Rim Country Land Blog

It’s amazing how the wildflowers change from one week to the next, and one area to the next even in close proximity. The sand lilies are hanging on in the cooler protected areas but have gone from most of the prairie. In their place are hundreds of evening primrose (Oenothera caespitosa) that bloom as the sun sets, their brilliant white color easy to spot in the green and brown. Chickweed and chokecherry are also blooming in the canyons, as is the first of the yarrow. Deathcamas and vetches are visible, including groundplum milkvetch with its obvious round fruits. Delicate purple-blossomed waterleaf plants were a surprise, especially on the south-facing slopes. A few onions were growing in a section of the bulldozer track; I think they were pink onions, which are more prevalent farther east in tallgrass prairie. The bluebunch wheatgrass, thickspike wheatgrass, and ryegrass are green and growing, though unfortunately surrounded by a bumper crop of cheatgrass.

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Tonight’s wildflower walk took us to the top of the North rim and down through the dog town. The difference in flowers from even that small elevation difference was obvious–deathcamas blooming on top of the ridge but not below, larkspur and vetch the same. There were sand lilies everywhere, though, and phlox. Also blooming were skunkbush, currant, wild onion, prairie violet, and yellow biscuitroot. At the top of the ridge, at least, the currants were far more common at the base of the ponderosa than elsewhere. We spotted a small patch of Poa bulbosa, or bulbous bluegrass, which has bulblets that fall to the ground instead of seeds. It’s a non-native and can be aggressive, so we pulled up the plants we found. We also spent time looking at the sedges, their wiry roots holding together roundish platforms of soil protected from erosion. Animals for the evening included a small rattlesnake, a pair of blue herons flying overhead, and a close encounter (not too close!) with a porcupine in a clump of sagebrush. The temperature dropped dramatically at sunset at the edge of the canyon.

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