As Colorado's wildflowers bloom, a return to season of gratitude

Al and Betty Schneider were recently hiking around Lizard Head Wilderness near their southwest Colorado home when tiny pops of white amid tall grass caught their eye.

This was Turritis glabra, the couple determined, or the broad-leafed plant commonly called tower mustard.

“It’s actually a species that’s pretty common throughout the U.S.,” Al Schneider said.

But never had he and his wife, decades-long wildflower watchers, spotted the species. They happily took pictures and added them to the online repository they’ve maintained since 2001, swcoloradowildflowers.com.

Turritis glabra added to the total species catalogued. “That was 1,001,” Schneider said.

That might say something about the landscape we call home — these mountains and plains bursting with flowers waiting to be discovered this time every year.

“What it says about us, too,” said Schneider, 83. “People get old, and actually so many of us when we’re young, we don’t see the world around us. We don’t look for new things.”

Now is the time to look.

Don’t delay, say fans and flower experts around the state.

“People should make their trips now,” said Maggie Gaddis, the Colorado Springs-based executive director of Colorado Native Plant Society.

From her own observations and reports from watchers across the Front Range and Western Slope, “everything seems to be in fast-forward,” Gaddis said. Heading into July, that seemed to be due to a fairly generous snowpack and spring moisture that followed a general dry spell, she explained.

For the sake of blooms prolonging through the month, Gaddis and others hoped as ever for continued rain.

Said Jen Bousselot, assistant professor of horticulture at Colorado State University: “On the Front Range, we’ve gotten hot and dry very quickly, so that’s going to curtail wildflowers. But I think the higher elevations are still safe.”

Snow still streaked the high country at the start of July, sure to melt and give way to the kaleidoscope that waits to sprout beneath the alpine every summer.

In Crested Butte, Colorado’s so-called “wildflower capital,” the timing appears right for the annual Wildflower Festival. The 10-day event of workshops and guided hikes starts July 12 — but one needs no ticket to admire the hillsides and meadows awash in color.

It’s not quite the “super bloom” buzz that accompanied visitors last year, said Ian Billick, who oversees wildflower research at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte. “But I still think it’ll be a beautiful summer,” he said.

Yes, some blooms seemed to be early, he said. “Although, it’s hard for me to know what early is anymore with climate change.”

Billick’s center has paid close attention to wildflowers’ relationship with warming trends. Blooming periods are changing, research has determined, along with locations. Data show species adapting by migrating upward and northward.

For overall viewing expectations, “it’s gotten spottier,” Bousselot said.

Which might say something about how we should appreciate the season. “Go on a hike, find a flower, take a picture and celebrate it,” Bousselot suggested.

Take it from Schneider, who is always adding new pictures to his collection.

“There’s always something new,” he said. “Even the plants you see many times, you take another look at them, and you see new characteristics you didn’t notice before. It’s like looking at an old friend.”