WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

Actually, it’s not a grass. This member of the Iris Family has thin, flat, grass-like leaf blades, forms dense 6–18-inch tall clumps, and shows off with dainty, star-shaped violet flowers. Note the winged stems are single, not branching, and the inner and outer bracts of the spathe that encloses the flowers are unequal. The outer bract extends way above the flower.

FLOWER: May–June. Each 1/2–3/4-inch wide flower, has 6 petals (tepals) and a yellow center and a bright yellow stamen column. Petals are dark blue to purple with a yellow base, narrow, lance-shaped, and often tipped with a tiny bristle. A purse-like, keel-shaped spathe with the inner bract shorter than the outer bract encloses the flowers.

LEAVES: Basal, grass-like. Blades narrow, 5–10 inches long (2–4 cm).

HABITAT: Moist soils, meadows, drainages, seeps, moist forests: pinyon-juniper, pine-fir, spruce-aspen forests.

ELEVATION: 6,500–9,400 feet

RANGE: CO, KS, MT, ND, NE, NM, SD, WY; Great Lakes east through New England states.

SIMILAR SPECIES: 6 species in NM; 2 yellow, and 2 widespread blue species that have slight differences in the spathe. The widespread Stiff Blue-eyed Grass, S. demissum (4,500–9,100 feet), has branched stems and spathes with bracts equal in length.

NM COUNTIES: Cibola, Colfax, Dona Ana, Grant, Guadalupe, Harding, Los Alamos, Mora, San Miguel, Sandoval, Socorro, Rio Arriba, Taos, Torrance, Union.