On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
TKH
During my long distance hikes through mostly desert country, with a few routes through more temperate country thrown in here and there, one of the highlights for me is the local flora. This bug was planted in me by my mother when I was a young boy while we were hiking in the mountains during summer vacations.
She, sadly, lacked any formal education owing to the time, place and family she was born into. By the time she had accomplished the Münchhausen feat of pulling herself by her hair out of that morass, it was too late since the educational system was not accommodating for late bloomers in general, and late-blooming women in particular. She would have made a fine botanist. As it was, she became an avid gardener, a keen and sharp observer of plant life who could tell you at the drop of a hat how what you were looking at was related to other plants or to what she had in her garden, including the Latin names. Quite remarkable!
She never cared much for my hiking adventures, being afraid that I was taking too many risks, but when the pictures of plants came out, she was all eyes and ears. So this submission is in memory of my mother who passed away eight months ago at the ripe old age of 101.
It is also in honor of those of you who get up early on a Sunday morning to decide of which plants to order too many varieties of seeds of or run out to save a precious flower from an impending summer thunder storm. That’s apart from all the weeding, pruning, watering, mulching. I am very familiar with these travails, even if I do not partake as an apartment dweller who spends six months of the year out in the backcountry, for now at least.
I will split this up into two parts, one dealing with desert plants, or, more precisely, plants that I encountered in the deserts of Utah and Arizona, and one with pictures from temperate zones, California, Wyoming and the Pyrenees.
The tufted evening primrose (Oenothera caespitosa) often found on talus slopes, but here on the forest floor
Kingcup cactus a member of the hedgehog cactus family (Echinocereus triglochidiatus).
I love it when I come around a corner while hiking through a landscape dominated by kind of drab colors grey, beige or reddish-brown and chance upon one of these bright red cacti.
Sometimes you have to wind your way through fields of these and then I could do with out the thorns. But you won’t get one without the other, and nobody ask my opinion anyway.
Sand Verbena (Abronia sp.), not related to Verbenas, the common name notwithstanding. They have an absolutely delightful scent. and believe me, after hiking through the desert for a few weeks anything that smells delightfully is very welcome!
Often found in sandy washes as here, where you ask yourself how they can possibly survive.
prairie spiderwort or western spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalis)
I encountered this first while crossing Southwest Utah in Spring of 2019 on a bench above Hackberry canyon, not before and not after, where it was dominating.
This either a variegated form of Tradescantia occidentalis, the prairie spiderwort, or another species, or another species, Tradescantia ohiensis. The plant ID app is not consistent
The glory of Texas ( I am sorry, I’d never have thought that I would have to type these words) (Thelocactus bicolor)
Mariposa lily (Chalocortus sp.)
Plains pricklypear (Opuntia polyacantha)
Smallflower fishhook cactus (Sclerocactus parviflorus)
Look at the end of the thorns! And be careful not to step on the real thing in real life, pulling out the thorns will be doing some damage!
Bitterroot (Lewisia sp.) This was the first time that I have seen this. I am wondering whether this gives the Bitterroot valley in Wyoming its name and whether the “Lewis” in the Latin name is the Lewis of Lewis and Clark? (Google to the rescue: it is named for not by Meriwether Lewis.
JPL
The pictures are beautiful and the story even more so. Thank you.
Bill Hicks
Thanks for the photos and IDs. A little interesting botanical trivia, cacti have spines (pointy modified leaves). Thorns are modified whole stems and probably the rarest of the pointy modifications by plants and in my experience often the largest pointy things. Honey locust has some amazingly large thorns (thought to deter extinct herbivores like giant sloths and mastodons). By far, prickles are the most common, think blackberries and roses. They are epidermal extensions, skin outgrowths from the stem (so sort of a modified stem but not the whole stem). In the interest of science and accurate terminology, I contact Bret Michaels every March 15th encouraging him to change the title and lyrics of the Poison song to “Every Rose Has Its Prickle”. I urge yall to do the same as he continues to ignore me.
OzarkHillbilly
Beautiful flowers. It’s a little early for drinking, but I’ll make an exception today: Here’s looking at you, Mom. Prost!
Lapassionara
Love these! Thanks for sharing.
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
Lovely photos!
Yes Lewisia is named for Merriweather Lewis. The expidition found Bitterroot in Montana and brought specimens back. That was Lewisia rediviva which is now the state flower there. It has narrower leaves than the species in your photo. The roots of the Bitterroots were a staple food of native americans who liked the taste even though Europeans found them not so great, hence the common name.
mvr
Props to your mom. This seems like a fitting memorial.
Thanks!
Betty
Nice to see such a variety of plants we rarely see. Lovely tribute to your Mom.
pieceofpeace
Thorns! And protecting? such beauty! Wonderful mom-memory that continues to give you pleasure.
Thanks for sharing…..
MelissaM
@Bill Hicks: I’ll keep calling the things on roses thorns if they draw blood. Otherwise, I’ll stick to prickles.
Any comment on Annie Lennox’s “Thorn in My Side?” I suppose she doesn’t state the source.
I’m loving the flora pictures and it’s a lovely remembrance of your mom.
Xavier
Lewis did describe a number of new species of plants and animals in the journals of the expedition.
BretH
Beautiful prose and photos. I became hooked on solo hiking reading the books of Colin Fletcher – The Man Who Walked Through Time and his amazing The Complete Walker. His philosophy of backpacking for the purpose of walking through lovely places as unencumbered as possible as opposed to seeing how far you can hike still sticks with me.
This led me in later years to appreciate the books of Tom Brown, Jr and to take his Tracker School Standard Class, and later to study with his protégé Jon Young and to participate in his week-long Art of Mentoring classes.
Trivia Man
@Bill Hicks: Next time, remind him that technically correct is the best kind if correct! Anything else contributes to the dumbening of america and we should not belittle Poison fans with the sift bigotry of low expectations!
Trivia Man
Your mother’s experience is a stark example if how society has intentionally hobbled itself through time. How many geniuses, in every field, were wasted through intentionally closed doors of opportunity? Gender, race, economic access – i am 100% certain we will have a better world for all if we can get better at identifying, nurturing, and developing the best of our best humans.
StringOnAStick
Lovely photos, I share your thrill of finding something gorgeous, just out there living it’s life in the desert or other wild lands. Look up Pinedrops, the latest thing I’ve found to be amazing. It has a complex relationship to pine trees and has no green chlorophyll.
Lewisia has been adopted by the more desert types in the landscape trade, lots of amazing colours and larger blooms, but they have to be in free draining soil or they will rot.
way2blue
Thanks for sharing photos of desert flora from your expeditions. And your tribute to your Mom. Looking forward to tomorrow’s contribution.
N.B., I spent two summers mapping in the Wasatch Mountains and would bring wildflowers I’d encountered back to camp. To show the wife of the project leader, a botanist. And had been my school librarian. She had us ID’n local flowers and making dyes in grade school. Savoring the memories.
Dan B
It’s fascinating to see species of plants like the Oenothera and Tradescantia whose close relatives are highly invasive in soggy Seattle. And Lewisia that are a challenge unless your partner builds a rip rap wall out of concrete rubble from the homely , and ugly, sidewalks and rotten driveway. We’ve got a couple Lewisia growing in the cracks in the wall. I thought they’d perish last summer from lack of water but these garden center hybrids are back and blooming. My partner who grew up with the consensus that all plants need mounds of mulch doesn’t notice them. He seems baffled by rock garden plants. In the Cascades there are ecological niches for plants on the wet western side and on the much dryer eastern slopes. One glorious plant is Lewisia tweedyi. It grows in one dry mountain valley. It’s a beauty.
TKH
@Bill Hicks: I learned that distinction 50 years ago at university, but in a European language and never in English. So thanks for filling in that hole in my education.
The key for identifying plants in North America is so heavy that I cannot be bothered to take it on my hikes. I’d rather take more food, which also has the advantage that it’s weight will eventually disappear from the pack while the book would be part of the base weight of the load.
TKH
@StringOnAStick: Thank you for the pointer to pinedrops! I had encountered them once on the Tahoe Rim Trail and did not know what they were. In those days I still used a camera rather than a phone to take pictures, hence no convenient Plant ID app!