Spring, as Such
The vernal equinox hit like a shotgun blast this year.
For the uninitiated I should say that the Colorado Front Range already exhibits unorthodox seasonal weather: winters aren't snowy so much as they are windy, with most of the precipitation being deposited in the high country. If Denver and the foothills are inclined to see snow in a given year, that snow will most likely occur over the course of February, March and April.
That didn't happen in 2025/26: this wasn't a winter so much as a seven month long September (where thirty days is already too much of that particular month) – an endless hellscape of sunny blue skies, and temperatures rarely dipping below 60 Fahrenheit. Most disturbingly, there were no winds: the Chinook winds are an obnoxious beast to endure, but they keep things cool, and moreover they indicate snow deposition in the high country. The lack of winds suggest, in this case, a lack of snow. Which indeed there was: this has been – as everyone living in the west seems eager to remind each other – a historically warm, historically dry year. I don't know about you, reader, but I've grown quite tired of living in unprecedented times.
If you've never had the occasion to enjoy one, a Front Range spring is usually quite lovely: temperatures oscillate in and out of freezing, and flowers are consequently slow to bloom. Things take their time out here – which can be annoying – but if you know what to expect then you're in for a treat when it thaws. But again, such was not the case this year: the western US has been made to endure a historically early heat wave over the past couple weeks, and only god knows when it'll end. October maybe? The next century?
But I digress: being someone already predisposed to severe climate grief, I'd like to transmit as little as possible to you, dear reader. I'll cap it off by returning to my opening statement: spring this year came with a couple exclamation points. Where flowers normally bloom stochastically per species – and progressively over elevation – everything has arrived this year all at once. And so with extreme and judicious FOMO, I'm doing my best to capture it all as it happens.
Townsendia is a widely-represented genus of Asters in the American West, with different species blooming gregariously over the season. The Easter Daisies are a cluster of species named for their early blooming period, as it seems Christ wasn't the only thing to come back around that time. Here on the Foothills they usually show up after Easter – early-to-mid April – and it takes them a couple weeks to ramp up to their zenith. They employ the usual ephemeral strategies: hemi-geophytic habit, low to the ground, short blooming period, fast to fruit. With all this established they reliably appear on the talus slopes like an old friend, and early though they may be I am mighty pleased to see them again.
We have two species of Easter daisy in this area: T. exscapa and T. hookeri. They're generally indistinguishable save for some discrete involucral traits, and so whenever I post this species I tend to err on the side of caution: "Townsendia spp." I am not, and have never claimed to be, good with the asters.
(Just as a disclaimer, nobody can seem to decide on the proper name for this one: I've seen creeping Mahonia vacillate in and out of classifications multiple times by this point, so I'll just cover my bases by using both Mahonia and Berberis for its genus.)
Mahonia (syn. Berberis) repens is the only native representation of the barberry family in front range Colorado. You'll also see the PNW-endemic M. aquifolium as an escaped ornamental (and I'm surprised we haven't seen any interspecific crosses, given that they share a blooming period), but the foothills belong to M. repens. And to their credit, I think they're having a banner year: due to a recent heat spell, a lot of the populations I'm used to seeing bloom sequentially, have instead all blossomed at once – in full force, at that. We'll see if any of those flowers have been successfully pollinated, but I'm hopeful.
Perhaps the most covert wildflower we'll be discussing today, Desert parsley can be difficult to spot unless you know what to look for. I've heard that this actually poses an issue for field ecologists: that due to its demure presence and early seasonal phenology, organismal land surveys tend not to account for them (for this same reason I like to document these little guys whenever I can). With that all being said, every encounter I've had wit L. orientale has been strictly unintentional – I don't go out looking for it, it just shows up.
Brassica lovers know what a rare delight it is to happen across a native mustard; moving through an American open space you're apt to walk knee-deep through introduced, naturalized, and invasive mustard species (which is made worse by the fact that these species are all very charming in their own ways) so it's a wonderful thing to once in a while happen across a mustard that actually belongs here.
Noccaea fendleri is one such brassica: with a natural range spanning the intermountain west and parts of northern Mexico, this wildflower is known for its early occurrence (even compared to its ephemeral counterparts), where it pops up over pine forests and talus slopes. The flowers provide essential early-season nectar for native bee and butterfly species, and is an easy species to spot along trailsides while in bloom. The alpine candytuft (subspecies glauca) is a known hyperaccumulator of nickel.
