by Rebecca Shankland
July 1999
When does water make fire?
Ordinarily, never. But the recent rains have brought forth a fireworks
display of wildflowers, visible in vast profusion at spots like the White Rock Y,
the traffic intersection near the main Lab entrance, and lots of road edges
that have been carefully seeded with native plants.
Let's look at a July bouquet of red, white, and blue: scarlet bugler,
paintbrush, Apache plume, yarrow, blue flax, and
First, the reds. Road edges that sparkle with one- to two-foot tall plants
bearing brilliant scarlet blossoms are home to Penstemon barbatus, subspecies
torreyi. Because it's so spectacular, it has several common names: scarlet
bugler, beardtongue, hummingbird flower. Hummingbirds hover over the inch-long
tubular flowers whose lower lip curls back underneath. One distinctive feature
is the way the flowers parade up the stem, tapering from fully grown ones at
the lower end, to not-quite-open ones in the middle, to tiny buds at the top.
Stems and leaves have a reddish cast.
Penstemons are members of the Schrophulariaceae family, which most of us
know as snapdragons and which plant lovers affectionately call scrophs. Like
their cultivated cousins the snapdragons, their flowers have two lips, the
upper with two and the lower with three lobes.
Look for scarlet bugler at the entrance to LANSCE, beside the road a half
mile below, or at the White Rock Y. Don't confuse it with its smaller evergreen
relation, Penstemon pinefolius, beautifully planted all along Central Avenue,
but not native to Los Alamos.
Adding to the red bouquet (but don't ever pick this unusual plant) is the
beloved Indian paintbrush, perfectly named as it looks freshly dipped in a pot
of red-orange paint. The red flower is really red leaves (bracts) surrounding a
slender green tubular flower (another in the snapdragon or figwort family). Its
scientific name is Castilleja integra, honoring a Spanish botanist, according
to Foxx and Hoard's Flowers of the SW Forests and Woodlands. The eight-inch
tall plant has its showy "flower" at the top of each stem.
Now for the white flowers of our bouquet. We find dwarf white violets along
the trails in the ponderosa forests of Los Alamos, and a few tiny white
strawberry blossoms. But let's find something more showy for our patriotic
collection.
The white, rose-shaped flowers of Apache plume are now bursting into
fireworks displays of fuzzy pinkish-white plumes in balls about an inch in diameter.
These cotton-ball puffs cover the four-foot high shrubs, turning them into
delicate, feathery apparitions. All along Pajarito Road, the truck route, and
the main hill road, Apache plume is in its glory.
Pearly-white yarrow is another perfect bouquet flower with dozens of tiny
daisy flowers arranged neatly in a nosegay atop the stems. A close look shows
that the ray flowers are pure white and the central or disk flowers are pale
cream with bright yellow anthers-hence the pearly effect. Yarrow loves mountain
meadows, but several roadside clumps appear in White Rock (a lovely stand is at
the top of Piedra Loop where it meets SR 4) and it's abundant along the end of
Diamond Drive by the Lab buildings.
Yarrow is scientifically Achillea lanulosa. The first name alludes to
Achilles, who is said by Homer to have used it to cure arrow wounds of his
soldiers. The English believed yarrow to be the same plant used by Achilles.
Lanulosa simply means "wooly." The sparsely set leaves are
exquisitely dissected, like miniature fern leaves.
Blue flowers come in several shades, from delicate blue flax to deep
blue-violet penstemon. The flax, Linum lewisii, blooms sky-blue in the morning
sun, then sheds its five rounded petals from noon onward. The next day each
stem has another blue blossom and the earlier flowers turn into knot-like seed
pods. The plant is two feet tall, with narrow leaves. It thrives in gardens and
used to bloom in profusion along the newly landscaped edge of SR 4 in White
Rock. But today not a trace of blue can be seen-since it's a perennial that
easily seeds itself, one wonders "where have all the flowers gone?"
The name linum is Latin for the flax plant, whose stems were used to make
linen and seeds were pressed for linseed oil. Both Europeans and Native
Americans recognized how to use the stems as fibers. The second name, lewisii,
is for Meriwether Lewis of expedition fame.
The intense blue-violet flowers seen all over Los Alamos now are
The name penstemon refers to their five (pente) stamens (stemon), one of
which lacks an anther (the pollen-bearing tip) but instead has a fuzzy perch
for insects. Look inside an open flower to discover the four normal stamens and
the golden fuzz near the lower lip-this gives the whole species the name
beardtongue. And strictus? The same as English, but with a twist-strict as in
upright. Sounds patriotic enough for the Fourth of July.