The San Juan Mountains are experiencing an explosion of wildflowers known as “green gentians” or “monument plants” around high elevation meadows that only happens once in a blue moon.
The large stalks, which typically measure between 3 and 6 feet, blossom after decades of cementing their roots into the earth. After a few weeks of beauty, they seed and die, giving way to the next generation that won’t display its delicate flowers for years to come.
“It may be as long as seven years between good flowering events. It's a welcome sight for people who like wildflowers,” David Inouye, a researcher with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, said.
Inouye, known in wildflower enthusiast circles as the green gentian expert, said their unusual life span and flowering patterns fascinate him.
“Most of the plants – at least where I am up around 9,100 feet – are probably somewhere between about 20 and 50 years old before they get big enough to flower,” Inouye said.
They grow along the Front Range and the Western Slope in Colorado, with colonies throughout other Western states, according to Inouye. This year, many clusters of the plants are going through a mass flowering period known as a masting event, displaying fields of brilliant white flowers running up tall green stems.
They say April showers bring May flowers, but in the case of the green gentians, the flowers reveal themselves in June – four years later.
“It seems like if you have a wet summer, a lot of rain in June and July, that triggers some of these plants to start making flower stalks,” Inouye said. “But they start making them underground and it's not until four years later that they're above ground.”
Inouye hypothesized that some could even live a century before putting on this final spectacular performance. Years of preparing for their swan song means these flowers also provide a lot of nectar for bees.
“They're very attractive to pollinators,” Inouye said. “And that's important because they have to be pollinated in order to make seeds for the next generation.”
When green gentians die, their bodies act as protectors to the seeds they just spread, shielding them as they sprout.
“It's kind of like a little nursery, all those dead plant stalks and dead leaves are protecting the seeds as they germinate,” Durango-based biologist and herbalist Marija Helt said. “I think that’s really neat.”
As an herbalist, Helt knows green gentians have been used as digestive bitters to trigger production of digestive enzymes, but due to their rare blooms, she just lets them be.
“It's such an old herbaceous plant, right?” Helt said. “Those plants will grow for 20 years, or 40 years, or 80 years before they bloom. And then they die. So I don't like to dig them up. I leave them alone.”
The blooms could last until mid-July, so Southwest Colorado residents and visitors still have time to witness this rare event. Helt recommends driving up Coal Bank Pass (U.S. Highway 550) north of Durango to Engineer Mountain Summit for a good view.
“You can just park up in that parking lot there and carefully cross the street, and that meadow is full of them,” Helt said.
She also cited Missionary Ridge and La Plata Canyon, which offers a bumpier dirt road, as good spots to witness the gentians.
avanderveen@the-journal.com
