Mountain Girl: the Perks of Being a Wildflower

Around six p.m. the dark rain clouds that had been hanging over the city all afternoon finally rolled away and the evening turned crisp & clear. I decided to drive north to Snow Canyon to walk the trails through petrified dunes of Navajo sandstone and hardened lava rock hoping to spot some spring flowers in bloom. I had visited a section of Snow Canyon in February and heard some locals talking up the current display of wildflowers while I was hiking in Zion the day prior so I thought I would check it out.The canyon is located on the city limits above the bedroom community of Saint George just north of the apex of northern Arizona, southern Utah & Las Vegas, Nevada and runs south of the spine of the Pine Valley Mountain Wilderness. The late afternoon sun was glowing against my face as I wove my way through the city passing one well-landscaped retirement community after the next until I saw the pull off for Snow Canyon. From the get-go the scenery was absolutely breathtaking and as I continued up the main park drive the canyon walls continued to grow until they were towering over my head. I pulled off to check out some climbing walls and was feeling pretty itchy to send a route but an obvious lack of gear forced me back into the car and on to the next trail head. I consulted the map and discovered a trail labeled "Hidden Pinyon Nature Trail" which sounded like exactly what I had come looking for.

Snow Canyon

The trail begins at the main park road and meanders through a grove of red sand and pinyon trees until it butts up against beautiful red rock and starts weaving through cracks until finally spitting you out in a wash on the other side of the ridge. My hiking pace was slowed as the trail was lined with flora of all shapes & sizes and I stopped to photograph everything I saw. Something about spring wildflowers makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, especially after a long Montana winter, and after seeing nothing but white for almost 5 months the vibrant pigmentation of desert flowers re-energized my soul and brought feelings of tranquility and peace. There is something so unique about viewing flowers in the desert where it seems they should not be. Their colors pop against the red rocks & sand and it is humbling to know that even in the dry, arid conditions of southwestern Utah these precious life forms can tackle anything that comes their way. Against all odds they find sources of water and nutrients and seem to grow and thrive in this desolate climate.

Many of the flowers I saw where cactus blossoms that drastically counteracted the sharp & spindly needles on the rest of the plant. In fact, the cactus flowers are some of my favorites because the contrast of color, texture and aesthetics is so vast yet it all stems from the same parent plant. The dull greens & browns of the cactus play an important role in contrasting the vibrancy of color displayed in the blossoms while the harshness of the needles makes the silky flowers seem like clouds effortlessly floating above. From Purple Torch to Prickly Pear, Mojave King Cup & Harriman's Yucca, the cactus flowers were in full bloom and I felt blessed to have arrived just in time to soak in the beauty of these special lifeforms.

Hackberry Beard-Tongue

There were also many non-cactus flowers that were blooming pretty & bright alongside the sandy trail. Globemallow, Blue Dicks, Western Wallflower, Desert Sunflower, Hackberry Beard-Tongue, Desert Paintbrush, and Spectacle Pod are among the flowers that I photographed and accurately identified, however there were a slew of others that I could not locate online. There is also some discrepancy in wildflower classification because of the variety of names associated with each individual flower. For every plant listed there is a scientific name and one or more common names used by locals and naturalists alike. In addition to that, I photographed flowers at many different stages of growth but the ones that were new blooms were much harder to identify as most of the pictures online are of full-blossom blooms. Here is an example of the classification system used to identify one of the most astonishing flowers I saw last week, the Hackberry Beard-Tongue from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Site:

Kingdom	Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom	Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision	Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division	Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class	Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass	Asteridae
Order	Scrophulariales
Family	Scrophulariaceae – Figwort family
Genus	Penstemon Schmidel – Beardtongue
Species	Penstemon subulatus M.E. Jones – Hackberry Beardtongue

Knowing the names and classifications of lifeforms in your natural surrounding is a very important tool for those working in an outdoor professional setting. Finding, photographing & identifying these flowers was an engaging and exciting process and one that I look forward to continuing with all manner of plants, animals & rocks in the American southwest this season. **Don't forget to click on any of the photographs you see to enlarge them for beautiful quality & detail!