May 28 – June 2, 2020.
I’m pretty sure most people go to Bryce Canyon specifically to see the rocks. And really, they should, the rocks are stunning. But we had lots of wonderful surprises at Bryce that weren’t rocks. The abundance of wildflowers was one of them.
At first, I thought all wildflowers at Bryce and the area we camped in the Dixie National Forest were yellow. One yellow flower tends to look like the next after a while. But the more time we spent in the area, the more colors we found, including really interesting ones like Blue Columbine and Scarlet Gilia. And some of the yellow ones turned out to be pretty special too, like the Bigfruit Evening Primrose or my fave yellow, Rough Mandora.
We are up to 157 wildflowers and blooming trees, bushes, and cactus identified as of this post. And although we are now seeing more faded flowers now that summer is upon us, we are still adding to our list all the time.
* To see all the wildflowers in the first Just Wildflowers post, click here. To see all the wildflowers in the Just Wildflowers 2 post, click here.
** We use iNaturalist to identify our flowers, but can’t guarantee that all IDs are correct. We do our best. And BTW – there is a link to our iNaturalist page in the sidebar of this blog. Click on this link to see our most recent flower, bird, critter, reptile, and insect finds.
*** All pics are click to enlarge (the flowers are even prettier when you enlarge them).
I’m sure you are curating these somehow into a digital book on desert wildflowers or wildflowers from national parks? Those types of resources are invaluable to writers as we want to be sure to include organic flora in our books.
An interesting idea. I think I will have to go to a lot more National Parks to make it really useful (we are trying). What I probably need to do is create some kind of data base on the blog where one can search for a flower (or bird or reptile, critter, etc) in an area, a particular color, a certain type, etc.
Beautiful! I wonder who invents these flower names. Bladderpod? My favorite in this post is the Blue (yet purple) Columbine. Fantastic resource you are creating!
I’ve tried to find out who does the naming but have gleaned little info during our scant times with the internet these days. But the Columbine – one of my faves too – I have done a little research into and hope to write about it in my next flowers post.