Wildflowers in Colorado High Country

The Museum of Western Colorado sponsored its popular annual Wildflower Tour to the area near Crested Butte, Colorado over the past weekend.  A dozen of us traveled by van to take in a tour of Crested Butte, eat and shop in the quaint downtown area, and later attend an excellent evening chamber music concert of piano, violin and cello sponsored by the Crested Butte Music Festival.  Then we were off early Saturday morning to meet our wildflower guides and travel north through Gothic and the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory and on to find wildflowers.

We were at an elevation over 10,000 feet when our guides arrived at the areas where they had previously scouted out the best display of wildflowers.  We stayed on the gravel roadway (mostly) and were shown about three dozen different wildflowers growing close to the road where our guides pointed out unique characteristics of each of the flowers. Breathtaking views, magnificent flowers, and being taught by experts in their biological fields was memorable, to say the least.

I took about 100 photographs, then chose 50 of the better ones to put into a movie.  If you have a couple of minutes, the entire YouTube video can be seen below.  A few separate photographs are shown at the bottom of the post.

Crested Butte Mountain

Cow Parsnips

Elephantheads

Columbines

Although Colorado has had low rainfall this year, our guides kept a sharp lookout and found the following varieties of wildflowers to show the group: Tall Larkspur,  Sneezeweed, Longleaf Arnica, Bistort, Silvery Lupine, Parrot's Beak, Showy fleabane, Coulter's fleabane, Rosy Paintbrush, Sulphur Paintbrush, Daffodil Senecio, Tall Bluebells, Sawleaf Senecio, Cow Parsnips, Fireweed, White Geranium, Dock, Queen's Crown, King's Crown, Yarrow, Corydalis, Fringed Gentian, Star Gentian, Monkey Flower, Goldenrod, Shrubby Potentilia, Whipple's penstemon, Scarlet Paintbrush, Monkshood, Monument Plant, and Golden Aster.

On another note, I found an excellent app for the iPad called "Colorado Rocky Mountain Wildflowers" that can be seen here.  It can be accessed without using wi-fi; a great buy for $10 and good to use in the field.  They say, in part, ..."We have been careful to include the most abundant and visible plants and also those less common but found in unusual habitats, such as, wetlands, ponds, and rocky slopes. We have also chosen species from various altitudes, from 85 families and 200 genera, and from all geographic locations -- East Slope, West Slope, and the mountains between."