I think it might be Larkspur
5. Glacier Lily (I'm really sure about that one!)
6. Goldfields, I think in the Senecio family
7. For such a simple flower, I can't figure out what it is! Some ideas were desert lily, leadwort, wandflower, forget-me-not, and it even sort of looks like a venus fly trap flower! I don't think it's any of those though. Definitely not Venus flytrap.
8. This is either Heart's Delight or Pale Trumpets.
9. Tall Cinquefoil. Also sort of looks like Prairie Buttercup, but I'm pretty sure it's not.
10. Leatherflower, also known as
clematis or "Sugarbowl."
11. Wow, how weird! Some sort of lily?
12. Hmm, the only thing I could figure out was a Rose Bract?
13. These may be violets on their way out.
14. I think it's a primrose or wild rose.
15. White Columbine. Definitely.
16. Blue Forget-Me-Nots. Also Definite.
17. Lupine. It does sort of look like Snapdragon, but I think they're too small and separate for that.
18. Oregon Grape (although the leaves look wrong for that one)
19. Standing Cypress (we used to call these Indian Paintbrush, but we were wrong)
20. And. . .a wild rose!
How'd I do?
Amazing! Thanks for helping me learn my wildflowers, Amy!
#5 Glacier Lily, we liked those ones! They look like banana peels!
#10 has a fitting name as leatherflower. It has a second stage (like the two stages of a dandelion) where it bursts into a ball of green tentaculae. We were sure it had to be some mythological flower used by witches to brew potions. Leatherflower is a good name for that.
#11 we called the alien flower. It was growing like a mini pine tree about four feet tall with each branch ending in one of those alien flowers. We only saw the one "alien pine tree" on the whole trail. We had to get a picture cause it was so weird. We have several more of the whole plant, too.
Maybe if you send me pictures of the whole plant, I'd have a better time identifying it. That helps to know that it was on an evergreen, not as a lone-standing wildflower. I was looking in the wrong places to identify it.
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