Photos and Field Guides Don't Guarantee Easy I.D.

Photographing wildflowers has taken on more significance since I moved to California. With so many new things to see, I don't want to spend too much time hovering over each and every flower, and I can be a world-class hoverer. Instead, I photograph them and move on, leaving identification for later, when I can sit with a field guide, some photos and perhaps a cup of coffee.

With that in mind, you can imagine me, with my usual Christmas-morning fervor, tearing into my latest stack of photos. I knew a handful of treasures awaited.

There were, as usual, more lupine and paintbrush photos, as well as a species of wild mint mixed in with the sunsets and butterfly photos. There was also the usual assortment of out-of-focus shots, mountains and an occasional smiling face.

And then there were the three wildflowers I had photographed recently in soggy fields. These were at the source of my Christmas-morning fervor. (Words like ‘hedonistic’ and ‘bloodthirsty’ might come to mind if my parents were asked to recall my annual lunge at the gifts beneath the Christmas Tree.)

The first wildflower I knew was a species of Shooting Star, which species the mystery to be solved. It was a mystery short-lived and easy to solve. Comparing my photo with those in a Sierra Nevada Mt. wildflower field guide it was easy to see I had found Jeffrey Shooting Star (Dodecatheon jeffreyi), a member of the Primrose (Primulaceae) Family. This “find” was doubly exciting for me because, just this past April, in North Carolina, I finally found and photographed Shooting Star (D. meadia), once a very common eastern species.

Shooting Stars are easy to recognize by their four or five swept-back petals and erect stamens that point downward, forming a beak. Jeffrey Shooting Star flowers are pink with white and yellow at the base of the petals. They grow in wet meadows and along stream banks and lakeshores. They can be locally abundant.

D. meadia, on the other hand, is no longer plentiful due to habitat destruction and over-picking. Its flowers can be white, rose or lilac in color, and it grows in meadows, prairies and open woods. Prairie settlers called it Prairie Pointers.

My second mystery wildflower was familiar, but not obvious, like the Jeffrey Shooting Star. It required more page turning, head scratching and second-guessing. It reminded me of Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium van-bruntiae) and Greek Valerian (P. reptans), two members of the Phlox (Polemoniaceae) Family which often turn up in gardens. So, I made for the Phlox section of my wildflower books.

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