Motherships and Wildflowers

When I was a kid ... well, not just as a kid but well into my 20s ... I was profoundly intrigued by flying saucers; UFOs; aliens; Close Encounters. It was the possibility of silvery spaceships full of little green men that paved the way for my studying astronomy in college, and has absolutely nothing to do with wildflowers, but I haven't finished my segue.

In 1977 Stephen Spielberg gave us Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a phrase created by Dr. J. Allen Hynek to describe a certain kind of encounter with aliens. Dr. Hynek was, coincidentally, formerly a professor of astronomy at Ohio State, where I majored in the stars. This still has nothing to do with wildflowers, but I'm getting closer.

In Close Encounters of the Third Kind Richard Dreyfuss's character became obsessed with the whole notion of flying saucers and aliens and began making mashed potato sculptures and small models in the game room, eventually building what turned out to be a living room-filling model of Devil's Tower, a national landmark in Wyoming. The movie's payoff was the massive mother ship rising up over the extruded rock formation, all bright lights and cosmic atmosphere. Wow.

When Sheri and I left Colorado for Washington in May, our first stop was at Devil's Tower. It was something I had wanted to visit for nearly 25 years.

Well, Devil's Tower was, indeed, pretty cosmically groovy thanks to Stephen Spielberg, not to mention a pretty stark example of geology, sticking up from the ground like something extruded from the business end of a Play-Doh Fun Factory. Really amazing.

Sheri and hiked all around it, photographed it, marveled at it, and were pleased to find a few wildflowers in bloom here and there, in among the conifers on one side of the monument, and in the grassy meadows on the other side.

We found a few scattered populations of Few-flowered Shooting Star (Dodecatheon pulchelum), a variety of shooting star I hadn't seen before. It smelled of cinnamon chewing gum.

Though it was new to me, it's a fairly common species growing in coastal prairies, streamsides, and mountain meadows. It can be found throughout the west, from Alaska down to Mexico, as well as in much of the east.

We also found quite a bit of Meadow Death-Camas (Zigadenus venenosus), a perennial of the Lily Family, which is as dangerous as its name suggests. Even its specific name, venenosus, means

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