Ipomopsis aggregata
Now it's summer, and there is no more spectacular native plant to announce the solstice than Scarlet gilia. Summer flowers don't mess around, and while there are stunning blooms on the horizon as we come to "peak prairie," Scarlet gilia is a remarkable plant. It is biennial (or "short-lived") and in their first year they put out a ferny-looking rosette on the ground. Then you get these amazing red spikes (no color tweaking is done in these images), so last year I knew already that it would be good this year. I had seen a few around Kamiak Butte, so I knew this was a native when I spotted a substantial drift of it in the road cut on Route 27 going north from Palouse to Garfield, years ago. All my seed came from one afternoon where I collected some there, along with the Phacelia seed that produced those still-blooming bee-smothered white spikes in the background. By starting several patches of these with a few handfuls of seed, they now are a population that I've been able to spread throughout the project. The pink is Clarkia, still going strong.
Scarlet gilia has a strange scent, and the bees, other insects, and hummingbirds are mad for it. I assume there must have been traditional Native American medicinal uses for it. It just seems like a powerful plant, somehow. As we go into July, the hummingbirds will begin a peculiar aerial ballet, alighting on it, then zipping around the flowers and suddenly shooting hundreds of feet straight up in the air. I am happy to provide the bird-nip for the show. Significantly, the deer, bunnies, etc. do not mess with this stuff.
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