Inland Northwest

Defiant and otherworldly. Crimson and silver. This western thistle is a plant of some certain magnificence. And, it most certainly is not a weed. ...

This most interesting perennial aquatic plant produces a rambunctious “spray” of numerous small three-petaled white flowers arising on a tall, exte...

This plant is a quiet remnant of a landscape left behind. Tapping deep into the soil like an old memory, this native legume of the Inland West is a...

Silky lupine shows up where the soil is thin, the sun relentless, and ancient stories are written upon the landscape. Its silver-soft leaves catch ...

Subtle, and low-growing, Spanish clover isn’t a wildflower that gets a lot of attention, but this mounding annual legume is an under-acknowledged b...

Don’t let the common name deceive you, this isn’t a sticky plant in the sense that it is very wet or tacky, but rather it is a plant covered in fin...

Prairie smoke is a most curious and delightful wildflower. A member of the rose family…with deeply cut foliage reminiscent of relatives such as bur...

While we aren’t yet ready to call this a landrace variety, this chives population has does quite well for us in the maritime rain shadow region of ...

Nineleaf biscuitroot possesses a fantastically pleasing form. Structurally it’s comprised of super-attractive slender compound leaflets which look ...

Yes, it looks like a dandelion, but, no, it isn’t a dandelion. Larger (up to almost 2-feet tall!), and quite ridiculously popular with many flower ...

Distantly related to the European horehound (used in candy flavoring), American water horehound is a native mint with interestingly toothed leaves,...

An excellently bunchy, leafy, long-lived western forb of dry, low fertility soils.  Roundleaf alumroot lives life on cliffs, rocky outcrops, and ta...

Some people look across a grassy canopy, and see a sort of green blur or tangle of semi-uniformity. This isn’t necessarily an inaccurate impression...

Smooth blue aster is a beautiful slow growing native fall bloomer. Long-lived and cold hardy. It’s a plant with almost continent-wide distribution,...

The Great Central Plain of California…was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to th...

How can shallow, muddy, sometimes polluted ground give rise to something as beautiful as this? Woolgrass is a clumping wetland emergent species, a...

Western peony is a supremely interesting and attractive oddity of a wildflower. Consisting of slightly fleshy foliage (i.e. glaucous), big lobed le...

The most mysterious of prairie wildflowers Burdened with various unflattering alternative common names, this is among the most enchanting and myste...

Oregon geranium is a soft-leaved spring perennial, a woodland edge and oak savanna species that is luminous in filtered light. Pollinated by small ...

Tall cinquefoil establishes itself in dry (sometimes craggy) soils from a sturdy anchoring taproot, wherefrom it emerges as a statuesque and magnif...

Tall, dramatic, producing a blast of unrestrained intense fragrance from large, numerous flowers (sometimes more than 20 per plant!), Washington li...

Our native western (and Great Lakes region) hawthorn is a tree of exceptional uses!  While the small black fruit is edible (in haw jelly, etc.), ...

Short Awn Foxtail is a native grass of temporarily watery lands. It is not, as some might mistakenly believe, the non-native weedy meadow foxtail (...

Bog saxifrage is a pleasingly odd kind of plant. One that we used to glance upon occasionally, with its almost succulent rosette leaves and floweri...