Wildflowers on the Edge (A Grand Canyon Album)

Here are more wildflowers from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. (My first post on the North Rim, Perspective, is here.)  Identifications (provisional) rely on Nancy Varga's wildflower album at the desk of the North Rim Visitor's Center.  Repeated burns have cleared the forest, leaving aspen saplings and vast fields of lupine. What a scent!

I don't remember seeing a single (European) honeybee all week.  All kinds of other pollinators were on duty, including this brawny pollen-shouldered fellow. (The lupines are spread out enough that the fields don't impress in a photo.)

 Perhaps the next most common wildflower was Beardlip Penstemon, which grew in a variety of habitats.

This patch was on the North Kabob Trail a little down from the rim.  Listed as Penstemon barbatus, it is similar to the California native Firecracker Penstemon Penstemon eatonii.  The leaves are narrower, and the flower has an undercut lower lip.

DYC's, "Darn Yellow Composites," were present in abundance; here are two that intrigued me.

Oops. didn't catch this one's name!   I like the lacy doily of foliage.

Fineleaf Woolywhite.  Doesn't look white to me! Unusual flower structure. (Hymenopappus filifolius var. lugens)

As is often the case, roadsides were some of the best wildflower sites: disturbed soil, sometimes a ditch to catch the rain, and plenty of sunlight out from under the pines.

This Cryptantha was growing 3 feet tall along the road near Cape Royal.  A Popcorn Flower relative, it is not one of the 88 listed California species (!)  Varga says it's Cryptantha setosissima.  Whatever you call it, it's the biggest, showiest Cryptantha I've seen.

Grand Canyon Prickly Pear cacti, not common on the rim, are willing to show multiple blooms simultaneously in a way Orange County cacti seem to resist.  Maybe it's the shorter growing season.

I think this is Engelmann's Prickly Pear (Opuntia engelmanii).  It comes in a variety of flower colors; this one's a winner. 

A few feet away, Mojave Prickly Pear, Opuntia erinacaea, refuses to be outdone.

Secrets lurk in the forest.  Including an orchid with no chlorophyll in it, which almost went unnoticed as we hiked by.

Spotted Coralroot, Corallorhiza maculata, is widespread in American mountain forests, and is featured in the aptly-named poem "On Going Unnoticed" by Robert Frost.

We saw one, and only one, Columbine in the forest.

Colorado columbine, Aquilegia caerulea, this one all white and very showy.

Out on  a scrubby bluff alongside buckbrush and salsify was the local Mariposa Lily.

Or Sego lily, as they call it. Calochortus nuttalli, the state flower of Utah.  It grows from an edible bulb, but don't you dare.

Mules travel along the top section of the North Kaibab trail into the canyon, so the wildflowers there have dust issues.  Still this one was lovely.

Missed the name of these little red stars too.  Anybody?

The forest is mixed, and in many areas bare from devastating burns.  Ponderosa Pines survive the smaller fires, and are the stars of the North Rim with their thick puzzle-piece bark, bouquet-like bursts of needles, and towering dimensions.  Our campground was almost a monoculture of Ponderosa.

In this unlikely spot, a Ponderosa Pine is thriving.  No competition. 

This Arizona Sister was one of many butterflies drifting about.

What a treat to be led by Thea Gavin on long hikes for the purpose of savoring nature, filling our senses so we would have plenty of material for Writing on the Edge through the Grand Canyon Field Institute.  Want to join us next year?  (June 17-19, 2016.)  Indulge me as I offer you one more poem.

On the Way to Tanager Point

I cannot make good time.
I have to check for belly flowers,
regret leaving my camera behind,
smell the pines.

When I move fast I miss
the savor of the junco's tiny song,
a rat's nest of pussy toes,
clouds gathering themselves
     into heroic shapes
     in preparation for sunset.

When I move fast I miss
the wind on my skin,
that sense of dislocation in a barely know place,
my losses:
     move quickly or they'll catch up with you.

I cannot make good time in this place.
I will walk slowly and wait,
and hear the whoosh of the raven's wing,
and watch the raindrops dissolve my thoughts.

Nancy, me and Thea on the edge.

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