Boulder Wildlife This Month
What’s blooming in Boulder in July?
If you take a walk down the trails near Boulder, what will you see this month? This summer I've been lugging around botanical keys, pondering phillaries and cladodes, and watercoloring and photographing to document and help myself learn about my floral relatives in Boulder, Colorado. As I learn each flower and plant, I feel closer and more connected to my landscape. Want to learn, too? Follow along below!
In addition to flowers, in July you'll see more and more ripening seeds and fruit!
At the Trailhead
As you start from the trailhead, you might see more introduced species blooming and beginning to go to seed, like the already-browning Musk Thistle, Creeping Bellflower, Field Bindweed, and Broad-leaved Sweet Pea. The growing seed pods of the sweet pea make it clear that this species is in the Pea Family (Fabaceae). And the Curled Dock seedheads that were green and ripening last month, are now turning brown and drying. And the huge dandelion-like seedheads of Yellow Goatsbeard (also called Yellow Salsify) are ripe for the blowing on.
Grasses
Many of the early-season introduced grasses are now done flowering and beginning to seed and dry. For example, Orchard Grass seedheads are now turning brown, and the stems are no longer delicious to eat. However, other grasses are just beginning to flower, like the Intermediate Wheatgrass—note the bluish color, alternate branched flowerheads, and growth habit of many stems and leaves coming from a common root system. This species is a perennial, and the Land Institute has developed this species into a perennial wheat-like crop called Kernza in order to reduce the environmental impacts caused by having to harvest, plow, and plant wheat annually.
Cacti
Pricklypear cactuses (genus Opuntia) peaked blooming in June, though there are still some flowers out. Most are starting to fruit, but they won't be ripe yet for many months. Pricklypear cactuses are identifiable by their large paddle-shapedleaves, which are not actually leaves, but special flattened stems called cladodes. There are three common species here, Prairie Pricklypear, which has only a few spines in each bunch and the spine bunches are quite far apart, Plains Pricklypear, which seems to be slightly less common and has many spines in each bunch and higher density of bunches, and finally the least showy of the group, Brittle Pricklypear, which has much smaller, barely flattened cladodes with dense, long spines. All three species often grow together.
Fruiting trees and shrubs
There are also lots of trees and shrubs out right now with fruit, including the rather bitter and still-unripe Chokecherries produced along racemes (i.e., the berries coming from a single stalk). In contrast, the fruit of the American Plum are found singly or in pairs; these fruit are also just beginning to ripen, with some just starting to show touches of pink. The red and ripe Morrow's Honeysuckle (hairs on the backs of the leaves differentiate it from the similar Tatarian Honeysuckle); the green and still-ripening Boxelder seeds (called samara). Skunkbush Sumac is abundantly fruiting right now, with its reddish, bunched fruit. You might see some greenish spheres that look like berries on hackberry leaves, but these may actually a type of gall made by the Hackberry Nipple Psyllid.
Wildflowers blooming now
Many wildflowers are blooming right now, including the Curlycup Gumweed (note the recurved spines and very sticky flower head and the dried-up basal leaves); Prairie Coneflower (beautiful cone-shaped flowers); Sulfur Buckwheat (umbels of small greenish-yellow flowers). Many of these are also starting to go to seed, such as the Pinewoods Geranium (pink/purple flowers with darker veins)—the long seeds look sort of like bird bills, and are the reason why these plants are often calledcranesbill. Hairy False Goldenasters are also still mid-bloom, showing a mix of seedheads and flowering heads.
Flowers just beginning to bloom
Other late-summer flowers are just beginning to bloom, such as Missouri Goldenrod and the pungent Western Ragweed (one of the causes of hay fever in some—get ready!). Missouri Goldenrod has three veins stretching down its leaves (called "nerves" in goldenrods), the leaves closest to the ground have already turned brown, and all of the flowers are on the top sides of the branches (called "sucund"). Western Ragweed can be distinguished from Common Ragweeed because the former has finely and multiply pinnate leaves. Look closely and you can see the bright yellow anthers in the ragweed flowers! The closely-related Giant Ragweed plants are still growing and have not even begun to flower yet—look for their large three-lobed leaves, thick stalks, and opposite growth pattern. Another small yellow flower that just started opening is the Broom Snakeweed—a bounty of tiny yellow flowers above thin leaves.
