Pointedtip Mariposa Lily, Three-spot Mariposa Lily, Baker’s Mariposa ~ Calochortus apiculatus ~ Found only in Canada’s British Columbia and Alberta and in Oregon, Idaho and Montana in the U.S.
Beargrass is beginning to bloom now in the western Montana high country,
Beargrass ~ Xerophyllum tenax
and then thinking of bears… As I sat eating my lunch along a trail the other day, enjoying the cool breeze that was sweeping up the mountain and the beauty of spring in the wild country, I watched dozens of bumble bees gathering nectar from and pollinating the huckleberry bushes that are now in bloom
Huckleberry ~ Vaccinium membranaceum
and the thought occurred to me that in the spring of the year a bee which weighs about half a gram gets sustenance from the blossoms and at the same time pollinates the plants, then in the autumn of the year a bear which can weigh up to 1,700 pounds gets sustenance from the berries of those plants and spreads their seeds; what extremes in the annual cycle of a plant!
