Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Across the little valley from Flash and his mares, I found these beautiful little flowers. Actually, the sort of yellow and soft-red/pink bud of another plant caught my eye before I found a few clusters with some rather wind-battered blooms open. There were maybe a dozen plants in one area … and nowhere else.

I’m not entirely sure whether I’ve seen these before; the sight of them rings a dim bell … but I know for sure that if I have seen them before, I never identified them. They have the curiously long name of lavenderleaf sundrops! Length aside, what a pretty name!

I found/identified it first through my Southwest Colorado Wildflowers app, where it calls them the above-referenced lavenderleaf sundrops, then went to the website, where it’s identified as Oenothera lavandulifolia (Sundrops).

As I was walking back down the hill, thinking about the pretty flowers, I thought they looked a bit like evening primrose, which are larger and have white petals and are ubiquitous around the high desert (in probably most western states). I must be gaining *some* kind of plant knowledge, as the site identifies them further as being “Onagraceae (Evening Primrose Family)”. 🙂

I especially liked this reference at the very bottom of the information:

“This is such an attractive plant, whether in isolated clusters or in magnificent displays over broad areas. Even the buds have their own special attractiveness.” I had been thinking *exactly* the same thing when I first saw the pretty yellow-and-red buds!

(Of further interest, Lone Mesa State Park is just “over the hill,” so to speak, between Disappointment Valley and Dolores, and Canyons (many canyons) of the Ancients National Monument covers a good bit of the very farthest deserty western and close-to-southernmost corner of the state of Colorado.