baby blue eyesNemophila menziesii var. atomaria
Boraginaceae (formerly Hydrophyllaceae)
I asked Andy to stop the car as we were heading down from Fremont Peak so that I could get a closer look at the huge patches of white flowers on the side of the road. I love the detail in the petals. I wonder what it would look like under UV light. I totally did not notice these flowers going into the park, but as Carol LeNeve from CNPS pointed out to me, it matters which direction you're driving to notice many flowers. As an aside, I'm still looking for a wildflower book that can help identify roadside flowers going at 55 m.p.h. Hey, it's not always easy or convenient to stop the car to get a closer look.
This is another first flower sighting for me... I've never noticed the white version of baby blues eyes before. To be quite honest, I'm making an assumption about the variety here based on pictures of white blooms on CalPhotos (linked in the common name below the pictures). I have not found any plant list to double-check this variety. Calflora and Jepson do not show this variety as occurring in San Benito County. Even though Fremont Peak borders both San Benito and Monterey counties, these two floral resources seem to consider Fremont Peak as being in San Benito County.
I'm taking my cue from James of Lost in the Landscape, whose recent comment reminded me about not allowing distribution data to blind me from recognizing rarer plants. This is in stark contrast to how some people are so excited that they've found something so rare and so unusual that they make outlandish ID claims. Generally, my stance on Nature ID is that whatever I manage to find is not too unusual for the area.
