Seeps and Hanging Gardens and Zion National Monument

In Ohio, wildflowers were spring-bloomers in the woods, and along roadsides, in open areas, and in prairie remnants during the summer and autumn. Oh, and there were some boggy, marshy, wet-loving stuff going on now and then as well. They were the extent of the sorts of wildflower environments I was familiar with. Then my wife and I began moving around, first to northern Indiana, where that was more of the same plus the dune and the lakeshore environments.

I got to see some new stuff. What fun!

Then we move to the mountains of western North Carolina; spring wildflowers got stepped up a notch or two along the Blue Parkway. There were Yellow and Pink Lady's-slippers and Painted Trillium and Wake Robin and Showy Orchis and Purple Fringed Orchids... That was pretty much Nirvana.

In Soda Springs, CA, not far from Donner Summit where the menu once included ma and pa and cousin Lil, I got familiar with botany at 7,000', in dry places and wet.

I've chased wildflowers on the Gulf of Mexico, around bayous, across the Central Plains, on the High Plateau of Colorado, around the Grand Canyon, in the various mountains and valleys and shorelines of California, from up in the Giant Redwoods all the way down to San Diego, from the Pacific Ocean to the Mojave Desert. I think I've seen wildflowers blooming in just about every environment there is in North America. One of the most interesting ... and one of the few I couldn't get in among the blossoms ... was in mid-September-dry-as-dirt Zion National Monument in southwestern Utah. These were seeps along trails and dripping from wet sandstone walls, producing lush, colorful and out-of-my-reach hanging gardens.

It was another of those amazing wildflower sights I tend to go on and on about, the sheer walls of rock bearded with Yellow Monkeyflower and Maidenhair ferns and slimy, mossy stuff, dripping with cool water and smelling of the fresh, green earth at the dawn of time, while all around is dry rock and sandy soil and desert-like heat.

A variety of plants thrive in these hanging gardens in Zion, including Red Monkeyflower, Zion Shooting Star, Golden Columbine, Crimson Columbine, Zion Daisy, Rock Spiraea, Cardinal Flower, and the orchid Hellenborine. We didn't see all these species in bloom, but were treated to plenty of the monkeyflowers and Golden Columbine and Cardinal Flower. Individually, each of these is an eyeful, but together, in these hanging gardens ... it was a change of

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