A Small and Unassuming Plant

The bitterroot plant is easy to miss in the first and last part of its growing cycle.  The plant prefers cool weather and is usually the very first to emerge from the prairie ground as the snows melt back toward the mountain summits.  Some years, I have seen the first bitterroot surface in early March—a time when winter is still marshaling together snowstorms on regular occasion.

 

Smallish and growing nearly flat against the earth, the bitterroot does little to attract attention from when it first starts growing until blooming in June.   In bloom, though, the bitterroot is one of the most spectacular and conspicuous flowers to splash colors against the sky.  That is why the bitterroot became the Montana State flower.

Today, I am posting a photograph of some bitterroot plants I found yesterday afternoon while out walking.  I am also posting some photos I snapped of bitterroot in bloom from years past.  Following the remarkable time of blossoming, the bitterroot plants vanish back into the soil to go dormant during the heat of summer and wait to burst forth the next season.

 

 

--Mitchell Hegman