Pictures

A forget-me-not! I've seen some at Gibson Jack, too. It took me a while to figure out what they were. The first forget-me-not I saw was in Rocky Mountain National Park, on an exposed hillside at around 10,000 feet. They don't get so tall there. :^D

There are at least two varieties of snake-grass up at Cherry Springs. They seem to be a sort of fern, rather than grass. The bottom one was the only one I found, but my resources for ferns are rather sparse. It seems to be Common Scouring Rush, Equisetum hyemale. Cool. Their stems feel rough, and this is due to silica crystals. Apparently natives used them to polish all sorts of stuff, and they "make excellent scouring pads." [Plants of the RM] Oh, the leafy things in the background there MIGHT be wild ginger, Asarum Caudatum.




This is the promised thorn. Scale? The thorn was about 3/4 of an inch long. I didn't get any embedded in me, but they were rather scratchy. The bush did have some berries, but I haven't made it to figuring out bushes yet.


Next, I finally got some pictures of junipers, and learned something very, very new. The top picture is a male juniper, producing male cones. The bottom juniper is a female producing female cones (that I always thought were berries). So there are male and female junipers. Incidently, these were so intertwined that I thought they must be a single shrub, until I looked up what the male cones were. I'd never seen them before!




Here is the rockslide that may or may not have once been a trail. Interesting footing, I must say. Directly above, nothing that looked like a genuine trail.



I've seen this SO many places lately. Lava Hot Springs. The zoo. Gibson Jack. Gem Lake in Idaho Falls (Hmmm... I may not have mentioned that I stopped off there on Saturday). It's climbing nightshade, Solanum Dolcamara. Apparently it's originally from Eurasia and contains all sorts of toxins (so I'm surprised they tolerate it at the zoo).


Well, this is certainly not a penstemon. It seems to be in the phlox family. Scarlet Gilia aka Skyrocket, Ipomopsis aggregata. My book mentions that hummingbirds like this flower. So did the butterfly in the next picture down.




Last, a scenery shot from one of the places I stopped on Scout Mountain: