Well, vacations—both the planned of July and the unplanned of August—are over: time to get back to writing work. What better way to get back into the routine than to reflect on the break? About not writing in August, there’s nothing to say other than it happened. As for the July blog vacation, I recognize…
If you’ve been following this series of blog posts featuring the wildflowers blooming in our part of Colorado this July, you may have noticed a relative dearth of the classic and recognizable form commonly referred to as sunflowers. The local sunflower types tend to come out later in the summer; at our altitude, many are…
Thirty days ago, I was inspired to blog the bloom by a prolific little flower I called “the little purple penstemon that blooms earlier than most of the penstemons” (kindly identified as P. virens by Susan J. Tweit in the comments to that post). Those plants have now gone to seed, but their larger penstemon compatriots…
Friends, the month of July is running out of days faster than I am running out of flowers to post. Here, then, is a sampling of the flowers from the Astragulus genus. By sharing them as a group, I’m able to show you more of the floral abundance and variety, whilst avoiding any pretense of…
The conventional definition of a weed is a plant s growing where it’s not wanted. By that subjective measure, any of the twenty-six wildflowers featured on this blog over the past few weeks might qualify as a weed if it’s in the “wrong” spot. More often, I suspect, we think of weeds as non-native or…
This flower-a-day project has encouraged me to look closer at familiar blooms, but I’ve also found new ones, which has been great fun. I knew this plant, but not its flower. The foliage grows in mats of tightly clustered rosettes, the plump leaves so tiny the plant resembles moss–and, in fact, I’ve thought of it…
Charming little plants when in flower: like candles in the grass, with crayon-yellow flames. Orthocarpus luteus
To my considerable relief, the nod of the Nodding Onion is distinctive, and I can assert with some confidence that this is Allium cernuum. And since I have not yet had occasion to use the word “umbel”–and who wouldn’t want to use the word?–I will add this note: an umbel is a form in which…
If Harebells are cute and Sugarbowl clematis is sweet, the word for this flower is elegant. Calochortus gunnisonii We’ve called these Sego lilies for two decades, but with this bloom-a-day-in-July project I’ve been cross-examining my assumptions while delving into a wider range of wildflower resources. Evidently, what we have here (in large numbers, right now)…
Euphorbia brachycera Although it resembles the pernicious invasive Leafy spurge, this little native is smaller and exhibits better manners. Some guides use the common name “Horned spurge,” but I think the “Shorthorn” version is more winsome. Up here, the plants grow to seven or eight inches tall, and tend to be solitary rather than forming…