Here on Colorado’s Front Range the pasqueflower is the first wildflower of spring. Today I went hiking in search of one.
Yesterday evening I showed my friend Mark some barely adequate photos of pasqueflowers that I took a few years ago. Mark is a fellow photographer and hiker, but he’s new to Boulder. I told him that the pasqueflower is the first flower of spring.
The flower takes its French name from the Hebrew word “pesach” or Passover in English because it begins to bloom at about this Passover-Easter season. Telling Mark about these flowers inspired my search today. But I had almost given up my quest before I found any.
I hiked for several hours up the Mesa Trail to Shadow Canyon where I looped back on the Towhee and then on the Homestead trail. Not until the final leg of my 4-mile hike did I see any pasqueflowers.
Then, dozens appeared! I was so glad! I took so many photographs that the only problem was selecting my favorites:
One Pasqueflower, One Bee
Three Pasqueflowers
Seven Pasqueflowers, Two Bees
These pasqueflowers are by far the biggest and most beautiful wildflowers I saw today. Except for the ubiquitous dandelion, none of the other wildflowers that are blooming yet are bigger than about one-fourth of an inch in diameter. Here are some of the small beauties:
Two Beauties
Blue Beauties
Now I finally feel that spring has arrived.
1 response so far ↓
1 Homestead-Mesa-Bluestem Trail // May 24, 2009 at 10:13 pm
[...] the six weeks since I hiked a part of today’s loop, millions more wildflowers have bloomed. I didn’t [...]
Leave a Comment