Since I posted enough boring blossoms of non-native flowers, thought I should also throw out a few of the natives I shot on Tuesday, too.

Prairie pink:

Sego lily:

Trillium:

Scarlet globemallow:

Harebells:

Prince's plume:

I was mentioning the coneflowers to one of my game wardens, and he asked if they were tall and yellow?

Yep.

It was miles later that he pointed out these plumes, and assumed they were the coneflowers.

Nope. Coneflowers, well, coneflowers look like little cones...

But, having been here a couple years now, he has just now noticed the Prince's plumes. And they're everywhere in the desert.

I didn't say anything. We don 't want to talk about how many years it was before I noticed them.

It was decades before I noticed the scarlet gaura. And years more before I learned its name.

For the life of me, I still think it looks like a flower unfinished.

And yes, Melissa, the monkeyflowers were doing great. Huge almost-bushes, laden with blossoms.

Although I didn't hike to the creek bottom where the dwarf versions grow. Without heelers along, exploring just doesn't seem to be as much fun, you know?

'Course, since the boss called and wanted a return call asap in the morning, that also puts a damper on diversions in the desert.

And then there were the large stands of Indian paintbrush.

This species came up in discussion on one the recent trips with the wife. She'd traveled a couple hundred miles of our state with a bunch of her co-workers to attend a training session. And there'd been nice paintbrush blooming at one of the reststops they'd stopped to use.

"You know," she said, "not one of them knew about pulling the tubes off and sucking the nectar out."

And were all surprised when she bent down to do just that.

And they're all natives.

And yeah, I know spiders aren't flowers. But she looked cool, frozen in her web above a small brook.

And I'm pretty sure she's a native.