Flowers

I decided to gather the flower photos from the trip. I tend to focus on bugs and birds before plants, but I still took a lot of flower photos. I apologize in advance for the overdose.

I always check out milkweed plants looking for Monarch butterfly caterpillars, although spring is probably the wrong time to see them here. Milkweed plants are toxic, so often the leaves are untouched. Monarch caterpillars eat them because they are toxic - to become toxic themselves and therefore less attractive to predators. The milkweed I know to recognize and see most often is Showy Milkweed.

Yellow iris are pretty but they are an introduced plant that has escaped into the wild and become invasive.

One of the campgrounds we stayed at had lots of Beargrass.

Tamarisk is another non-native plant that is a problem in some areas. Around Five Springs there were only scattered plants. I might not have noticed it if it hadn't been flowering.

Sego Lilies (native) are always a pleasant surprise in the high desert.

Scarlet Globemallow

In Saskatchewan, the Prairie Pasqua Flowers ("crocuses") come out while there is still frost and even snow. These ones are later due to the altitude.

Prairie Smoke or Three-flowered Aven are another one I used to see in Saskatchewan:

and Shooting Stars

and Paintbrush

There were tons of lupines around, probably multiple kinds.

Higher up in the Bighorn mountains one of the view points was surrounded by these little blue flowers. I think they're Pale Alpine Forget-me-nots.

We have Stonecrops around Victoria so it was interesting to see this mountain variety.

Beardtongue seems like a suitable name for these flowers. They are related to snapdragons and foxgloves.

I think this is Linearleaf Phacelia. It doesn't seem to have a less technical name.

Last year it seemed like almost all the prickly pear cactus was blooming. This year I only found a few flowers.

I think this is Alpine Golden Buckwheat. (spot the Mormon cricket) It was at Five Springs, but it makes a good transition to our later stop at Craters of the Moon, where there are a variety of wild buckwheats (unrelated to cultivated buckwheat).

Cushion Buckwheat is common at Craters of the Moon. It varies in color from yellow to pink.

I think this is Parsnipflower Buckwheat.

And Sulfur Buckwheat

Dwarf Purple Monkeyflower has tiny flowers but they're quite pretty up close.

I think this is Hoary Pincushion - a suitable name for the appearance of the flowers.

I think this is Silverleaf Phacelia, another scorpionweed like Linearleaf Phacelia above.

Larkspurs are common and also have interesting flowers up close.

Away from the desert, foxgloves were blooming all over.

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