I know I’ve blogged about these plants before, but please enjoy these pictures of them as seen at Citadel of Rocks.
Tag: botany
Botany: Speargrass
I did not need to look this up in my Falcon Guide to Central Rocky Mountain Wildflowers. Husband identified it, and kids immediately started throwing it at each other.
Idaho Wildflowers headscratcher: Silvery Lupine?
I first assumed this was a yucca, but the leaves are all wrong.
I looked up these leaves with the help of the Google machine, and it suggested Silvery Lupine.
Sure enough, here’s a more typical-looking example of the flower from the same trip.
I can only conclude that the freakishly tall and white silvery lupine is an unholy hybrid of lupine and yucca.
Here’s an in-between-looking specimen.
Botany is hard.
Idaho Wildflowers : Oregon Sunshine
(Why, you ask, is Oregon so greedy with the plant names? Well, remember that at one time, Idaho was part of Oregon Territory. The name Idaho was made up and used later.)
“The leaves may be entire, lobed, or deeply cleft into several narrow segments. Open, dry places, valleys and plains to alpine zones. Meriwether Lewis collected a specimen of this species on June 6, 1806, along the high uplands of the ‘Kooskooskee’ (Clearwater) River, near ‘Camp Chopunnish,’ or present-day Kamiah, Idaho.” (Falcon Guide, p. 108)
Idaho Wildflowers: Creeping Oregongrape
“The bright yellow flowers give way to a grapelike cluster of purple berries with whitish coating. In the fall, some of the leaves often turn bright red, orange, or bronze.
“The tart berries make a refreshing, lemonade-like drink and fine jelly or wine. The yellow inner bark was used by Native Americans as a yellow dye and as a medicine with many applications.”
(Falcon Guide, p. 121)
Idaho Wildflowers: Aspen
It may seem strange to call the aspen tree a flower, but it does appear in my Falcon Guide Central Rocky Mountain Wildflowers.
“Aspen’s leaves (as distinct from birches’) are rounded or heart-shaped in outline, with vertically flattened pettioles (leaf stalks) that are responsible for their distinctive trembling, rotating action in the slightest breeze.
“Aspen is a colonial tree that spreads by shallow underground stems. Patches of aspen trees are often just vertical stems (clones) of a single genetic individual. The borders of the clone patches are often obvious in the spring and fall, when the genetic differences in leafing out and fall coloration are expressed between clone patches. The underground stems enable aspen to survive forest fires with ease. Aspen twigs are a favorite food for browsing deer, elk, and moose, especially in winter.” (page 246)
Here’s a path leading past Silver Sage into an aspen grove (clone patch? Or between clone patches? I’m sticking with grove – sounds less disturbing).
Idaho Wildflowers: White Frasera
I think I may have managed to photograph a flower that is “endemic to this area and found nowhere else in the world.”
White Frasera, according to my Falcon Guide, is “found in the montane forests of central and west-central ID” (page 209). Citadel of Rocks, where I found this, doesn’t technically fit the bill, since it is in the southern part of the state. Other possible candidates are Black Elderberry and Edible Tobacco Root.
Rocky Mountain Iris
Also known as Missouri Iris. Photographed at Citadel of Rocks.
“This is the Central Rocky Mountains’ only native iris … Iris, or fleur-de-lis, is the national flower and emblem of France and the state flower of Tennessee. Iris is both a dangerous poisonous plant and a valuable medicinal herb.” (Central Rocky Mountain Wildflowers Falcon Guide, p. 37)
Idaho Wildflowers : Scarlet Globe Mallow
Sphaeralcea coccinea, Greek for “scarlet sphere mallow.”
Grows in the “dry prairies of the valleys and plains and foothills zones as far as the Bitterroot Valley, MT; Bannock County, ID; and parts of OR.”
“Scarlet globe mallow has slimy, viscous sap that can stick to skin or mucous membranes and thus provide a protective coating. The native Dakota people chewed the plant and applied it to inflamed sores and wounds as a salve. It was said to cool inflammation and promote healing.”
I can’t believe the first two wildflowers I chose to blog about this year both turned out to be medicinal. But there ya go, God puts ’em in the ground for us to find! Once again, the Falcon Guide Central Rocky Mountain Wildflowers has shown its usefulness. All in the information in this post, except the photographs, came from page 93. I took the photographs at Citadel of Rocks, where the sphaeralcea was obediently growing exactly where described.
Idaho Wildflowers Are Back!
I think this is White Geranium. According to the Central Rocky Mountain Wildflowers Falcon Guide, it is a medicinal herb that can be used to treat diarrhea, dysentery, ulcers, and hemorrhoids, and to stop bleeding (211). It’s found in shady woodlands, plains, valleys, montane, and lower subalpine zones. This is exactly where I found it! This, and the flowers that will follow, were photographed on a weekend trip to Citadel of Rocks, Idaho.
