June 2022-3

It's official: it's invasive and bees love it

Melilotus officinalis, June 16, 2022

Common & scientific name
Yellow sweetclover, Melilotus officinalis

Family
Pea, Fabaceae

Location
Roadside up to 9,800’

Fun, weird, helpful, or little known fact
Yes, this is the same yellow-flowered plant you see growing 3 feet high by the side of the road seemingly everywhere.  It stabilizes soil, fixes nitrogen, doesn’t mind roadsides or other disturbed places, and is loved by bees.  These are its positive traits.  It is also, as you can tell by its abundance, invasive and can potentially crowd out (or at least hide) native species.  Thankfully I have not seen it creep into the back country, beyond roadside, where the bees have plenty of other native species to choose from.

The shrinking snapdragons

Castilleja sulphurea, June 16, 2022

Common & scientific name
Sulfur indian paintbrush, Castilleja sulphurea

Family
Broomrape, Orobanchaceae

Location
Between Lincoln Creek turnoff & Lost Man TH, 10,100’

Fun, weird, helpful, or little known fact

I always had a hard time understanding how the paintbrushes fit within the Snapdragon (Scrophularaceae) family, along with the penstemons and monkey flowers and louseworts.  Now I know they don’t (nor, it seems, do the aforementioned: more on that in those plants’ profiles!)  Some time in the last few years when I wasn’t paying attention, they got moved to the Broomrape (Orobanchaceae) family, not because of their physical characteristics, but because of their genetics and the fact that they are parasitic on other plants, like other broomrapes.

Your lower roadside companion

Heterotheca villosa, June 16, 2022

Common & scientific name
Hairy golden aster, Heterotheca villosa

Family
Sunflower, Asteraceae

Location
Roadside, 8,200’

Fun, weird, helpful, or little known fact

While all guide books describe this plant as “highly variable” (in size, leaf shape, hairiness, etc.), it is easily identifiable by its strongly pungent smell, location (dry, exposed places, often roadside), and its numerous yellow flowers atop a mound of grayish-green leaves.  Its alpine cousin, H. pumila, looks similar (and they may interbreed), but it generally has larger yellow flowers and, well, grows higher. I tried for years to distinguish these two species, but have now decided not to make the perfect the enemy of the good: if it’s up high, it’s H. pumila, if it’s not, it’s H. villosa.

A work of art

Iris missourienses, June 16, 2022

I. missouriensis, Twin Lakes area, 9,400’ June 17, 2022

I. missouriensis, roadside 10,400’, July 12, 2022

Common & scientific name
Rocky Mountain iris, Iris missouriensis

Family
Iris, Iridaceae

Location
Grottos, 9,500’

Fun, weird, helpful, or little known fact

More modest in size and coloring than its cultivated brethren, but always a thrill to find in the wild (and to this observer’s eye, more beautiful in its delicacy), this wild iris thrives in wet areas like Twin Lakes meadow and the Grottos.

I. missouriensis, roadside 10,400’, July 12, 2022

I. missouriensis seedpods, Twin Lakes, 9,200’, August 17, 2022

Pin cushion

Geum macrophyllum, June 16, 2022

G. macrophyllum, in fruit, Lost Man Reservoir, 10,600’, August 15, 2022

Common & scientific name
Large-leaved avens, Geum macrophyllum

Family
Rose, Rosaceae 

Location
Difficult Creek, 8,100’

Fun, weird, helpful, or little known fact
Can easily be confused at first glance with a cinquefoil (Potentilla), with its tall habit and yellow cinquefoil-like flowers, but can be distinguished by the three-parted stem leaves, its more maple-like basal leaves, and especially by its seedhead, seen in the photo at left below, which has a bristly, pin cushion look with pinkish styles that are curly-cue shaped at the end. This uncommon (on the Pass) plant grows near streams and in wet areas.

Drilling down on reproduction

Geranium richardsonii, June 16, 2022

G. richardsonii, Weller, 9,100’, July 11, 2022

Common & scientific name
Richardson’s geranium, Geranium richardsonii

Family
Geranium, Geraniaceae

Location
Roadside, 10,000’

Fun, weird, helpful, or little known fact

Distinguishable from its close relative, Geranium viscosissimum, by the sticky, red-ball-tipped (“glandular”) hairs on the stem below its flower, as opposed to the yellow-tipped hairs on G. viscosissimum.

Geraniums have evolved a wonderful method for successfully planting their own seeds.  Its seeds are attached to a reproductive part of the flower, the style, that coils like a spring.  Once it falls to the ground, it coils and uncoils in response to changes in atmospheric pressure, thereby drilling itself and its seeds into the ground.