The last couple days has brought more flowers blooming to RedRock RV Park (Island Park, Idaho). In the forest across the street from our RV Park I found several new species of flowers blooming for the first time. It's fun to look for the new flowers. You have to be very careful to look under plants and to look at the small ones. Today I found a very tiny plant that's even hard to see with the naked eye (you can, but it's not easy to spot). We finally got a respite from the clouds and the rain and it's made it comfortable to photograph again.


The first flower we celebrate is my second favorite around here, the Red (Aquilegia formosa) and Yellow Columbines. We don't have the beautiful Blue Columbine like you'll find in Colorado, but ours are just as beautiful. They just started blooming here and only a few small specimens are out. We have both the Red and the Yellow variety. They are most likely hybrids of each other since you find them growing close together. The sepals vary from bright red to almost yellow. For a perspective, the flowers are about 2" long and hang like a bell from a long stalk. They like shadier spots and you find them on the forests edge here. Soon there will be numerous flowered specimens lining the edge of the forest. They last for several weeks.

Two days ago I found a rare plant for this area. I was quite excited to find it. I only found two specimens in the area (and I looked around for others.) I had seen it in the books but never found it in the 8 years I've been here. It was in meadow #1, under some bushes along the forest's edge. The bulbous Chocolate Lily (Fritillaria atropurpurea) grows about 2 to 3 feet tall and has brown/yellow/green sepals with large yellow anthers to accent it. It grows like a bell. I've include a few views so you can get a good idea of what it looks like. The flower is about 1.25" wide and tall. Notice the full flower on the right. See the two flowers on above the other? There is another variety discovered by the Lewis and Clarke expedition called the Checker Lily that looks similar but it's range differs and it grows in the northern parts of Idaho. (We are in the south.)



Getting back to the forest across the street from RedRock RV Park today, I found the tiny Side-flowered mitrewort (Mitella stauropetala) plant growing in among the other plants. It prefers moist shaded areas and our forest qualifies. It's an interesting plant because its blooms are so tiny and they are evenly situated along a narrow stalk. It has only large basal leaves that I can discern that lie flat against the ground. The flower image is greatly magnified. I suspect the flower is less than .05 inch across. The stalk is probably about 8" high at the most. Several of them were growing together along the path in the forest. You have to be looking closely down to see them.



Several of the flowers I've seen the the past few weeks are fading fast, including the Heart-leaved Arnica, the Vase flower, the western virgin bower, and more. I saw only one specimen of the beautiful Fairyslipper orchid. But... there are more to replace them.


On my way out of the forest, I encountered another member of the orchid family that has newly bloomed since my last visit, the totally red Striped coralroot (Corallorhiza trifida.) The "flower" is striped with a yellow throat. It is an erect stalk that holds from seven to 25 flowers in a pikelike raceme. This plant is a sprophyte in that it gets it nutrients from soil fungi and do not do photosynthesis. This means that have no leaves and no chlorophyll.

So, please plan to come visit us at RedRock RV Park in Island Park, Idaho soon before this miracle of nature begins to fade. (Of course, there are flowers blooming until September, so you'll just miss the major part, but not all of the wildflowers if you are late coming.)

I'm looking forward to my annual drive through the Gravelly Ridge mountains after July 4th. There's a great spectacle of wildflowers there that I'll report.