Coloradans heading to the mountains in the next couple weeks will be treated to a superbloom of plants that grow flower-covered stalks reaching 5 feet high or more.
The frasera speciosa plant, also known as green gentian or monument plant, is experiencing what scientists call a masting event, when many of them decide to bloom at the same time. Since they typically grow in alpine meadows, that’s a great place to see hundreds or even thousands of green gentians popping off all at once, said Marija Helt, a Durango-based biologist and herbalist.
Right now, superblooms are taking place across the state from Summit County to the San Juan Mountains. There have been reported sightings in , Gothic, and , as far as Telluride, . Helt recently went to Engineer Mountain in the San Juans, where she said the meadows are lush.
“When I was out this year, I saw some that were just a few feet tall, there were some 5 feet tall. It’s kind of neat — I’m 5’4” and shrinking — to walk up a trail and have them be as tall as me. They can be even taller,” she said. “Itap so spectacular.”
Beyond the stunning visual effects, green gentians are unique because they grow for decades — most plants live between 20 and 80 years, Helt said — and each plant only blooms once before it dies. David Inouye, principal investigator at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, told The Denver Post he expects the blooms to last about two weeks.
Inouye began studying green gentians in 1973 after becoming intrigued by the plantap irregular flowering patterns. In the decades before they bloom, the plants boast a rosette of leaves and remain close to the ground. Each one can grow anywhere between two and 90 leaves. (That number is not correlated with how old each plant is, Inouye said.)
Masting events tend to happen a couple times each decade — the last one was in 2019 — but appear to be triggered by wet weather, Inouye said. There are benefits to blooming in unison, he added, such as sharing pollinators.
“I think thatap led to the evolution of a mechanism where there’s an environmental cue that can trigger flowering across a large number of individuals in a population,” Inouye said. “That cue seems to be having unusually wet summer, but then it takes the plants four years before flower stalks appear above ground because they are pre-forming the flower stalks and leaves underground.”
That means the bloom is response to summer 2022, when the state saw . Inouye surveyed the area near Gothic on Friday and counted about 3,000 plants flowering, all about 5 to 6 feet tall. (The tallest one he’s ever seen was 9 feet tall.) He suspects this summer’s bloom will reach Utah, where the plant is also commonly found.
There are additional theories about why these plants collectively bloom. For one, it may be a manner of survival, Helt said.
“It may be that it improves the odds of survival because things that eat the seeds can’t possibly eat all those seeds. And then when they die, the stalks fall over and the leaves die, they’re kind of protecting those seeds as they germinate. They’re providing a little nursery as it were,” Helt said. “When you think about plants degrading and breaking down, maybe they’re providing a little fertilizer, as well.”
The timing of the superbloom is occurring ahead of whatap typically considered peak wildflower season, though this year flowers are blooming earlier and more quickly than usual due to drought conditions. Serendipitously, there are two events where green gentians are likely to be showcased: Breckenridge Wildflower Week (July 2-12) and .
