Home » Plants & Animals » North American Wildflowers » A Change in the Top Ten

A Change in the Top Ten

© Gregg Pasterick

Way back at the beginning of year I wrote a couple of articles about my Top Ten favorite wildflower spots, with a few honorable mentions thrown in for good measure. In the meantime, my wife and I drove from Ohio to Montana by way of Texas and the Desert Southwest, taking advantage of the spring blooming season, not to mention to do a little bird watching. We counted nearly 350 different wildflower species, 18 new birds got added to my life list, and we got to see a lot of the country (again). And as often as not we found ourselves standing at the foot of some hillsides covered with wildflowers, or in the middle of a desert garden in Texas or California, or ogling some roadside swath of color.

Two or three of these flowery locations deserve consideration for the list of my Top Ten Wildflower Places...

The first such stretch of realty, an interchange along I-35E, between Dallas and Austin, Texas was Joseph's Garden of Many Colors, worthy of every covetous bone in my body. It was a Pink Floyd album cover in paintbrushes and sunflowery things and downingias and more. It had the potential to crack the top 5 of my list, but I wasn't certain if it had occurred on its own, or was a Texas DOT beautification project. Being a Texas DOT beautification project is an unfair advantage; thus the Texas interstate interchange is banished to my list of honorable mentions.

More than a week later, on Highway 101 in northern California, we came upon a hillside which was a family reunion of multi-colored peas. Family members included Butter Lupine (Lupinus luteolus), what I think was Valley Lupine (L. subvexus), and clovers and vetches ... an orgy of colorful banners and wings ... and definitely worthy of consideration.

Well, I've considered it and it just doesn't quite make it. So, that's two honorable mentions.

A few days earlier, between the Texas interstate and Highway 101 in northern California, my wife and I returned to the west side of Yosemite. Lupines and paintbrushes and poppies and vetches filled roadsides like a rainbow of litter tossed from cars. But that wasn't why we were back. We were back for Hite's Cove, a wildflower garden hanging from the side of a steep hill over the south fork of the Merced River.

We had hiked a bit of the Hite's Cove trail back in 2003, but it was in June, past peak bloom for the hillside. There were blossoms there at the time, but nothing like the free-for-all we had heard and read about. Hiking it again, this time in late April, it was a much different story. This time it was everything rumor had it to be. It was a patchwork quilt of White Globe Lilies (Calochortus albus) and Twining Snake Lilies (Dichelostemma volublie) and Owl's Clover (Orthocarpus purpurascens) and Chinese Houses (Collinsia heterophylla) and Harlequin Lupine (Lupinus stiversii) and more. More, more, more!

The copyright of the article A Change in the Top Ten in North American Wildflowers is owned by . Permission to republish A Change in the Top Ten in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.