Too Many Distractions!

The plan was to collect seeds of wild plants and talk about the great variety of means of dispersal. On my way to camp I stopped at many roadside hot spots and collected seed pods from lupine, big puff balls of salsify seeds, acorns, and so on, but saw my first Evening Primrose of the season blooming and had to break out the camera. [Second photo from top.] Soon afterward, a row of Fireweed which is in the same family. [Third from top.] Next, that great feeling of anticipation as I came across a patch of Gumplant, not blooming quite yet, but with many buds on which the disk flowers were filled with blobs of "gum." These will be blooming soon and they attract a great variety of butterflies and beetles. I'll be back!
I had already photographed Indian Hemp and Mountain Spiraea, but today their blooms were lighted perfectly by the early morning sun so I took some more pictures.
My first stop on the scheduled walk with campers was the large elderberry bush near the corral. A lady with binoculars spotted a bright red something-or-other near the top of of the bush. At first, I thought it was the biggest Red Milkweed Beetle I had ever seen. Campers helped me bend the bush to bring the bug within reach. It turned out to be a beetle in the same family, but this time it was the Elderberry Beetle, one I had never seen before. It made such an impression that I forgot I had my camera in my hand, and the beetle flew off before I could get pictures. I'll be back!
We did manage to talk some about seeds and dispersal - how some seeds need to pass through the gut of a bird before they will germinate, how some must survive a fire before they will germinate, and the various ways some are adapted to dispersal by wind, water, gravity, on animal hair, and so on. But there were many other points of interest - the caterpillar of a Monarch butterfly, a baby garter snake, clerid beetles, the wilted lady slippers - thus the title of this post.
The front seat of my car is still piled with my roadside collection of seeds and seed-producing parts of plants, so I'll probably use them on today's hike - unless we're distracted.
I collected this material in a nick of time. On my way home yesterday, one of those tractor-mounted weed-eaters was in the process of mowing (read "decimating") the roadsides along Quincy Junction and Chandler Roads, so they are now tamed. But, like Thoreau, I have great faith in a seed, and I know the weeds will be back!