I went on a week's vacation to northern New Mexico in mid-July. We hiked and went to botanic gardens, but the best moment of wildflower spotting was the unexpected one. A field of flowers on the roadside.
When I stepped out of the car, all about my feet was the most wonderful diversity of flowers!
Look at these!
I can name many of them to genus, but they'll be New Mexican species. Blue and purple penstemons (Penstemon), white evening primroses (Oenothera), clumps of grayish sages which are in flower but have tiny flowers the same color as their foliage (Artemisia), yellow ragworts (Senecio)...
The red below is skyrocket (Ipomopsis aggregata, also called scarlet gilia). The red-purple in the lower left is a pea-family vine, maybe a milkvetch (Astragalus).
There are some weeds--I recognized mullein (Verbascum thapsus), the big soft leaves at the top of the photo below--but natives far out-numbered them. I didn't look closely enough at the white spires (in the photo above), I think they are a bistort (Bistorta) but I can't say for sure.
While a display of roadside wild flowers could have been planted, some of the plants, like the winged wild buckwheat (Eriogonum alatum), the yellow plant standing beside the skyrocket, are not available as wildflower seeds, so my thought is that no, we stumbled on a flowering meadow.
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| sky rocket and winged wild buckwheat |
So just look around with me:
Totally distracted by the flowers near the road, I never walked over to see what plant colored the distant fields purple. The site had penstemons in purple, but also lupines (Lupinus) which are taller so easier to see at a distance, and milkvetches (Astragalus) which are low but the right shade of purple (in the photo above out toward the fence). So too many choices! How wonderful1
Comments and corrections welcome.
Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist
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