Last month we found chocolate lilies and other delightful wildflowers while on PIB‘s Alaska birding tour. Here are the best of them, mostly found at Turnagain Pass Rest Area on 18 June 2019. Please leave a comment to help me identify the ones I’ve labeled “mystery” flowers and correct any I’ve misidentified. Thanks!
At top, the chocolate lily (Fritillaria camschatcensis) is a gorgeous small flower that resembles a Canada lily (Lilium canadense) except that it’s the color of chocolate. What a treat!
Below, clasping twisted-stalk (Streptopus amplexifolius) has delicate bell-shaped yellow flowers that hang under the leaves. They remind me of Solomon’s seal.
Nootka lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis) starts blue, becomes white at the tip.
Devil’s club (Oplopanax horridum) is covered in spines that are hard to remove if they get in your skin. Don’t touch!
Woolly geranium (Geranium erianthum) looks like Pennsylvania’s wild geranium. The flowers and leaves are larger, though.
We saw liverleaf wintergreen (Pyrola asarifolia) in Seward.
What is the yellow flower shown below? It looks like a cinquefoil to me but the leaves are so big. (The flower is about the size of the first joint of my thumb.)
I believe this is salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis). Am I right?
Threeleaf foamflower (Tiarella trifoliata), found in Seward.
I couldn’t identify this flower at first, but thanks to Janet Campagna’s comment I think these are yellow marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), seen at Turnagain Pass Rest Area, 18 June 2019.
And finally, dwarf fireweed (Chamaenerion latifolium) was easy to find along the Teller Road northwest of Nome.
Please let me know if I’ve misidentified any of these. The solo yellow flower, 7th photo, remains a mystery.
(photos by Kate St. John, all of them taken with my Pixel 3 cellphone)
Thanks for the wildflower pics, Kate. We were touring Alaska at the same time you were. Interesting that so many flowers remind us of ones found closer to home. I also had that reaction to Mountain Bluebells, which looked like Virginia Bluebells to me. Did you see Alaska’s state flower, forget-me-not?
I did see the forget-me-not but only one little plant. I was much more impressed by the chocolate lilies!
Beautiful!
Hmm… Some kind of marsh marigold?
Janet, thank you! Marsh marigold makes sense in that habitat. Here’s a link to photos on the Alaska flowers website: http://www.alaskawildflowers.us/Kingdom/Plantae/Magnoliophyta/Magnoliopsida/Ranunculaceae/Caltha_palustris/index.html