Wildflowers #2

These just showing their flowers today:

not sure what this little flower is; Lomatium ??? Cymopterous???

With help from my friends Sam Rushforth and Jim Harris, both botanists of some note, I have concluded that this is either Lomatium or Cymopterous. Thanks a lot you guys! But how is it that a botanist can only say it's either this or that? Ask me if a sentence is Russian or German and I'll tell you. Unambiguously. Unless, of course, it's Serbian and I mistake it for Russian.


I looked for both of the names in question on the internet and found this beauty:


    Intermountain Flora observes that "the taxonomic definition of Cymopterus is a vexed question....  Even the distinction between Cymopterus and Lomatium is subject to failure.  Ordinarily one or more of the dorsal ribs [of the seeds have wings in] Cymopterus, but not in Lomatium.  Cymopterus newberryi completely bridges the difference.  In this species the dorsal wings vary from nearly or fully as large as the lateral ones to poorly developed or even obsolete".

a glacier lilly, also called a dogtooth violet, ready to open—Erythronium grandiflorum