Friday flowers…royal catchfly

These are from McDowell Forest Preserve in Naperville, Illinois. Not many new flowers around here right now, but these bring back some good memories. I don’t remember what these are called, but there were only one or two plants in the entire park. In fact, I was going to go the lazy woman’s route and just say I didn’t know what they were because it’s not always easy trying to identify a flower or tree online. But I decided to give it a try, looking up “wildflowers Illinois” via DuckDuckGo and lo and behold, I found a photo right on the first page! They’re Royal Catchfly, (Silene regia) the name probably deriving from the sticky hairs that catch insects. These plants have endangered status in Illinois, so I guess I was fortunate to see them!

Red is an uncommon color among prairie plants because many pollinating insects (e.g., bees) are insensitive to this range of the light spectrum. However, some butterflies perceive red, and for this reason are attracted to such flowers. The flowers of Royal Catchfly have a design that favors butterflies as pollinating agents: They have a proboscis that is sufficiently long to reach the nectar at the bottom of the long narrow tube that is formed by the calyx, while the flared petals provide a colorful landing platform for their legs. Illinois Wildflowers

Evidently they’re also pollinated by the ruby-throated hummingbird, according to Wikipedia. At any rate, they’re very attractive!

Had to laugh because evidently I looked them up before. When I typed the name into my tags, it popped up. 🙂 Just didn’t remember what I’d forgotten.

Friday flowers…and friend

Friday flowers…wildflowers

Even though I arrived on the Bighorns in mid-July, there was still a plethora of wonderful wildflowers.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #101 – One Single Flower

Cee’s Len’s-Artists Photo Challenge this week features single flowers. I realized I’m spoiled for choice, but that’s not a bad problem to have.

My first photo, an iris, was taken with an iPhone and has been one of my most popular photos. Of course, the light is what makes it and I never again could get that same light. Then the older man who grew these beauties on his tree lawn died and the family dug them up.

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.”
― Luther Burbank

Now that we live in the desert, I think it only fitting that I should include a shot of a cactus flower. Although you might not think it, the cacti have some of the most beautiful blooms you’ll ever see. Just be careful when getting a closeup!

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Framing Wyoming: walk with me

It’s Monday, time for another walk with Jo and other friends, but on this walk, we can easily frame a few choice bits of Wyoming for Amy and the photographers of the Lens Artists group (as well as all the walkers.) Tie your laces and let’s go! But first, take a look out the window. You never know what you’ll see.

Friday flowers…wildflowers

I think it’s difficult to really show the scope and impact of a meadow filled with wildflowers in a photo. So many of them are small and there’s so much grass. But I’ve done my best to show the plethora of the wildflowers carpeting the mountain meadows this spring. Take my word for it, it was stunning.

Monday walk…Look out!

When at our cabin, there’s no phone service, so if we want to make a call, we have to walk to the “phone booth”, high on a ridge where we can look out over a good part of eastern Wyoming. A satellite phone will work, but being without phone service is one of the joys of vacation there.

The walk to the phone booth is a bit over a mile each way, but at 7200′ and in the mountains, it’s not like a walk in the park. Additionally, there are attractive nuisances in every direction. My method is look down, look out, look down, look out; repeat often. If you wander off the path, it doesn’t matter, just keep heading in the right direction. Let’s go!

Down.

Friday flowers…prairie crocus

These gorgeously hairy beauties were everywhere this spring and I fell in love.

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Friday flowers…Shooting stars in Wyoming

We’ve often seen Wyoming brown and I’ve seen it partly green but it, like so many other places in the country, had much rain this spring. That meant that conditions were ripe for wildflowers.  I loved these shooting stars and I think you can see how wet it was!

Friday flowers…spring

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
― Mark Twain

It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.
― John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga