Spring Wildflowers around EskDale

I usually spend one morning a week in EskDale, and the last two weeks I've seen some terrific wildflowers. Here are most of them, with links to the A Plant a Day blog, which is an excellent site if you'd like to learn the plants of the central Great Basin.

A splash of orange: Gooseberryleaf Globemallow, also called Currant-leaf Desert Mallow (Sphaeralcea grossulariifolia)

Cryptantha--one of many!

A small shrub with yellow flowers: bud sagebrush (Picrothamnus desertorum)

A surprising find in the early spring: tufted townsend daisy (Townsendia scapigera)

One of the easier milkvetches to identify, especially when the big, spotted pods appear: Freckled Milkvetch (Astragalus lentiginosus).

This tree is already past the flower stage and into the fruit stage: Russian olive (Elaegnus angustifolia)

The desert may not look very colorful from afar, but once you start spotting flowers, you find more and more!

A tiny plant with surprisingly bright flowers: Spiny Milkwort (Polygala subspinosa)

Splashes of white on the desert floor: Tufted Evening Primrose (Oenothera caespitosa) 

A mass of pink and green: Winged Four O'clock (Mirabilis alipes)

A field of purple (and white): cleftleaf wildheliotrope (Phacelia crenulata)

A stately, elegant flower with a poisonous punch: foothill deathcamas (Zigadenus paniculatus)

Leaves feathery and gray-green with a two-inch ball of flowers: globe springparsley (Cymopterus globosus).

The eyecatching desert Indian paintbrush (Castilleja angustifolia

A spray of white: mountain pepperweed (Lepidium montanum)

A spark of yellow: western wallflower (Erysimum capitatum)

I thought I was done, but I went back out to EskDale today and found even more! 

So there will be a part 2, that even includes some animals.

If you like flowers, check out this post about flowers in Pole Canyon in Great Basin National Park.