I found this little plant from the Buckwheat family (Polygonaceae) growing near a snow patch in early August. It's alpine mountainsorrel (Oxyria digyna), and it's fond of alpine and sub-alpine areas. It grows in western and northern North America.
Leaves are round and thick, while the flowers are green and soon replaced by reddish-brown seed pods.
The plant for today is rather different--it's in the Christmas Mistletoe Family (Viscaceae), which might sound like a rather happy name. Unfortunately, the reality is that it's a parasite, eating off the tree, stunting its growth, and sometimes even killing it. The mistletoes have different species adapted to different tree species. This one is limber pine dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium cyanocarpum), which as you might suspect, grows on limber pines (although it might also affect bristlecone pines). I couldn't find much info about the mistletoes except that insects and spiders pollinate them.
For me, many of the thistles can be quite confusing, but fortunately this one is easy to tell apart because it's the only native one in the area. It's Arizona thistle (Cirsium arizonicum), native to California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona.
It grows from 6,500 to 10,100 feet in this area, and at lower elevations elsewhere, and on open, dry slopes.
For more information about Arizona thistle, click here.
California brome (Bromus carinatus), also known as mountain brome, is a perennial bunchgrass that grows up to 3 feet high. It is found in a variety of habitats from sagebrush to mountain grasslands and conifers. It is often found under aspen trees. It is native to western North America but has been introduced to many other areas.
The inflorescence is an erect painicle, and the spikelets are distinctly flattened.
This cool-season wheatgrass is thickspike wheatgrass (Elymus lanceolatus). The old scientific name for it was Agropyron dasystachyum. It's perenial and grows up to 2 1/2 feet talls, with rihizomes and shallow roots. Like other wheatgrasses, the inflorescence is an erect, rather dese spike. It grows throughout western and northern North America in a variety of habitats.
The spikelets generally overlap slightly.
Not one, but two ferns in a week's time! This one is in a different family, the Maidenhair Fern family (Pteridaceae) and is called Brewer's cliffbrake (Pellaea breweri). It likes rock crevices on limestone or granite and grows in the western U.S.
For more info on Brewer's cliffbrake, click here.
This high elevation Potentilla is sheep cinquefoil (Potentilla ovina var. ovina), part of the Rose Family (Rosaceae). It has deeply divided leaflets that are green above and gray below, and very hairy. The plant creeps along the ground and grows in parts of western North America. The name "sheep" is due to the type specimen, found on Sheep Mountain in British Columbia.
For more info about sheep cinquefoil, click here.
