Blue Dick Flowers at Santa Rosa Plateau


My return to the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Preserve turned out to be an interpretive hike.  Bob, the hike leader, looks around for any rangers in sight and  uproots a bulbous flower and swears it tastes like onion. He talks about hoping to see chocolate lilies in the meadow. Meadow is pronounced like the me in medicine not the me  in the mean, says my babe! Okay, let me say grassy field instead.

I think of what to blab in my next blog. Hiking and blogging go together. I can not just cuss and swear from out of the blue. I am glad I got into hiking. It makes me forget about Ayyedis Vakkendjaab. I squat for a photo with chocolate lilies. Aren't they glorieux?


Google comes up with an alternate names for this wild flower growing in the meadows: skunk lily or dirty diaper!  I want to forget even learning about the alternate names of a wild flower scientifically identified as  Fritillaria Camschatcensis.  There's my friend Kay enjoying the moment with pretty chocolate lilies. It was at the Big Laguna Trail that I hiked with her first. I've heard about her wonderful sons who got her into hiking with meetup grups. She thought meetup.com is dating site. "No Mom, it's meet-up not mate-up."

"What to do you call those flowers again?" I asked Ron, the botanist in the group.
"Blue dicks!"
I glanced at Ron, the botanist to see if he looks like a joker. He seems serious, kind of scholarly looking. I stay behind the group to photograph more wildflowers. I looked for blue dicks.
"They are called blue-eyed grass," Ron informs me.

Up close, blue dicks are quite pretty. They are also thought of as wild hyacynths. They are also called Brodiaea or purpleheads. Blue dick purpleheads? Holy Shih Tzu! What a complicated way to call wild flowers which are scientifically known as Dichelostemma Capitatum!

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