{"id":136172,"date":"2026-06-27T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/rare-superbloom-event-takes-over-alpine-meadows-in-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T20:15:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T02:15:50","slug":"rare-superbloom-event-takes-over-alpine-meadows-in-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/rare-superbloom-event-takes-over-alpine-meadows-in-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare superbloom event takes over alpine meadows in Southwest Colorado"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Green
Green gentians take decades to bloom, with many showing their flowers this year due to a wet summer four years ago. (Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The San Juan Mountains are experiencing an explosion of wildflowers known as \u201cgreen gentians\u201d or \u201cmonument plants\u201d around high elevation meadows that only happens once in a blue moon.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t display its delicate flowers for years to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may be as long as seven years between good flowering events. It\u2019s a welcome sight for people who like wildflowers,\u201d David Inouye, a researcher with the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, said.<\/p>\n

Inouye, known in wildflower enthusiast circles as the green gentian expert, said their unusual life span and flowering patterns fascinate him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the plants \u2013 at least where I am up around 9,100 feet \u2013 are probably somewhere between about 20 and 50 years old before they get big enough to flower,\u201d Inouye said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

They say April showers bring May flowers, but in the case of the green gentians, the flowers reveal themselves in June \u2013 four years later.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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,\u201d Inouye said. \u201cBut they start making them underground and it\u2019s not until four years later that they\u2019re above ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very attractive to pollinators,\u201d Inouye said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s important because they have to be pollinated in order to make seeds for the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

When green gentians die, their bodies act as protectors to the seeds they just spread, shielding them as they sprout.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like a little nursery, all those dead plant stalks and dead leaves are protecting the seeds as they germinate,\u201d Durango-based biologist and herbalist Marija Helt said. \u201cI think that\u2019s really neat.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an herbalist, Helt knows green gentians have been used as digestive bitters to trigger production of digestive enzymes, but because of their rare blooms, she just lets them be.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such an old herbaceous plant, right?\u201d Helt said. \u201cThose plants will grow for 20 years, or 40 years, or 80 years before they bloom. And then they die. \u2029So I don\u2019t like to dig them up. I leave them alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can just park up in that parking lot there and carefully cross the street, and that meadow is full of them,\u201d Helt said.<\/p>\n

She also cited Missionary Ridge and La Plata Canyon, which offers a bumpier dirt road, as good spots to witness the gentians.<\/p>\n

avanderveen@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After decades of growing, green gentians blossom across high elevation meadows<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1820,5484,28,1625,29,1309,6419,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-136172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-dh-trueanthem","tag-engineer-mountain","tag-headlines","tag-nature","tag-newsletter","tag-san-juan-mountains","tag-tj-trueanthem","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"Website Administrator","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136182,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136172\/revisions\/136182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136172"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=136172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}