by Judy Lehmberg, BioPics Photography. www.vernelehmberg.com
It has been a fairly wet spring in Yellowstone and the plants are loving it. You can look at mountainsides from a distance and see almost solid yellow from the arrowleaf balsamroot. It is past its peak in most areas now but is still beautiful. There are more than just the 4 following species blooming now but these are some of my favorites.
Clematis is in the buttercup family. There are many species of clematis but the above one is my favorite. You know how some couples have a song they consider “our song?” Clematis is my husband’s and my flower. He gave me a photo he took of one before we even started dating. (I was dating his roommate at the time, but that is another story.) His mother later gave me a cutting from her clematis vines. I do not have a green thumb, and since we spend about 6 months of the year in Yellowstone my clematis, which are in Texas, don’t get much attention. In spite of that they have been growing on a trellis, on the side of our garage, for over 35 years. Although most clematis species are toxic in varying degrees Native Americans used them for migraine headaches and skin infections. There are actually two species of clematis in Yellowstone: this one and subalpine clematis
Lupines are one of the most widespread flowers in Yellowstone. It is in the pea and bean family, Fabaceae. Plants in the family fabaceae are important to the plants that live near them because they have root nodules containing bacteria which fix atmospheric nitrogen, thus increasing the amount of nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, in the soil.
I am from Texas. Our state flower is the bluebonnet. Bluebonnets are also lupines. That is what makes common names confusing. A lupine is a lupine in Wyoming, but in Texas it’s a bluebonnet
Prairie smoke derives its common name from the flower’s fruit. The above photo is of the flowers. The fruit is a light mauve to pink collection of fuzzy stringy things that are really pretty. I guess if you squinted at them you might think of smoke. They don’t look like it, but they are in the rose family. Some Native Americans used prairie smoke to treat tuberculosis.
Shooting star is fairly common in Yellowstone and in many areas of western North America. I think it is interesting for two reasons. One, as the flower bud opens the pink petals move 180 degrees to the position you see in the above photo. The stamens and pistal point down and the petals point up. And, two, they can only be fertilized by buzz pollination. Buzz pollination occurs when a bee lands on the flower and vibrates, or buzzes, its wings. The vibration releases the flower’s pollen from the dark colored stamens.
Thank you ! Very informative
Well, I have been trying to figure out what kind of flower that first one is but would not have guess clematis. Thank you for this great post.