July 14, 2016

A Few Wildflowers


My daughter, who notices wildflowers like me, wanted me to take some pictures of the flowers we saw along the trail on a hike a few weeks ago.

I didn't have my identification book with me at the time.
As it turns out, it wouldn't have helped me all that much anyway.
This time around I had to google the name of the hill we hiked and "wildflowers" to figure these out.
Happily, I pulled up a couple of sites that had a list with links to multiple pictures of each one.
It took some time to click on all the links, though!

Then, once I found them on the website, I was able to find them in the book.
One drawback of using a book is that the book generally has just one picture of each flower, so if it doesn't look quite the same or is a different subspecies, it can be hard to match them up.


Scarlet gilia or skyrocket
(Ipomopsis aggregata or Gilia aggregata)


Harsh paintbrush (Castilleja hispida)
[As near as I can tell.]
I knew it was a paintbrush flower.
Little did I know how many varieties there would be!


Penstemon attenuates


Spreading dogbane or mountain dogbane
(Apocynum androsaemifolium)

Phew! That took some research!
There is definitely a sense of satisfaction when you've finally found the match, though.
Like finding a new friend: "Oh--there you are!"
It remains to be seen if I'll be able to identify these next time we're up there.


Do you like knowing the names of plants that you see?

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