Wildflowers of San Francisco

I tend to write a lot about and share images of my favorite California city, San Francisco. But today’s post has absolutely nothing to do with the City by the Bay, because these photos were shot in northern Arizona. The San Francisco Peaks lie just north of Flagstaff and include the highest point in Arizona (Humphreys Peak, 12, 637 ft/3,852 m). The peaks are all that remains of an enormous volcano, now eroded into a caldera. The city of Williams, Arizona, is located about 30 miles west of Flagstaff and is also part of the San Francisco volcanic field. The higher elevations here offer an escape from the desert heat, the shelter of pine forests, and great habitat for wildlife and spring wildflowers, even in the middle of June. I found a lot of flowers that were completely new to me — as well as a few familiar ones, like the scarlet Paintbrush — and I’ve done my best to (hopefully!) correctly identify them below. Many are native to the southwest, but there are also invasive plants such as the attractive but noxious Common toadflax, also known as Butter-and-eggs.

I saw more than one variety of lupine, but in researching the names I found so many that, to me, looked so similar I finally gave up trying to pin them down.

Groundsel is another new-to-me plant, and I may have seen more than one variety. But the one that really interested me had strangely shaped leaves; at first glance I thought someone had chewed them full of holes!