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The Last Snapdragon Standing

© Gregg Pasterick

I'm not certain how summer's supposed to go in northwestern Montana. Sarah, our relief girl at the motel tells us that she needed some of her winter apparel the previous year because August was wet and chilly. And folks tell us that this was a banner year for Bear Grass, a once-in-a-decade kind of a thing. As for the rest of glut of wildflowers we've had, it is due, in large part, to the very wet and dreary June we had, followed by a sun-drenched July.

It seems we got lucky, just as we had done last year in the Cascades and the year before that in southern California. But the luck has run dry, literally.

June was wet. July was sun-drenched. By the end of the month the landscape began to hint of kindling. Fire restrictions were issued. By the end of August it was even drier. Hence there wasn't much left in colorful bloom by the first of September. Even the purple asters seemed too tired to go on.

What was in bloom seemed mostly to be the same thing, something pale yellow, clustered on stems a few inches to a foot or more tall. I suspected it to be something in the Snapdragon (Scrophulariaceae) Family. Eventually I had a closer look. I was right. It was Toadflax.

Also known as Butter and Eggs (Linaria vulgaris), Toadflax is a snapdragon introduced from Eurasia and, though it is a lovely species, it is not a welcome one. As far back as 1758 John Bartram wrote about Toadflax in his "brief account of those plants that are most troublesome in our pastures and fields in Pennsylvania. ...the most mischievous of these is, first, the stinking yellow Linaria. It is the most hurtful plant to our pastures that can grow in our northern climate. Neither spade, plough, nor hoe can eradicate it when it is spread in pasture. Every little fibre that is left will soon increase prodigiously; nay, some people have rolled great logs upon it, and burnt them to ashes, whereby the earth was burnt half a foot deep, yet it put up again, as fresh as ever, covering the ground so close as not to let any grass grow amongst it; and the cattle can't abide it."

Yikes. It does grow often in dense patches, and does have numerous yellow flowers, and is found throughout much of the continent, mostly in open spaces, but at a time when the season's waning, and there is so little color left, well, it lifted my spirits.

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