EskDale Flowers--Part II

It's been a great spring for wild flowers in Snake Valley. If you haven't already, be sure to check out Part I of Flowers around EskDale.  I found so many that I had to split it into two posts!

Here are some more beauties on the landscape:

A selenium-loving spear of yellow: Desert princesplume (Stanleya pinnata)

Getting ready to bloom: Fragrant White Sand Verbena (Abronia elliptica)

Bright yellow shrub: Nuttall's horsebrush (Tetradymia nuttalli)

And then I got distracted by American Avocets in the reservoir. They were happily eating little invertebrates in the murky water.

I got a little too close, though, and spooked them.

Flowers in the Sunflower family with no leaves on the stem: naked stemmed daisy (Enceliopsis nudicaulis)

A low-lying plant with flowers about the color of yellow fluorescent markers: 

Shockley's buckwheat (Eriogonum shockleyi)

A beautiful penstemon about a foot high: Steptoe Valley Beardtongue (Penstemon immanifestus)

A tiny white flower at the end of very hairy nutlets: bearded cryptantha (Cryptantha barbigera)

A dandelion-like flower (with a pollinator!): Modoc hawksbeard (Crepis modocensis)

A cute flower: shaggy fleabane (Erigeron pumilis)

This shrub is dotting the sagebrush areas and brightening it up: Mormon tea (Ephedra viridis)

And a stop to enjoy a gopher snake.

The diminutive: whitestem blazing star (Mentzelia albicaulisi)

It made me feel so good to see so many interesting flowers--almost like I was on a treasure hunt! Besides looking for different flowers, it's fun to watch the lizards scurry around, observe the numerous burrows, watch the grasshoppers jump, and see which flowers, grasses, and shrubs are most predominant. Best of all is taking deep breaths of the clean air. We are fortunate to live in such a beautiful place.