Forget Me-Nots and Owls Claws

Among the earliest blooming flowers of the ridgeline on the Manti- La Sal Mountains are Forget Me-nots and Owl’s Claws aka sneezeweed. They remind me of a chapter from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. In the chapter Asters and Goldenrod, she describes how these plants grow together for the visual contrast they provide each other, thus drawing the attention of pollinators. We have the lucky bonus of them looking beautiful to us.

Forget Me-nots, or Hackelia micrantha, blooms early in the season. The seed heads are small velcro like balls that stick to your socks as you walk through a summer meadow where they were blooming. That’s how they disperse their seeds. I suppose if you wanted to assist the forget me-nots you could wear socks with sandals to walk through their habitat, or perhaps a pair of soft pajama pants. I’m selfish and wear jeans or hiking pants so they can’t hitch a ride, although I can tolerate one or two sticking to the tops of my socks, so I only wear hiking shoes instead of boots.