Last night at Feather River Art Camp, during my portion of the traditional slide show, I included the above shot of Lemmon's Wild Ginger that I took several weeks ago when these flowers were at their peak. Several of the people who came on my nature walk wanted to know where to find them, so I promised that today I'd show what to look for. The continuous carpet of heart-shaped (cordiform) leaves (below) resemble at a glance the sort of Ivy ground cover that lots of people choose for their landscaping. One would never suspect flowers are on the ground near the bases of the stems, hidden by this carpet of leaves.
During this morning's hike, I parted a few leaves in the above scene to reveal the now-dried up flowers (below). My finger tip provides some scale. The flowers are roughly 1/2-inch in diameter. As seen here and in the top photo, both the blossoms and the stems are quite hairy. I lover close-ups of details like that. When viewed on my 15" screen, I can pretend I still have 20-20 vision. In fact, sometimes I discover tiny bugs in the photos that I didn't notice when taking the pictures.
Happy hunting. The plant is an ever green, so if the drought doesn't kill them, the leafy carpets may be found near still or slowly moving water all summer and fall.
On last night's hike, we also spotted Goldenrod Crab Spiders. I found some again this morning, so in my next post I'll give a little more background on them. It was enjoyable to be back on the trail again at camp.
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