Flower is 1¼ inches across of 5 to 10 (or more) pale cream petal-like sepals, with numerous yellow stamens and several pistils in the center. Numerous petals, so dwarfed as hardly to be noticed, surround the base of the stamens. Plants, 8 to 15 inches tall, often grow in groups and bear several flowers, each on its own slender stem. Leaves are dark green and deeply cut into 5 or more spreading lobes (palmate). Grows in moist rich soil in sub-alpine and alpine zones. Blooms late May-July.
When the snowbanks melt in the alpine country, hundreds of temporary runlets carry the snow water to timberline lakes and to permanent streams. In the wet soil along these runlets and near these lakes, globeflower is one of the common and very good looking plants. Both its foliage and its flowers are graceful and charming. Associated with it is usually marsh marigold, Caltha rotundifolia, which is also a member of the buttercup family. Our Colorado marsh marigold is not gold at all, but white—even a bluish-white. It grows with its feet right in the water. Its leaves are entire and are all at the base of the sturdy low plant. Its flowers are as large or slightly larger than those of globeflower. It makes an effective companion for its more dainty relative.
Buttercup Family
Columbine, Aquilegia coerulea, JAMES
The flower is formed of 5 sepals and 5 petals, alternately arranged and all of them showy. The sepals are deep blue or sometimes quite pale, forming a wide saucer-like star 3 inches across; the petals form a white inner cup 1¾ inches across, and stretch back between the sepals as hollow, slender 2-inch spurs. Plants are 2 feet or more high of several delicate stems, usually carrying at their tops numerous flowers. The deeply cut leaves are mainly concentrated at the plant base. Grows in rich soil in montane zone, but extends into foothills and up to timberline. Blooms June-July.
Colorado’s queenly state flower speaks for itself much more eloquently than humans can speak for it. No portrait can do it justice. We have found it in the very glade near Palmer Lake where James first saw it and named it coerulea for its celestial blue. We have found it in countless aspen groves of the montane zone and finally on rocky scree near timberline (a more compact plant there—with flowers sometimes white or of a rosy hue). Always there is the thrill of real discovery—a new realization of its beauty. A less common and even more exciting find is the dwarf columbine, Aquilegia saximontana, that grows between rocks above timberline.
Poppy Family
Prickly Poppy, Argemone intermedia, SWEET
Flower, 3 inches or more across, is formed of 6 brilliant white, paper-like petals, surrounding numerous golden stamens with, at the very center, a dark or even black stigma. Blossoms, in loose clusters opening over a long period, crowd each other slightly at the tops of the branching stems. Plant is 2 to 5 feet tall, with gray-green leaves divided into lobes, and with yellowish spines along the stems and leaf ribs. Grows in plains, foothills and lower montane zones. Blooms May-September.
These big coarse plants, which may be seen in small groups along our roads at culvert ends and in neglected fence rows, could be taken for some sort of thistle if it were not for the amazing flowers which they display in successive crops throughout the whole summer. The blossoms look like big circles of white crepe paper with a center of spun gold. As the season advances, the plants get ragged, but even in September a few fresh flowers will appear. Some resemblance can be seen between these blossoms and the Oriental poppies of our gardens, but only by study of their botanical structure can we find why they are put in the same family with golden smoke, Corydalis aurea, of our foothills, and the bleeding-heart of old-fashioned gardens.