Last week I wrote about my Top Ten Favorite Wildflower Spots, with new additions that shoved the southern Ohio prairie remnants off the list, into the land of my Honorable Mentions. The addendum I added two weeks later knocked the Blue Ridge Parkway off the list. My second addendum, written nearly two months further on, knocked Short Canyon from the list. An additional addendum knocked Mt. Dana from the Top Ten, and a fifth addendum in early August knocked Jawbone Canyon off the list. And I wrote about a Pea Family reunion on a northern California hillside along Hwy 101, and an explosion of paintbrushes at a Texas interstate interchange; both were new additions to that almost-but-not-quite list of Honorable Mentions.
The list of near-misses already had such eye-candy as Saddle Mt. in Oregon, Red Rock Canyon in California, and a path in the northern Indiana woods known as the "Heron Rookery;" the Pea Family reunion and the explosion of paintbrushes gives it a little bit more oomph. But I'm not finished. I spent the summer in Montana, at Glacier National Park. I've seen more wildflower orgies. Not Top Ten Favorite Wildflower Spots orgies, but definitely Honorable Mention orgies.
I'm tempted to declare the entire east side of Glacier National Park in early June an orgy, that's how good the wildflowers were, scattered about from East Glacier up to St. Mary, Montana. But that's a little much, I think. Besides, there were a couple of spots whose yeast rose well above all the rest.
The first spot was a Camas Lily meadow on both sides of Hwy 49 between East Glacier and Kiowa. The dark blue-purple lilies shared the meadow with velvety blue Low Larkspur and white Field Chickweed and bright yellow Biscuit Root and a bit of paintbrush and a few other colorful odds and ends. Blue skies and snow-capped Rocky Mountains provided the backdrop.
It was a keeper.
The other Honorable Mention on the east side of the park was a meadow of (primarily) deep pink Shooting Stars, with more of those snow-capped Rocky Mountains in the background. It was along Hwy 89, north of Kiowa.
There were other flowers ... other colors ... in the meadow: a bit of white, some yellow, perhaps even a smidgeon of blue, but when there's so much pink, when there are so many acres of Shooting Stars the rest is just a bit of colorful confetti strewn about.
