Zion National Park
What's up --and Blooming?
All these flowers can be seen from the roads and trails! We want you to enjoy the flowers; photograph them, tell them you love them, BUT please stay on the roads and trails so that you do not trample the plants and/or compact the soil, thus destroying what you seek to admire. Left unmolested, others may also enjoy them, and they can reproduce and still be there for future generations to enjoy and study; and the wildlife will still have the habitat and food upon which their lives depend.
We had some good rain "at the right time", in late winter, so our flowers are already eagerly starting to "do their thing"! Not too many so far, but things are changing fast.
VARIABLE-COLORED FLOWERS
Erigeron pumilus EARLY WHITE DAISY Sunflower Family
An early bloomer, somewhat spreading, with rather narrow leaves; both they and the stems rather hairy. Typical daisy flowers, with many rays in several layers; usually light pink or bluish, rather than white, despite the name. Look for it in the lower areas of Zion Canyon.
PINK TO RED OR RED-VIOLET FLOWERS
Arctostaphylos pungens MANZANITA Heath Family
A shrub of rocky places, mostly in the slickrock areas; the bark is smooth, thin, and reddish, sometimes peeling. Leaves are bright green, thick, roundish; flowers are pink (gradually fading whitish) with anunusual urn shape. Manzanita is Spanish for "little apple:, and this term well describes the fruits. Ours are mostly on the East Side, beyond the long tunnel.
Astragalus zionis ZION MILKVETCH Pea Family
A low spreading plant having compound leaves with many pairs of opposite rather silvery (and hairy) leaflets. Its flowers are typical pea ones, red violet with white markings in the throat. Very attractive! Look for it in sandy spots from Coalpits Wash up into the slickrock; one of our earliest bloomers.
Astragalus argophyllus, SILVER-LEAVED MILKVETCH, is very similar & nearly impossible to distinguish until the seed pods appear, but prefers higher elevations with better soil, so haven't seen any of these yet this year.
Erodium cicutarium RED-STEMMED FILAREE Geranium Family
A ground-cover plant often found in disturbed areas. The flowers are small, red-violet, and are followed by typical long narrow "stork's bill" seed pods. A favorite food of the endangered Desert Tortoise. Common on the Canyon bottom for most of the year but most prolific in spring.
Ranunculus andersonii juniperinus SAND BUTTERCUP Buttercup Family
A small ground-hugging plant; its gray-green leaves, divided into tongue-shaped divisions, are all at the base. Flowers are on short leafless stems, and have glossy reddish petals. It likes sandy areas and is a very early bloomer, usually in sandy areas on the East Side (Slickrock) area.
BLUE OR PURPLE FLOWERS
Chorispora tenella MUSK MUSTARD Mustard Family
A small plant with blue-purple four-petaled flowers. Tends to have a musky scent, although this is usually hard to pick up Found in disturbed area along trails and floodplain meadows in the canyon bottom.
TREES
If you came into Zion from the west, you no doubt noticed a lot of blooming fruit trees. However, the apples are not yet out.
Many of our trees are deciduous, and most of the deciduous ones are wind-pollinated. This means that the flowers are usually pretty "basic", often consisting only of a stamen and/or a pistil; these are generally not showy. They include:
Populus fremontii FREMONT COTTONWOOD Willow Family: found mainly along the Virgin River; The leaves are shaped rather like those of the closely related quaking aspen, but are much wider. They bloom before they leaf out, leaving the ground covered with fallen blossoms.
We also have several species of non-deciduous trees, including
Juniperus spp. JUNIPER Cypress Family: Pines and junipers do not really flower; they produce their seeds in cones. The brownish tips on the branches n the junipers now are the male cones, filled with pollen. Soon the fleshy bluish-gray female cones, commonly called "Juniper berries", will begin to develop. (The female cones visible on some of the trees now are last year's crop; they take two years to mature.) We have two species:
Juniperus osteosperma UTAH JUNIPER: relatively small but sturdy-looking. We have LOTS of these!
Juniperus scopulorum ROCKY MOUNTAIN JUNIPER: larger but much more delicate-looking, with smaller leaves and cones. Found in relatively cool shady places such as north-facing slopes in Emerald Pools Canyon.