Catherine Creek, March 15, 2023
I plan to keep track of Catherine Creek this year. I will hike there every two or three weeks till June sometime, keeping track of the change of flowers. Catherine Creek is known for its great displays of wildflowers: it is a truly amazing area. Today, I counted over one hundred million grass widows, maybe more. And came across a very rare variety, a pure white version. In the bazillions of grass widows that are purple, I found only two instances of the white ones. And they were not near each other, actually on opposite sides of the area. It is still early in the season for flowers but I found about ten types today: the infamous grass widows and the white variety; gold stars, woodland stars, desert parsley and pungent desert parsley, salt and pepper, a few early western saxifrages, whitlow grass, which has the tiniest of flowers, and a couple of early yellow fritillary flowers. Todays hike went from the parking area, to the new bridge on the Catherine Creek loop trail, to a cutoff trail going uphill under the power towers, then to the left to loop around and down to the creek and the old bridge, then up the County Road trail till it joined with the Rowland Ridge trail and back down to the trailhead. This was just about 6 miles with 900 feet of climbing and descending, on a slightly windy but beautiful day.
Often a solitary flower, sometimes there are clumps as seen here.
This old tree has been leaning here for as long as I have been hiking at Catherine Creek.
Rare white variety of grass widow
Whitlow Grass, tiniest flower out there.
It’s too early for Bitter Root flowers yet, but the leaves are popping up now.
