Thursday, June 9, 2011

butterfly mariposa lily ~ 06/09/11 ~ Pinnacles

Calochortus venustus among Avena fatua
Liliaceae and Poaceae

We saw whole hillsides of this beautiful lily in various shades from white to pink. Unfortunately, the invasive wild oat was taller than the lilies and made them difficult to spot in photographs.

ps 08/07/11 - Thanks to Way Points post on mariposa lilies, I looked at these again to double-check the IDs. Many of the 45 kinds of mariposa lilies found in CA look very similar. I'm not familiar enough to know the tricks to look for to distinguish between the species and Jepson's descriptions confuse me. Here are links to Flickr groups that highlight mariposa lilies, CaliFlora and Calochortus beauty. I wonder if one or more of these might be clay mariposa lily (Calochortus argillosus) even though it is not on the official Pinnacles plant list. I asked on a Flickr picture with hopes to get an answer. Does anyone know of how to tell the difference between mariposa lilies?

2 comments:

John @ Beans and I on the Loose said...

Such a beautiful little flower that looks like an artist took a paintbrush to it.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

That's a fun observation, JL.