Al and Betty Schneider were recently hiking around Lizard Head Wilderness near their southwest Colorado home when tiny pops of white amid tall grass caught their eye. This was Turritis glabra, the couple determined, or the broad-leafed plant commonly called tower mustard. “It’s actually a species that’s pretty common throughout the U.
S.,” Al Schneider said. But never had he and his wife, decades-long wildflower watchers, spotted the species.
They happily took pictures and added them to the online repository they’ve maintained since 2001, swcoloradowildflowers.com . Turritis glabra added to the total species catalogued.
“That was 1,001,” Schneider said. That might say something about the landscape we call home — these mountains and plains bursting with flowers waiting to be discovered this time every year. “What it says about us, too,” said Schneider, 83.
“People get old, and actually so many of us when we’re young, we don’t see the world around us. We don’t look for new things.” Now is the time to look.
Don’t delay, say fans and flower experts around the state. “People should make their trips now,” said Maggie Gaddis, the Colorado Springs-based executive director of Colorado Native Plant Society. From her own observations and reports from watchers across the Front Range and Western Slope, “everything seems to be in fast-forward,” Gaddis said.
Heading into July, that seemed to be due to a fairly generous snowpack and spring moisture that.
