Spring Wildflowers

Eddy Peak in the Cherry Peak Roadless Area photographed from the Munson Creek trail head.

One of my favorite days of Spring usually comes on April 18th and for years on that day I have hiked two miles up the Munson Creek trail to an area where there is a large area of Trilliums in bloom. This year it has been cool and rainy with few sunny days and I suspected that the trilliums would be late so today I checked at the footbridge near the trail head where they bloom earlier and found they are just beginning. My hike will be put off another week or so because my favorite area is two thousand feet higher in elevation.

Pacific Trillium, (trillium ovatum)

Several other wildflowers have begun to appear now too:

Yellow Bell, (fritillaria pudica)

Dark-throated Shooting Star, (dodecatheon pulchellum)

Small-flowered Woodland Star, (lithophragma parviflorum)

Bells and stars

In between rain showers and snow flurries both of these species bloomed today

A two photo day

Yellow Bell ~ Fritillaria pudica

Early little ones

Woodland Star ~ Lithophragma parviflorum

Such a tiny (about .25 inches across) blossom and so fragile that it floats on even the tiniest breeze, it is still one of the earliest and hardiest of the wildflowers. Things cannot always be understood at the first glance.

Yellow Bell ~ Fritillaria pudica

A Whitetail doe was grazing on the hillside just below this small blossom in the evening of the second day of its bloom: in the morning the flower was gone. Life can take a sudden turn in this world in which we live.

Gone for a bit

Please note:
I’ll be traveling for a week or so and since I don’t own a laptop I’ll be off the air for that long. I wish everyone a great week and I’ll look forward to resuming and catching up with everyone when I return.

Yellow Bell, Fritillaria pudica

‘Bashful’

It’s two weeks late this year and so far I’ve seen only the one, but there will soon be many more Yellow Bells dotting the hillsides in western Montana.

Fritillaria pudica (‘pudica’ in Latin means ‘bashful’) are found only in the eleven western-most states, skipping Arizona, and the two western-most provinces in Canada. They are perennials from small bulbs. The bulbs were harvested and eaten by several of the native Indian tribes.