Native Plant Walk

On Saturday we joined the Santa Fe Chapter of the New Mexico Native Plant Society on a walk in the Pecos Wilderness area east of Santa Fe. We all met at the parking lot of a local college and carpooled for the 40 minute drive. In our car we had another couple who had just moved to Santa Fe from Milwaukee, WI. She was a retired physicist and he had taught dentistry and done research on amphibian teeth. I don't think I knew frogs had teeth! Also a personal injury lawyer who had lived in the area for a long time. The whole group for the walk numbered about 15 people.

We parked at the Holy Ghost trail head and slowly made our way along the trail identifying plants. Most of the participants were not professionals, just people with a love of plants. Three dogs went on the walk, all pretty well behaved. The leader provided two plant lists from previous walks that were helpful. I could identify many plants to family or genus and then look on the list to see what the species was likely to be.

Attached is a photo of wood lily, Lilium philadelphicum, and of assorted people and the dog, Charlie, on the hillside harboring the wood lilies. Also a photo of Mertensia franciscana, Franciscan bluebells and of orange sneezeweed. The scenery was quite striking with small meadows, ravines, and many aspens and evergreen trees. Since we were walking pretty slowly I didn't notice any effect of the additional altitude.

On the way back, Jake drove through a tremendous thunderstorm that included hail briefly. Streams of water rushed along the edges of the highway. This was after taking a detour to get on the interstate after a semi truck failed to turn sharply enough and got stuck right before the interstate on-ramp on the soft shoulder.