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| Pinus longaeva |
2025 was a year of first for me: first time in Rome and Ravenna, first visit to Xi An (ancient capital of China) and four mountain ranges in China, and first visit to Torres de Paine in Chile. Although I had already driven to the White Mountains of California--it was in a drier midsummer and so long ago this felt like a first visit--we hit these peaks in full bloom. Of course, the bristlecones are stunning in any light.
A respendent, glorious day with puffy clouds didn't hurt.
Like any sensible tourist, I took way too many pictures of these hoary behemoths...they are even stunning when they've been dead for centuries!
It's hard to pick out a favorite--I took dozens of pictures...
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| Leptosiphon nuttallii |
One of my all time favorite wildflowers: I ought to dedicate a whole blog post to it. I first knew it as
Linanthus nuttallii--then it morphed to
Linanthastrum nuttallii, and now it rests (perhaps a tad nervously) under yet another synonym...
Widely distributed in the West, it is rarely seen in cultivation--despite it's blooming for a long season, adaptability...and when cut and dried it smells like vanilla!
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| Stenotus acaulis |
Glorious to see so many favorites blooming. This is
even MORE widespread from steppe to tundra across the West, and even more rarely seen in gardens.
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| Eriogonum gracilipes |
Even more thrilling to
find the local endemics, like this gem. On my first visit decades ago it was past bloom: this year we hit it spot on! The flower was breathtakingly variable in color...this was my favorite one, however.
Just what we need, a new yellow genus. I would love to grow it anyway (I'm an Asterophile), and delighted to add a new genus to my list!
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| Phlox condensata |
Here and there all over the White Mountains--and helping justify its name! It seems even whiter than what we have in the Southern Rockies!
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Castilleja linarifolia
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I didn't key this out at the time, and guessing the I.D. (it sure looks like the Wyoming state flower) although there are several other similar species in the area...
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| Pinus monophylla |
Almost as dear to me as the timberline pines, my home garden boasts both Western piñons as well as three species of tree line five needle pines. I confess...I'm a pine nut (figuratively speaking that is).
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| Eriogonum caespitosum |
I thought this was a monstrous clump of
E. ovalifolium at the time...the foliage on E. caespitosum is quite distinct--and when I zoomed in on my image it was clearl
y caespitosum. The forms I grow from the east end of the range of the species are not so powdery white!
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| Scott Skogerboe and fallen bristlecone |
Scott is on the left, btw: a dear friend and one of the boon companions who made this trip so memorable.
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| Salvia dorrii |
I was THRILLED to see wide mats of an almost prostrate form of the wonderful dryland sage of the Great Basin growing among the bristlecones. SO thrilled I only took one or two mediocre pictures: I must go back and spend a few hours worshiping and photographing these properly!
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| Calochortus excavatus |
Photobombed by a fly!
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| The same in its glory |
This is a Mariposa I'd never seen before. One I would dearly love to naturalize in my Xeriscape...
I have been privileged to meet many remarkable people in my life. I only met Dana once--and spent an hour or two with him in his home a few blocks from my house where I grew up (Paul Maslin brought me there). Dana was a distinguished geophysicist (his biography is intriguing) If you read that writeup, you will not see any mention of his hobby: he was a passionate student of the genus Pinus. He was also the man who distinguished the California bristlecone from the one in the Southern Rockies. He shook up the American botanical world when he published Pinus Longaeva D.K. Bailey (how dare a non-botanist do such a thing). In fact, he published four major works in Phytologia, Annals of Missouri Botanical Garden and as parts of books that cemented his place in the Botanical firmament. I shall never forget a house absolutely permeated with pine scent from the hundreds of paper bags full of pine specimens he had stashed absolutely everywhere. I remember he commented that his Home Insurance was cancelled when they found out about it.
You can even see his type specimen if you click that link, deposited at the CU Herbarium (which was also about 4 blocks from where I grew up)
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| Pinus longaeva distribution |
Generalized distribution of the more westerly Bristlecone Pine above and the Rocky Mountain species below
Here is the picture of the merry band of tree-worshippers who not only paid homage to Pinus longaeva, but a host of Sierra treasures (here clustered around an enormous trunk of a felled Abies magnifica above Mammoth, California...a tree which I am now determined to grow in Colorado. What a wonderful time we had! Beam me back, Scotty! And see to it the Epstein files really get published without redactions while your at it...(whoever dreamed the "president" of the US would start a World War to distract us from them!) Such is the strangeness of our time.
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