June

Dalmation toadflax grows up to four feet tall on a stout, erect, branching stem. It can easily be mistaken for a snapdragon with its bright yellow flowers that grow in a head at the end of the main stem. The flowers are about an inch long, with two lips and a pronounced opposing spur. The bottom lip is raised and covered with orange hairs.

The large-flowered collomia grows from a single branching stem up to three feet tall with narrow leaves one to three inches long. The unusual peach- or salmon-colored blossoms with blue stamens at the center are arranged in many-flowered heads.

Diffuse knapweed grows from long taproots into a bush up to two feet tall with a single upright stem sprouting many branches. The stems have fine, short hairs, giving the plant a gray appearance. The leaves are small, alternately arranged, and finely divided.

Sagebrush mariposa lily is showy and grows up to two feet tall, with a beautiful tulip-like flower that displays petals, sepals and stamens in multiples of three. Each plant has one to three flowers, and the lavender petals are pointed at the tip, with a darker violet band at the base.

Russian knapweed grows up to three feet tall with considerably branched stems. Leaves up to six inches long and one and a half inches wide grow near the base of the plant and become smaller toward the top. The small half-inch flower heads on the branch tips may be white, pink, or lavender-blue.

Bitterbrush is an extensively-branched, deciduous shrub that grows up to six feet tall. It produces many small three-lobed leaves, similar to those of sagebrush but lacking the gray, woolly hair, and brighter and more of an olive-green in color. The leaves are so tiny that the outline of the shrub’s limbs is distinctive.