Mother Nature has by no way completed her spring kaleidoscope of color, but she has outpaced my limited ability to identify all of them. For example, I used to think that this common flower was Blue Camas, but I now think I was wrong. As close as I could come was perhaps a species of hyacinth. Anyone?
After receiving a lot of help from Adam R. Paul and aullori, this flower was identified as the Wild Hyacinth Brodiaea douglasii. I’ve added this close-up of it:
Or this one, that I would guess is one of the 20 or so species of Monkeyflowers. I especially like the “ky” monogram on its petals.
This one I’m sure of: the Death Camas. Its bulbs contain the highest concentration of alkaloids, such as zygadenine, and cause such symptoms as muscular weakness, slow heartbeat, subnormal temperature, painful stomach upset, vomiting, diarrhea and excessive watering of the mouth.
My wife said this picture caused her to sneeze. While the spring blossoms of the sage are pretty, their pollen is really tough on anyone with allergies. It is, however, a very beneficial plant for the deer population, and during many of the very hard winters may be the only food source available to sustain mule deer. Extreme pressure on the environment by coal-bed methane exploration and production in Wyoming has caused the loss of much of the sage brush in some areas and a decline in the mule deer population has been the result.
Montana Outdoors 