Wildflower Colors

Virtual seas of wildflowers can be seen around the area from May through June. The variety of colors is astounding.

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Island Park was a crazy artist’s palette of wildflowers last week. As we drove near Warm River Spring, my wife pointed out a field of camas flowers and stated to our friends, “those purple flowers are camas.” Blue, I corrected absently, so blue that from a distance, Meriweather Lewis mistook an immense sea of camas flowers near present-day Grangeville, Idaho as a large lake. The nearby blooming larkspur was much closer to purple.

That put me to thinking about wildflowers and the wild range of colors that they entail. Even flowers of the same species can come in several different colors, sometimes side by side. For instance, the wyethia so prevalent this time of year comes mostly in white in Island Park, but can also be seen as creamy or even bright yellow, two very different colors to me.

Just how many colors of flowers are there in the world? I didn’t know, but I thought I would take a look at my Audubon Guide to Wildflowers, a guidebook that uses actual photographs. Like most flower identification books, this book is divided or indexed two ways: by flower color and by flower shape (within the color). The colors they chose to represent the various groups were: green (yes, there are green flowers), white, yellow, orange, brown, red, pink, and blue. Huh. No purple.

I then turned to my friend, Penny Walbom’s book, The Wildflowers of Island Park, Idaho. She is not colorblind like the editors of that old Audubon book and she had an entire section dedicated to purple flowers and one to black flowers (Western coneflower) as well.

I then opened a copy of Idaho Mountain Wildflowers by A. Scott Earle and Jane Lundin. This is a serious tome and lists flowers by family, not by color or shape. It does require a bit of knowledge about the families in order to successfully navigate it. However, I have found a number of plants I was interested in by just patiently thumbing through the pages. The photographs are quite good, often artful, and usually depict the flowers quite well, but it was hard to decipher the number of colors represented.

According to AI on Google, “There are around 20,000 wildflower species in the United States, and 400,000 flowering plant species worldwide.” That is a lot of potential for flower colors and color may be in part in the eye of the beholder. For those with a more refined eye, the cool end of the color spectrum may include blue, indigo, purple, lavender, and violet flowers, to name a few and grading toward other colors as well. These colors are much more precisely described, albeit at the same time subjective, but it does show the range of colors within colors.

There is another aspect to wildflower color that compounds the problem of trying to decide how many different wildflower colors there might be. That is when colors combine with other colors to make a two or even three-toned specimen. Sitka columbine is a classic example with its red and yellow pattern that could be classified as red or yellow in the Audubon book.

No one really knows how many flower colors there are or even which color, if any, dominates the flowering plant world. It is suggested by some that green flowers may actually dominate because of all the trees and grasses with their inconspicuous green flowers. In my opinion, of the showy flowers, yellow seems to dominate. Orange flowers may be the least prevalent in number of species.

As beautiful, enriching, and astounding as they are, flowers and their colors are not just for our pleasure though. They have a serious purpose—to create the seeds of the next generation—and it’s the pollinators that drive the show. Most species of flowering plants, especially those with showy flowers, have a specific suite of pollinators they try to court with their fragrances, shape, color, size, and bloom time. We are just the lucky spectators to this dance of life.

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Help Idaho Wildlife

When we traveled across the state in October 2017, most of the vehicles we saw using the wildlife management areas did not have wildlife plates. Buying wildlife plates is a great way for non-hunters and hunters alike to support wildlife-based recreation like birding.

C'mon folks, let's help Idaho's wildlife by proudly buying and displaying a wildlife license plate on each of our vehicles! 

See below for information on Idaho plates. Most states have wildlife plates so if you live outside Idaho, check with your state's wildlife department or vehicle licensing division for availability of state wildlife plates where you live. 

And tell them that you heard about it from Nature-track.com!

Wildlife License Plates

Great news! as of 2024, there are three NEW designs for license plates. They still are bluebird, cutthroat trout and elk, but they are beautiful.

Idaho Wildlife license plates provide essential funding that benefits the great diversity of native plants and wildlife that are not hunted, fished or trapped—over 10,000 species or 98% of Idaho’s species diversity. Game species that share the same habitats (such as elk, deer, antelope, sage-grouse, salmon, trout) also benefit from these specialty plates.

No state tax dollars are provided for wildlife diversity, conservation education and recreation programs. Neither are any revenues from the sale of hunting or fishing licenses spent on nongame species. Instead, these species depend on direct donations, federal grants, fundraising initiatives—and the Idaho Wildlife license plates.

Both my vehicles have Bluebird Plates. I prefer the bluebird because the nongame program gets 70 percent of the money from bluebird plates, but only 60 percent of the money from elk and trout plates - 10 percent of the money from elk plates supports wildlife disease monitoring and testing programs (to benefit the livestock industry) and 10 percent from cutthroat plates supports non-motorized boat access.

Incidentally, in 2014, the Idaho Legislature denied the Department of Fish and Game the ability to add new plates or even to change the name of the elk and cutthroat plates (very specific) to wildlife and fish plates, a move that would have allowed for changing images occasionally and generating more revenue. It would seem that they believe that we Idahoans don't want a well funded wildlife program.

I think it is time we let the Legislature know that Idahoan support wildlife funding and that we would like to see these generic plates come to fruition.