Early Spring on the High Plateau: More Cousins of Familiar Things

As I've written the past couple weeks, my wife and I expected to enjoy the high mountain meadows of the Rocky Mts. during the summer. Instead, and after a winter of mind-numbing, sedentary boredom, we decided to get out of town. Before we left, we also hoped to find a few early spring wildflowers during a not very springy April.

First there was the Golden Banner, the flower at the top of my list, which we found in abundance. The Yellow Salsify and Ragwort and a few other things we found, they were the same ol' thing, but the others I mentioned? They were something new. And then there were the Lanceleaf Chiming Bells, and Western Canada Violets and Yellow Violets, all cousins of more familiar things from back east. But there were more.

There was Western Spiderwort (Tradescantia occidentalis) for one.

Western Spiderwort grows in open areas such as mixed grass prairies and sand hills, from the Canadian prairies down into Arizona, and as far east as Louisiana up to Wisconsin. It is listed as Threatened throughout most of its range.

It produces a cluster of up to 25 flowers on stalks that droop over the buds. Only one or two flowers in a cluster open daily, very early in the morning. They close by afternoon, wilting and losing their three rounded petals. The flowers range in color from white to rose to blue.

Spiderworts get their name from the sticky, stringy stuff they secrete when their stem is broken. Once it hardens, it forms cobwebby-like stuff. (I always thought it was because the leaves looked like long, green spider's legs.)

Western Spiderwort and Pine Spiderwort (T. pinetorum) were used as cooked vegetables by Native Americans.

Another familiar-looking cousin I found was Western Wallflower (Erysimum asperum). Like all members of the Mustard Family (Brassicaceae), I tend to overlook wallflowers. They - members of the family - are so common and weedy and ordinary, I'd rather just move along in case something more interesting lurks up around the next corner. But I was in Colorado, and chances were this was something new to me, and it was a burst of bright yellow and deep orange during an otherwise gray, cloudy day ... we ended up getting' snowed on by mid-afternoon.

We also found a single little skullcap, which I think was Britton's Skullcap (Scutellaria brittonii). A member of the Mint Family (Lamiaceae), it grows in mostly dry areas in thickets, open woods, and

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