ANN DEBOLT: I think wildflowers are important because, for me, it sort of gives me a sense of where I am.

You go to different areas, you see different wildflowers, you connect that way.

BARBARA ERTTER: It's part of what makes this place special, everything special.

I mean, if you stop to think, at this point, this planet is the only place we know of that supports life in the entire universe.

And why do we not treasure the other things that are on this island with us?

DANIEL MURPHY: We need plants in our lives.

We are part of the food chain.

We eat plants and we eat things that have eaten plants.

But I also want to be able to tell a plant's story beyond just how it relates to a human.

KELSEY WEBSTER: Wildflowers.

Bring me a lot of joy.

A lot of reasons.

One they're pretty, I mean, who, doesn't love, seeing beautiful things.

To spot it in the wild is just such a special moment.

It's just one of those things that make being outside that much more amazing.

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho, by the Friends of Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.

KELSEY WEBSTER, MOUNTAIN BIKER: My name is Kelsey Webster and I like to ride my bike through wildflowers.

Oh man.

I just love spring, it's one of those things where the trails are constantly changing and you get outside and the lights different, the scenery is different and then the flowers come and every time you do it, the flowers are a little different.

It's so much fun to be out here.

The great thing about wildflowers, they just continue throughout May and June and the stronger you get on your bike through the spring, the higher you can go and then the more wildflowers you get to see.

So it's kind of motivating.

I think they add just so much character to the land and it feels almost like you're stealing a moment outside, just you in nature.

It's really great.

ANN DEBOLT, BOTANIST: My name is Ann Debolt, I'm a botanist and I like to identify wildflowers.

(MUSIC) Glacier Lily.

I love glacier Lily.

It's a flower, it could even be flowering when you still have snow on the ground.

I see it more often in Northern Idaho.

We have, silver lupine and silky Lupine are very blue and gorgeous.

And then we have a different Lupine in the Boise foothills that once it's pollinated, it actually changed color from yellow to a more of a pink color.

And Lupine is in the pea family or the Legume family, um, which is a very large family.

(MUSIC) BARBARA ERTTER, BOTANIST: I'm Barbara Ertter, I'm a professional botanist currently working on the flowers of the Boise front.

I've always liked going out and looking for something to find.

The neat thing about being in this field is the sense of being part of something bigger than you.

And this sense of history.

We realize we're the ones who are then a link in the chain that is gonna keep going beyond us.

Making a contribution, finding something that hadn't previously been known before.

But it's, something you need to do.

You can't conserve it until you know that it's there.

It's hard to answer the question of why is it important to have wildflowers because it's a moral obligation.

You treasure it because this is something else that is one of the few other occupants.

I mean, this to me is ultimately what it boils down to for me is they have a right to be here and I don't have a right to get rid of them.

Oh, there's some right there.

Oh yeah.

Nice patch of the Turkey peas.

Lovely little plant.

DON MANSFIELD Yeah.

Look at that.

ERTTER Yeah.

Kinda hard to see it's leaves are coming out or the flowers have come out before the leaves have even started showing here, MANSFIELD AND ERTTER: Hey, look at this.

This leaf has been eaten.

I think.

Oh really?

Huh?

Yeah.

Got a little bit.

Yeah.

Somebody's munching them.

They barely get out and they're already being you eating.

Hey, there's a little, there's a little Lithophragma.

At a lot of little Lithophragmas all around here.

Oh yeah, That'll be coming up next.

Yeah.

But this is cute.

This is cute.

Look at this.

Yeah, uh huh.

DON MANSFIELD: I'm Don Mansfield, I'm a retired professor of biology from the College of Idaho and I study plants out in the Owyhees.

MANSFIELD: They're all pretty, they're all valuable, but I see so much in where they're living, why they're there, who they're are related to, why they're shaped this way here and a little bit different over there.

And that's so fascinating.

You see the, the creature for what it is and its totality.

This is what we do to know what our flora are, know what plants we have out in the world in Idaho.

People really want to know.

What is this?

A lot of plant are medicinally important.

A lot of plants are potential cancer cures, cures for all sorts of medicines.

In fact, half of our drugs originate in plant medicines and the other half are based on modifications of chemistry that we learned from plants.

What we do is we start in the field and we bring plants in from their native habitats and press 'em in between sheets of paper like this.

And then we put 'em on the press to dry 'em out.

So they're fresh in the field like this.

We dry 'em out store 'em then put all the data into a database.

And we then update them and, revise their names as we learn more about which plants belong, uh, to which species.

So it's a, it's a large ongoing process of research.

And that's how we figure out what our wildflowers and other plants are.

(MUSIC) DEBOLT: Idahoa Scapigera, commonly known as Idahoa is a little tiny one to two inch tall wildflower that grows in Idaho and adjacent states.

It grows in March and April and once it comes up in these vernally moist sites in the springtime the plant dries out, it disappears and you'll never know it was there.

DEBOLT: Oh my gosh, bitterroot.

Merriweather Lewis.

It's Lewisia Rediviva.

It's just a magical plant in that you don't always even know it's going to appear in a site and it puts out little, worm like round fleshy leaves prior to flowering.

And then as the, as the flower, bud comes out, the leaves are retracted back into the ground and you'll have this large white, or sometimes pink star shaped flower sitting there on the ground.

It could be almost one to two inches across, fabulous plant.

(MUSIC) GERRY QUEENER, WILDFLOWER PHOTOGRAPHER: My name is Gerry Queener, I'm a retired Idaho science teacher and I'm a wildflower photographer.

You may have to help me back up!

My big hobbies are wildflower photography, insects, especially butterflies, but since there's about 650,000 species of beetles now, uh, I'm getting into beetles.

I like to leave things pretty much as natural as I can, but of course, dead vegetation doesn't add to the photo.

Hey here's some grass widows blooming, yeah, we lucked out.

A lot of times you get back and you take this picture and you think you've got it all.

And then you look at it where it's enlarged on a computer, and there's a lot of things down in there you didn't realize were there.

Usually some kind of insect or there's something going on.

To me that's fascinating.

And then I try to pursue that and find out what else is coming on.

To me, my curiosity has served me well, and I hope that I continue to have curiosity, because if without curiosity, as far as I'm concerned, you're dead.

There is a really nice patch of buttercups over here.

Well I'm always looking for new ones that I'm not familiar with, and it's pretty rare on, on a major field trip during the peak bloom time that I don't find new species that I haven't seen before.

Broadfruit Mariposa is another common name.

Calochortus nitidus.

That's my favorite flower.

It's so beautiful, especially when it has dew on it.

I'm drawn to flowers with purple in it.

It's pretty rare.

I always tell people, I'll show it to you, but I'm gonna blindfold you before I take you there.

And whatever you do, don't pick it or you won't come back alive.

The flower looks a little bit like a very beautiful tulip it's that shape.

There's an eye at the base of the petal, that's very purple.

And then the pedal has a little green band and then it kind of goes to a darker and then a lighter pink out to the edge of the pedal.

That's a nice clump, they're typical shape, unfortunately I don't see any insects, but the light is good, the breeze is not real good, but I think we can stop action here.

Let's take a look, not too bad.

I'm a born again agnostic, but, I'm kind of spiritual and I really love nature, and I want other people to appreciate it.

I don't care about their religious views.

I just want 'em to appreciate nature and not destroy it.

(MUSIC) DEBOLT: Indian Paintbrush.

There's a number of different species in Idaho.

They range from orange to pink, to red, to even some yellow ones.

And it's considered a hemiparasite.

So it parasitizes adjacent plants below the ground.

It grows in riparian areas.

So moist areas along streamside and up in the mountains as well, uh, visited by a variety, the pollinators will seek out those bright red or orange flowers that it produces.

(MUSIC) JENNIFER CUTHBERTSON, BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY: My name is Jennifer Cuthbertson and I teach environmental anthropology and ethnobotany at Boise State University.

Ethnobotany is the study of how indigenous populations use plants and plant life, whether it's a weaving and textiles or food, medicine dyes, uh, it looks into all of the different possible uses.

We've got arrowleaf balsamroot, but you also have camas as a really important one, bitterroot, you've got phlox a lot of different types of flocks.

Flax as well is wild and natural to the area.

This is arrowleaf balsamroot, and on the surface, it just looks like a beautiful flower because it is a beautiful flower, but this is not only a staple of a Native American diets in the area, especially during spring and summer, it can be ground up into flours, it can be harvested in different ways and boiled as teas.

And not only was it very starchy and has a lot of calories to it, but also has antibacterial properties.

It could be used as a food, it could be used as a medicine, it could be used dye if extracted properly.

So here, we've got some biscuitroot, specifically, nine leaf biscuitroot.

Um, they have starchy edible tubers, and you can also get the stalks and stems.

They also have been studied and seem to have antiviral properties.

Native Americans in the area, specifically Northern Paiute and Shoshone Bannock tribes would roam through here at about the time when these of you popping up.

Sometimes they could even change their path to coincide with them, or camp near of them.

By looking at it from an ethnographic standpoint, you can understand how it has impacted humans.

You can look at the knowledge that's been passed down for centuries, the stories that have surrounded it.

(MUSIC) DEBOLT: Aase's onion is a plant that is known from the Boise foothills and up around Weiser and up around Emmett.

And it only grows in deep core, sandy soil that is quite unique.

Very low to the ground, another very hot pink color to it.

So it's just, uh, fabulous species, considered sensitive or rare in the state.

And so it would be an Idaho endemic.

That means it's not known from anywhere else in the world.

(MUSIC) JACIE JENSEN, THORN CREEK NATIVE SEED FARM: My name is Jacie Jensen and my husband and I are partners in Thorn Creek Native Seed Farm.

We've been in business since 2004.

So we thought, okay, we can't make it growing wheat and legumes, can we grow something else?

And somebody had said, we don't know what you're doing with your Palouse Prairie remnant, but you've got one of the best remnants around.

So we thought, can we grow grasses and wildflowers on this land?

So that's how we started.

We started were doing native grasses and then started collecting the wildflowers to start doing fields.

They call it wild hollyhock and it looks like shells almost when you look at them.

And right now we have blanket flower.

We have Yarrow, we have Oregon sunshine, Eriophyllum lanatum .

We have, taper-leaf Penstemon.

We have a Louis flax.

We sell the seeds to wholesalers for our field crops.

Then we also sell them in mixes to consumers and packets as well as individual.

We sell to regional agencies such as our soil districts, Idaho Fish and Game.

It's just an interconnecting web and one supports the other.

There's a synergy and it keeps the soil healthier.

So the roots on these Palouse plants are a lot deeper than the grasses.

They're kinda like an upside down forest.

They'll go down 5, 6, 7 feet, very drought tolerant.

So they're also good as we are starting to realize we don't have all the water in the world anymore So by putting in a regional native plant, we reduce water usage.

And they're all different, all of these plants.

You just can't baby 'em, they don't like to be babied.

They're called wild for a reason they're wild children and they just, don't baby 'em you just got to put 'em in and let them do their thing.

(MUSIC) DEBOLT: If you haven't seen beargrass, you should take time to go see beargrass someday.

It is in the Lily family, and it flowers they say only about every six to seven years.

It looks just like a clump of very rough textured grass most of the time.

But then when it does flower, it puts up this four to five foot tall spike full of hundreds of little creamy, white flowers to it.

(MUSIC) JESSICA HARROLD, ADA SOIL & WATER CONSERVATION DISTRICT: My name is Jessica Harrold, program coordinator for the Ada Soil and Water Conservation District.

CLAY ERSKINE, PEACEFUL BELLY FARMS: My name's Clay Erskine.

I'm the owner and farmer of Peaceful Belly Farm.

HARROLD: The Ada Soil and Water Conservation District created the Treasure Valley Pollinator project as a way to bring awareness and teach people about how important our local pollinators are and to really give people a sense about what an impact they can make, even in their own backyard for our native pollinators.

ERSKINE: Peaceful Belly's been around for 20 years and we started in Boise and we're a CSA market farm.

So we raise certified organic vegetables for direct sales.

We've gotten a few grants to plant specific plants that will provide housing and forage for native pollinators and beneficial insects.

HARROLD: People today are picking up their flowers.

They've pre-ordered a flat, these flats have been designed to have flowers from early spring to late fall, and they have a variety of shapes and sizes and colors of flowers to attract a wide variety of insects to their garden.

ERKSINE: We've really focused on a lot of milkweed, which is, uh, really great for butterflies, yarrow is a really great source.

Flax, there's some annuals that are really good, like marigolds and zinnias, sunflowers are really great.

So there's lots of different plants that are really great for pollinators.

The pollinator plants provide habitat and food for what we would consider an insect that would go off and also pollinate fruits and vegetables.

So we get a dual benefit.

And so by planting pollinator plants or wildflowers, then we get the benefit of the pollination in our crops.

Then we have to have these pollinator plants for them to survive.

HARROLD: Diversity of flowers is super important because all of the insects rely on different types of pollinating flowers to really thrive.

ERKSINE: If they're not there.

And we don't have pollinators come visit the flower of our fruits and vegetables.

We don't have fruits and vegetables because there's no pollinator.

HARROLD: I think we could have a huge impact in our community if everybody were just to plant their garden with maybe a few extra pollinating species.

Your life is better for it and our ecosystem is better for it too.

(MUSIC) DEBOLT: Clarkia is fantastic.

The only plant named for William Clark from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

And it is a bright pink flower, that is also known as Ragged Robin.

Syringa or mock orange is another name for syringa.

Philadelphus lewisii.

It is the Idaho state flower.

It likes to grow in rocky areas, on canyons.

It has four flower pedals that are a creamy white, a very distinctive, and it's a shrub.

So it grows up to about eight, nine feet tall.

(MUSIC) DANIEL MURPHY, AWKWARD BOTANY BLOGGER: I'm Daniel Murphy.

I'm the creator and writer of Awkward Botany.

So I came up with this idea to write a blog about plants and just exploring all the many aspects of plants and trying to get people interested in them.

Just interested in plants for plants sake.

I like looking for weeds in, in urban areas because I see weeds as the urban flora.

And so to me, a weed can be considered a wildflower.

When I think of the term wildflower, I think of a plant growing naturally on its own without human and intervention.

But in that same respect, the weeds in this field, those to me would be wildflowers as well because we didn't plant them.

They got there on their own and now, here they are blooming without any help.

That's why I'm so fascinated by weeds is because their ability to disperse themselves is incredible.

There's about 400,000 different species of plants and very few can actually do what weeds can do, which is disperse themselves so prolifically and in such unlikely places.

That's just what fascinates me about them is their ability to follow humans around and to grow in all kinds of different environments.

A weed is a human construct.

Essentially.

It's a label that we've decided to put on a plant because of the way that it's acting in our environment.

It's all human based.

It's just how we see the world.

I do everything slowly.

You can probably tell, so, it wasn't hard for me to learn, to move slowly and to be observant, I'm more of an introvert anyway.

I like to sit and listen to people rather than talk to people.

But what I have learned as I've done that is that taking that time to look closely at things like that and seeing things that you wouldn't have seen otherwise you would've just walked on by and not noticed.

I mean, that opens up a whole world to me.

What I actually really want is for people to grow a plant at all, just be appreciative about plants in any way.

So if they're favorite plants are petunias, that's great, like grow those and have those.

And so whatever people like, as long as they're growing plants, that's, that's huge.

(MUSIC) DEBOLT: Wilcox's Primrose it is very limited in distribution, it grows mostly on north slopes.

Sheltered sites in fairly good condition.

Habitat a little bit in Oregon and in Idaho.

But it's a sweet little plant that is only visible for a couple of weeks in the springtime, early spring.

Oh, camas.

I love blue camas.

Flowers around Memorial Day, the third or fourth week of May, usually in Idaho in moist conditions, areas that will eventually dry out in the summertime.

In May it almost looks like a blue lake.

It's a gorgeous plants.

People know blue Camas.

WEBSTER: Think wildflowers are so special because they are fleeting.

It's a, a moment in time, we get a couple weeks of them every year and they kind of move throughout the foothills and, just to be able to be with them and kind of see the things that our earth can do is pretty wonderful.

ERTTER: Our enjoyment of life would be much lessened to lose all the wildflowers.

And to have something neat to go look and find.

The wildflowers are so pretty and gorgeous and come in so many different colors and forms.

It's this rich diversity that adds to our quality of life.

And we would be poorer to lose them very much poorer.

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Outdoor Idaho is made possible by the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho, by the Friends of Idaho Public Television, by the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.

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