Flowers from Hell's Half Acre

I didn't expect to find anything new at Hell's Half Acre this late in the summer, but there was one entirely new one, one that hadn't bloomed the last time I was there, and one that I've seen other places but never got around to identifying.


First, the new one. The flowers seem to be smaller versions of the probably carnation I found at City Creek (Pam agreed that it was a carnation, and even found a sketch of a carnation very like it in one of her botany books). So until I find out otherwise, I'm going to call this one "desert carnation."

This one I'm pretty sure is Hooker's Thistle, Cirsium hokkerianum. Oh, cool. It looks like our common native thistles are all edible. Listed in Edible & Medicinal Plants of the Rocky Mountains: Canadian thistle, Bull thistle, Hooker's thistle, and Leafy thistle (Elk thistle was mentioned in PRM as well). However, they taste better if you cook them well, and you have to be very careful with the spines, and remove them before eating. Probably best left as a survival food, since EMPRM also notes that some contain "potential" carcinogens. I'll assume that means substances similar to known carcinogens, but that haven't been specifically tested yet.


This one I have seen other places, notably on the ridgeline at Gibson Jack. I'm not completely certain, but I think it's some variety of a plant called "bedstraw." As the name suggests, it was once used to stuff mattresses. Northern bedstraw is Galium boreale, but this is more likely to be "Cleavers", or Galium aparine, based on the way the leaves are grouped. [Addendum: Maybe not... You can see several bedstraws here, and none of them look right. Maybe it's a weird variety of buckwheat?]