Wildflowers of the Rockies - A Field Guide in Progress

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Wildflowers of the Rockies

A field guide in progress: fifty alpine and subalpine wildflowers, with bloom times and where to look
Helen Stockstill, botanist

For twenty-two years I have carried a notebook up mountains and written down what was blooming. This page is an attempt to turn those notebooks into something useful for people who hike in the Rocky Mountains and want to know the name of the blue thing by the trail.

The plan is fifty species -- the ones a hiker on the Front Range or in the high country of Colorado is most likely to meet between June and September -- each with the common name, the scientific name, a description that would let you tell it from its neighbors, when and at what elevation it blooms, and where to look. I have thirty-two written up as of this month. The rest are in the notebooks, waiting for winter, which is when a botanist gets her typing done.

A note on the science: I have kept the descriptions to what I can vouch for from my own field work and the standard floras. Where I am not certain of a detail I have left it out. Common names vary from one valley to the next; the Latin does not, which is why it is there. If you find an error, I would honestly like to know.

There are no photographs yet. My slides go back to 1977 and they are in carousels in the hall closet, not on this computer, and I have been told the scanner needed to put them here costs more than my first car. In the meantime, the descriptions will have to do the work. That is, after all, what a field guide did before photographs.

Life Zones and Bloom Times

In the mountains, the calendar is written in elevation. Roughly every thousand feet you climb sets the season back by a week or more, so a flower that has gone to seed in the foothills in June may be just opening on the tundra in late July. The figures below are for the Colorado Rockies; the same zones sit lower as you go north, so that treeline in Montana is a couple of thousand feet below treeline here.

Zone	Elevation (Colorado)	What grows	Peak bloom
Foothills	about 5,500 to 8,000 ft	Ponderosa pine, scrub oak, grassland	May to mid-June
Montane	about 8,000 to 9,500 ft	Aspen, lodgepole pine, Douglas-fir, meadows	mid-June to July
Subalpine	about 9,500 to 11,500 ft	Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, wet meadows, willow	July to early August
Alpine (tundra)	above treeline, about 11,500 ft	No trees; cushion plants, sedges, rock	early July to early August; the show is over by mid-August

The tundra season is brutally short. Snow may not be gone from the high basins until late June, and the first hard frosts come back in late August. Everything up there has about six weeks to leaf, flower and set seed, which is why the alpine plants are small, low, and often perennial -- they cannot afford to start from seed every year. Many alpine cushion plants are decades old. Bear that in mind before you step on one.

The Species (32 written of 50 planned)

Grouped by the zone where you are most likely to meet them, and within each group roughly in order of bloom. Elevations are where I have most often recorded the plant in Colorado; most species range wider than this.

Foothills and Montane

1. Pasqueflower (Pulsatilla patens, also listed as Anemone patens). Lavender cups two inches across on a short, very fuzzy stem, often up before the last snow has gone from the north slopes; the whole plant is silky-haired. Blooms April to June, foothills to montane, on dry open slopes. Later in the season the seed heads are feathery plumes. One of the first flowers of the year and, for me, the one that means winter is finished.

2. Arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata). A large yellow sunflower-type head on a leafless stalk above a clump of big arrow-shaped, silvery-green leaves. Blooms May to June on open, sunny hillsides in the foothills and lower montane, often in great sheets. More common in the northern Rockies than here.

3. Blue flax (Linum lewisii). Sky-blue, five-petaled, an inch across, on thin wiry stems that sway in any breeze; the petals drop by afternoon and new ones open the next morning. May to July, foothills to montane, on dry meadows and roadsides. Named for Meriwether Lewis, who collected it on the expedition.

4. Wild rose (Rosa woodsii). A pink, five-petaled single rose on a thorny shrub, sweetly scented. June to July along streams and in aspen groves, foothills to montane. The red hips persist through winter.

5. Scarlet gilia, also called fairy trumpet or skyrocket (Ipomopsis aggregata). Brilliant red, inch-long trumpets flaring into five points, clustered along a two-foot stem; the leaves are finely divided and smell skunky if crushed. June to August, foothills to subalpine, on dry open slopes. Hummingbirds work these flowers all summer.

6. Rocky Mountain iris (Iris missouriensis). A pale blue-violet iris, veined with purple, in wet meadows and along ditches. May to July, foothills to montane. Grows in colonies; where you see one you see hundreds. The rootstock is poisonous to livestock, so ranchers do not love it.

7. Sticky geranium (Geranium viscosissimum). Pink to purple five-petaled flowers, an inch across, veined darker, on a leafy plant to two feet; the stems and leaves are sticky to the touch. June to August, montane meadows and aspen groves. Look at the seed pod: it is the long "crane's bill" that gives the family its name.

8. Heartleaf arnica (Arnica cordifolia). A single yellow daisy-like head on a stem with one or two pairs of heart-shaped leaves. June to July, in the shade of lodgepole and aspen, montane to subalpine. Carpets the forest floor some years.

9. Fairy slipper orchid (Calypso bulbosa). A single small pink orchid, slipper-shaped with a spotted lip, on a stem a few inches tall above one basal leaf, in deep spruce and fir shade. Late May to June, montane to subalpine. Rare, and easily killed by picking since the whole plant depends on a single tiny corm and a fungus partner in the soil. Look; do not touch.

10. Silvery lupine (Lupinus argenteus). Spikes of blue-purple pea flowers above silvery, palmately divided leaves (like a hand with the fingers spread). June to August, foothills to subalpine, in meadows and open forest. Poisonous to livestock, especially the seeds.

11. Rocky Mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus). Deep blue-purple tubular flowers, an inch long, all turned to one side of a stem to two feet. June to July, montane meadows and roadsides. There are dozens of penstemons in the Rockies; this is the one you are most likely to see from a car.

12. Colorado blue columbine (Aquilegia coerulea). See the section below; it deserves its own.

13. Fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium). Tall spikes of magenta-pink four-petaled flowers opening from the bottom up, on stems to five feet. July to September, montane to subalpine, on roadsides, burns and avalanche tracks -- anywhere the ground has been disturbed. When the top flowers open, the old-timers say, summer is nearly over. It is the first plant back after a fire.

14. Monument plant or green gentian (Frasera speciosa). A stalk to six feet, crowded with greenish-white four-petaled flowers spotted with purple, above a rosette of big leaves. June to August, montane to subalpine meadows. This plant grows as a leafy rosette for many years -- decades -- and then flowers once, sets seed, and dies. In some years whole meadows flower together.

Subalpine

15. Glacier lily (Erythronium grandiflorum). A nodding yellow lily with six petals swept back like a shooting star, one or two to a stem, above two glossy basal leaves. Blooms right at the edge of the melting snow, May in the montane to July in the subalpine, in moist meadows and open forest. Bears dig the corms, and where you see a subalpine meadow torn up in early summer, that is usually who did it.

16. Marsh marigold (Caltha leptosepala). White, cup-shaped, an inch or more across with a center of yellow stamens, on a short stem above round, dark green leaves. June to July, right at snowmelt, in wet subalpine meadows and along seeps. Often blooming through the last of the snow.

17. Globeflower (Trollius albiflorus). Cream-white, five to seven petals, a bit like the marsh marigold but the leaves are deeply lobed, not round, and the flower is more of a bowl. June to July, same wet places, same time. They grow together; look at the leaves.

18. Shooting star (Dodecatheon pulchellum). Magenta-pink petals swept straight back from a dark pointed "beak" of stamens, so that the flower looks like it is falling. June to July, wet meadows and streambanks, montane to subalpine.

19. Indian paintbrush (Castilleja species). The color is not in the flowers, which are small and greenish and tucked out of sight, but in the leafy bracts around them. Scarlet paintbrush (C. miniata) is the common red one in subalpine meadows, June to August; rosy paintbrush (C. rhexifolia) is pink to magenta in the same places and higher. Paintbrushes are partial parasites: their roots tap the roots of neighboring plants for water and nutrients, so they do not transplant, and there is no point trying. Wyoming's state flower is a paintbrush, C. linariifolia.

20. Elephant's head or elephanthead lousewort (Pedicularis groenlandica). A spike of pink-purple flowers, each of which is, unmistakably, a tiny elephant's head with the ears out and the trunk curled up. Once you have seen it you cannot see anything else. July to August in wet subalpine meadows and bogs, often with the marsh marigolds' leaves still around. Fernlike leaves.

21. Parry's primrose (Primula parryi). Vivid magenta flowers with a yellow eye in a cluster on a stem to a foot, above a rosette of thick leaves, always with its feet in the water -- at the edge of streams, snowmelt pools and waterfalls, subalpine to alpine. July. Beautiful, and it smells terrible up close, like something spoiled.

22. Monkshood (Aconitum columbianum). Deep blue-purple hooded flowers -- the upper sepal forms a hood or helmet over the rest -- on a tall stem to five feet, in wet meadows and along streams in willow thickets, July to August, montane to subalpine. Every part of this plant is poisonous, and seriously so; see the note on handling. The blue color is similar to larkspur (below), which grows in the same places and is also poisonous. Larkspur has a spur behind the flower; monkshood has a hood on top. Neither should be picked or tasted.

23. Subalpine larkspur (Delphinium barbeyi). Tall spikes of deep blue-purple spurred flowers, to five feet, in wet subalpine meadows and along streams, July to August. Poisonous to cattle, which have died of it in numbers; poisonous to people too.

24. Tall chiming bells or mountain bluebells (Mertensia ciliata). Clusters of nodding blue bells, pink in bud, on leafy stems to three feet, along streams and in wet meadows, June to August, montane to subalpine. The plant that lines every creek in the subalpine in July.

25. Cow parsnip (Heracleum sphondylium, often given as H. lanatum). Enormous flat-topped clusters of tiny white flowers, up to a foot across, on hollow stems to seven feet with leaves the size of a dinner plate. June to August, wet meadows and streambanks, montane to subalpine. The sap can make skin blister in sunlight; wear long sleeves if you have to push through it.

26. Yellow monkeyflower (Mimulus guttatus). Bright yellow snapdragon-shaped flowers with red spots in the throat, along streams and seeps and in the spray of waterfalls, June to August, foothills to subalpine. Never far from running water.

27. Rocky Mountain fringed gentian (Gentianopsis thermalis). Deep blue, four-petaled, the petal edges fringed, opening in sun and closing in cloud. July to September in wet subalpine meadows. This is the official flower of Yellowstone National Park.

Alpine

28. Alpine forget-me-not (Eritrichium nanum). A tight cushion of tiny hairy leaves an inch or two high, covered in late June and July with sky-blue flowers with yellow eyes, each a quarter-inch across, and sweetly fragrant if you put your nose to the ground. On exposed ridges and fellfields above treeline. The bluest thing in the mountains, and the one visitors most want to see. Find it on the tundra of Trail Ridge or Mount Evans in the first half of July.

29. Moss campion (Silene acaulis). A dense, mossy green cushion, sometimes two feet across, studded with small pink five-petaled flowers, June to August, on rocky tundra. A cushion the size of a dinner plate may be a century old; the plant takes ten years or more to flower at all. Walk around it.

30. Old-man-of-the-mountain or alpine sunflower (Hymenoxys grandiflora). A big yellow sunflower head, three or four inches across, on a stem only a few inches tall, with woolly divided leaves. July on the tundra. The heads all face east, toward the sunrise and away from the prevailing wind, so a slope of them looks like an audience. Like the monument plant, it grows for years and flowers once.

31. Sky pilot (Polemonium viscosum). Funnel-shaped blue-purple flowers with orange stamens in a cluster atop a stem to a foot, above sticky, fernlike leaves that smell strongly of skunk. July, high alpine, in rock crevices and scree, often the last flower before the summit.

32. Alpine avens (Geum rossii). Small yellow five-petaled flowers above fernlike leaves, June to August, the most abundant flower on Colorado tundra by far. In late August and September the leaves turn deep red and whole slopes of tundra go rust-colored. When people ask about the "fall color" above treeline, this is most of it.

Still to write: king's crown, queen's crown, alpine phlox, snow buttercup, American bistort, arctic gentian, Parry's gentian, alpine spring beauty, mountain harebell, Whipple's penstemon, Jacob's ladder, yarrow, death camas (poisonous), kinnikinnick, twinflower, prairie smoke, Wyoming paintbrush and wood lily. Winter project.

The Colorado State Flower

Colorado blue columbine, Aquilegia coerulea (you will also see it spelled caerulea). Five blue to lavender sepals spread wide behind five white petals that form a cup, and five long, slender spurs sweeping back behind the flower -- the spurs hold nectar and are what the hawkmoths come for. The flower is two to three inches across on a stem to two feet, above delicate, lobed, blue-green leaves. It blooms June to August, montane to subalpine, in aspen groves, on rocky slopes, and in meadows; some of the best stands I know are in aspen along the Front Range in early July. Higher up the flowers get smaller and paler, and on the tundra you may find them nearly white.

The Colorado General Assembly made the columbine the state flower in 1899, so this year is its hundredth anniversary as the official flower. A later state law, from the 1920s, protects it: it is against the law to uproot the plant on public land, and picking is limited to a small number of blossoms per person per day. Please don't pick any. It is a perennial; the plant you leave will be there next year and so will the seed.

There are other columbines in the Rockies -- a red-and-yellow one, Aquilegia elegantula, in the southern part of the state, and a yellow one, A. chrysantha, in canyons to the south -- and where they meet the blue columbine they hybridize, so an odd pinkish one is not a mistake, just a mixed marriage.

Handle With Care

A few of the plants above are dangerous, and I want to say so plainly rather than bury it in a description.

Monkshood (Aconitum) is among the most poisonous plants in North America. The whole plant, roots, leaves and flowers, contains alkaloids that affect the heart and nerves, and people have been poisoned by eating it and, in a few cases, by handling the roots with broken skin. Do not pick it, do not let children pick it, and wash your hands if you have touched it. It is a beautiful plant; admire it from the trail.

Larkspur (Delphinium) is related and also poisonous, and has killed a great many cattle on Colorado summer range. Death camas (Zigadenus), which I have yet to write up, has been mistaken for wild onion with fatal results; it does not smell of onion, and that is the test. Cow parsnip sap makes skin blister in sunlight.

The general rule: do not eat anything in the mountains that you cannot name with certainty, and do not trust a common name. My advice to hikers is simpler still. Eat the sandwich you brought.

Leave No Trace: Please Don't Pick

Take the picture, leave the flower. A picked wildflower is dead in an hour and gone from the meadow forever; the seed it would have made is gone too. In a national park or a wilderness area, picking is against the rules. Everywhere else it is merely a bad idea. There are more people on these trails every year -- the Trail Ridge tundra sees hundreds of thousands of visitors a summer -- and if each of us picked one flower there would be none.

Stay on the trail on the tundra. This matters more than anything else on this page. Alpine plants grow slowly and the soil under them is thin. A footprint on a cushion plant can kill a plant that took decades to grow, and a shortcut across a switchback becomes a gully in a few seasons. Where there is no trail, walk on rock or snow, spread out rather than in single file, and step around the cushions.

Do not dig plants to take home. They will die. Paintbrush cannot live without its host plant; the orchids cannot live without their soil fungus; the alpine plants cannot live at your elevation. Buy seed from a nursery that grows native plants.

And pack out what you carried in, orange peels included. An orange peel takes years to disappear at eleven thousand feet.

The 1999 Field Season

A wet spring and a late snowpack made 1999 a late year: the subalpine meadows I usually see at peak around the Fourth of July were two weeks behind, and it was a good year for the wet-meadow plants and a spectacular one for the columbines. From the notebook, in general terms (I keep the exact locations of the rare things to myself, which I hope you'll understand):

June 12 -- foothills west of Fort Collins. Pasqueflower gone to seed, blue flax, wild rose just opening, penstemon everywhere along the road. Iris in the wet draws.
June 26 -- a montane valley in the Indian Peaks. Glacier lilies and marsh marigolds at the snow edge at 10,000 feet, which is two weeks late. Fairy slippers in the spruce, six plants.
July 10 -- Trail Ridge Road, Rocky Mountain National Park, the tundra walks. Alpine forget-me-not at its peak, old-man-of-the-mountain all facing east, moss campion, alpine avens. A crowd of people from a tour bus and I spent an hour pointing at things together. Best day of the year.
July 17 -- Mount Evans road. Sky pilot in the rocks near the top. Columbines in the subalpine below, the best stand I've seen in a decade.
July 24-25 -- Crested Butte, which calls itself the wildflower capital of Colorado and had a fair claim to it this year. Meadows of paintbrush, lupine, larkspur, chiming bells and monkshood along every creek; elephant's head by the thousand in the wet places.
August 7 -- a basin near Ouray. Parry's primrose along the streams, fringed gentian opening. Fireweed starting.
August 28 -- back to Trail Ridge. Bloom over, alpine avens turning red, arctic gentian in flower (it is the last one). First frost had been. Season closed.

Total species recorded in flower this year: 187. The notebook is number 41.

Other Pages Worth Your Time

Desert Wildflower Watch -- the Brightmans do for the desert what I am trying to do for the mountains, and their season starts when mine ends.
Sierra Peaks Log -- Andrea climbs the peaks I only look at.
Dayhikes with Dad -- the right way to raise a botanist.
Monarch Waystation -- native plants in Kansas.
Heirloom Tomato Trials -- Dr. Pham, a fellow retired-from-the-lab botanist, working on something you can eat.
The RainForest neighborhood -- the rest of the naturalists.

Visitors to this meadow since May 1999:

E-mail Helen Stockstill
Corrections, identifications and "what was the blue thing" questions are all welcome. Describe the leaves; everyone describes the flower, and it is usually the leaves that settle it.

Last updated September 19, 1999. © 1999 Helen Stockstill. You are welcome to print this page for your pack; please do not reproduce it elsewhere without asking.