Eldorado Canyon

A short hike looking for wildflowers yesterday. At the start the trail looked more like a creek. The picture below shows water flowing down the stairs. It was pretty dry in about 100 yards.

Pretty, but not a good ecological sign: The hillsides were covered with Small-flowered Alyssum, Alyssum parviflorum, a Brassicaceae (Mustard).  Small flowered Alyssum is an extremely abundant European weed, flowering in early spring before other plants compete with it (2007 Colorado State University Extension). This one is not hard to ID because now the round flat pods are visible.

Yellow flowers

2 different parsleys:

Whiskbroom parsley, Harbouria trachypleura, is easy to ID because of the linear, very narrow, divided leaves. I’m thinking the second Parsley, could be stemless Indian parsley, Aletes acaulis,  because that is the only other possibility on the Boulder county checklist. It looks a bit like Musineon, which I’ve seen on Green mountain, but the leaves are different.

Brassicaceae (Mustard):  Mountain Bladderpod, Lesquerella montana, which was abundant and Wallflower, Erysimum capitatum, of which there were few.

Other yellow flowers: Leafy cinquefoil, Drymocallis fissa; Sulphur flower, Eriogonum umbellatum;  Oregon grape, Mahonia repens; Yellow Salsify, Tragopogon dubius (non-native species); Fendler’s ragwort, Packera fendleri, (not sure of ID, but the deeply divided basal leaves are a good clue); and  Golden banner, Thermopsis sp. by the river.

Blue and purple flowers: 

blue mist penstemon, Penstemon verins;  Foothills mertensia, Mertensia lanceolata; Nelson Larkspur, Delphinium nuttallianum; and  Short’s Milkvetch, Astragalus shortianus.

White flowers

Canada violet,Viola canadensis, and Mouse ear chickweed, Cerastium strictum

Prickly pear, could these be flower buds?  Didn’t see the flowers until July last year.

Saw a coyote, and some butterflies. I am going to confirm these identifications through BAMONA , but my guesses are the Cabbage White; Spring (Echo) Azure (tiny butterfly, that I believed liked the pink color of my shoe–blue from above and grey on the underside); and, and the Green Comma (a larger butterfly with orange with ragged-edged wings.)