Thoughtless picking of this flower has made it very rare and in danger of becoming extinct. Please do your part to help save the Fairy Slipper Orchid.
12. FOUR-O’CLOCK Four-O’Clock Family _Mirabilis multiflora_
Closely resembling the cultivated variety of Four-O’Clock, this plant, with its abundance of brilliant magenta-colored flowers, is one of the spectacular sights in May or early June. It is a sturdy perennial with thick, glossy-green leaves spreading low over the ground. The south-facing slopes in the Sonoran Zones are its most common habitat, but it is also found in the broken lava fields. Being a night bloomer, the flowers close during the bright daylight hours and open at about four o’clock in the afternoon. Its blooming season is generally brief, about two or three weeks, but it sometimes blooms twice in the same summer.
13. SPRINGBEAUTY Purslane Family _Claytonia lanceolata_
Found abundantly at Cedar Breaks during May and early June and also in the shady canyons of Zion in the Transition Zone. Each plant has two narrow leaves near the base, each about 2 inches long, above which are four to five practically leafless branches with a single flower at the top of each. The plant is rarely over 6 inches high; more commonly it is flat to the ground. Flowers vary in color from white to pink or sometimes the white blossoms have pink veins or stripes which tend to accentuate their beauty. Usually one of the early blooming flowers of the high plateaus, along with the Indianpotato and Buttercup.
14. BITTERROOT Portulaca Family _Lewisia rediviva_
This beautiful, dwarfed plant, never more than an inch or two high, is found during May mostly on the lava fields of the Transition Zone in Zion National Park. Its flower of white petals with pink veins is about 2 inches in diameter.
The Bitterroot was discovered in 1805 by the Lewis and Clark expedition while passing through western Montana. It was later named _Lewisia rediviva_ by the botanist Pursh.
The plant is of economic importance to the Northwestern Indians, who discovered that the bitter, parsnip-shaped roots possess a nutritious heart of starch, which cooking reduces to a pasty mass, palatable, at least, to Indian taste.