Early Summer Colorado Wildflowers

We have wonderful early summer Colorado wildflowers blooming right now. If you live in Colorado or can visit –don’t miss the chance to get out and see them!

We had a wet spring after a very wet fall. The plants of Colorado are usually limited by the amount of water available, so they are flowering profusely.

What the wildflowers might say if we could ask them: Oh! oh! oh! its wet! its so wet! Roll out the flowers! It may be years and years before the conditions are this good!!!

My flower photos are from about 6,000 feet elevation on the eastern side (Front Range) of the Rocky Mountains in midJune. A wave of flowering will move up the mountains as the snow (a record amount of it) melts off. Here on the plains other species of plants will come into bloom. Until everything dries out intense flowering will continue. Dry is normal, so we can expect the abundant rainfall to stop.

This yellow evening primrose, Oenothera flava, opened its flower the night before. As the morning warms it will turn orangy and wilt. I have nothing in the photo for scale but the flower is about 2″ across.

Happy blanketflowers. There’s nothing you’d confuse with blanketflower, Gailardia aristata. Aren’t they lovely!

Here is many-flowered stoneseed, Lithospermum multiflorum , a plant I almost never see and that is one of my favorites.

spiderwort, Tradescantia occidentalis, usually open only in the morning. Flowers vary from reddish purple to quite blue.

And Rocky Mountain penstemon, Penstemon strictus. Aren’t they lovely flowers?! Sometimes they are bluer than this one.

And there were more

…go see for yourself.

If you don’t live in Colorado, but it is summer where you are, go find your native wildflowers! They’ll be there!