Here are some of the flowers growing along the upper part of trail 205 ( 3,500 ft to 5,000 ft).
Red clover
Miner’s lettuce, claytonia perfoliata
Tolmie star-tulip
Tolmie star-tulips
A hillside of Blue-eyed Marys
A ridgetop covered with Arrowleaf Balsamroot
Very colorful Tolmies
Yellow Indian Paintbrush
Lupine
Montana Outdoors 
Oooh. Ahhh.
Beautiful flowers, and as always, I love learning what they are.
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Comment by Patia — June 26, 2008 @ 7:41 pm
To have that wonderful variety of flowers – of COURSE it’s got to be the longest 3 mile trail in Montana. You are one lucky devil!
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Comment by Bo — June 26, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
I’ve never seen a yellow indian paintbrush or red clover. that is one my son needed for his flower project. they are supposedly abundant in TX, but we’ve never found any!
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Comment by silken — June 26, 2008 @ 9:24 pm
Clover is sweet. I never tire of it in its many forms. The scent is always sweet. Have you got any yellow clovers in Montana?
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Comment by Tabbie — June 26, 2008 @ 10:19 pm
Patia,
Yes, there are some beauties out there. I try ti identify as many as possible, but some still elude me. I guess I’m more adapted to finding them than I am to identifying them.
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Comment by montucky — June 26, 2008 @ 10:32 pm
Bo,
It truly is wonderful to be able to see that much variety in one outing. That’s a pretty ambitious trail, but worth the effort to hike it, and it appears to have very little use, if any. There were elk trails that intersected it that were larger and better used that 205: if it were not for some ancient blaze marks it would have been nearly impossible to stay on it. I’ll post some photos of the trail itself and some of the scenery soon.
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Comment by montucky — June 26, 2008 @ 10:38 pm
silken,
The yellow paints are pretty scarce, but also not nearly as visible as the reds so they can be missed. I don’t see a lot of red clover, but it really isn’t rare here. We have a lot of white clover in our lawn, including one area that has many 4-leaf clovers.
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Comment by montucky — June 26, 2008 @ 10:41 pm
Tabbie,
I also like clover. I still pull some apart to get a taste of the nectar. Yes, we have yellow clover, the very tall variety. It covers the edges of many of the mountain roads especially. It hasn’t started to bloom yet this year though.
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Comment by montucky — June 26, 2008 @ 10:44 pm
Just gorgeous. The colorful Tolmies are *so* pretty (and furry inside)! And the lupines such a shock of gorgeous blue. It must be an utter delight to see them when hiking.
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Comment by Sara — June 27, 2008 @ 5:33 am
The Tolmies are just everywhere this year, and the Lupines are reaching their peak right now. They are interesting because when in a shady area they appear a dark vivid blue and in full sun a very pleasant light color. It has been a very colorful spring and early summer!
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Comment by montucky — June 27, 2008 @ 7:01 am
The Tolmies are drop-dead gorgeous. Absolute epitomes of nature’s beauty. Stunning. I’m quite speechless after seeing these photographs. No matter how many times I see flowers, even if the same type of flower, I can never ever get ‘bored’ by it. Each and every one of them is exuding life’s perfection from it. Stunning work! 🙂
P.S. I shifted again. wordpress.com didn’t really suit me – I couldn’t get that feeling of belonging, if you know what I mean! 🙂
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Comment by Sumedh — June 27, 2008 @ 7:20 am
Wow, the tolmies are incredible, I’ve never seen anything like them! What family are they in, do you know?
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Comment by teaspoon — June 27, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Sumedh,
The Tolmies are indeed incredible. There are so many different variations in them that I’m often surprised.
I changed your address in my blogroll. Sorry to hear WordPress didn’t work out for you. It took me a little time to get comfortable here but now I like it a lot.
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Comment by montucky — June 27, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
teaspoon,
They’re actually not a tulip at all, but a member of the lily family. (Calochortus tolmiei) I noticed them for the first time last summer and this year they seem to be everywhere. As far as I can tell they’re not even supposed to grow in Montana but they don’t know it.
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Comment by montucky — June 27, 2008 @ 1:42 pm