The teeniest, tiniest flowers in this post are the hidden flowers (Cryptantha minima) below. If they look familiar, it’s because a) there have been a whole lot of them in the Sandia foothills this spring and b) they’ve appeared in two previous Everyday Magic emails. The first showed two different Sandia hairstreak butterflies sipping from them and the other showed a rattlesnake’s tail gliding through a few clusters of them.
My guess is that their diameter is only about two millimeters max. You can see several more below, along with a much larger flower, whitestem stickleaf, whose diameter might be all of five millimeters.
The entire reason I rented the macro lens,1 though, was so I could take photos of the Gilia flowers below. I’m guessing they’re 3-4 millimeters in diameter. Most of them are white, and it’s quite possible that I’ve seen more this year than in the entire rest of my life put together.
I believe the species is Gilia flavocincta, also known as yellow-throat gilia.
Occasionally they show up in purple. I love their blue stamens, which are fairly unusual in my experience.
Sometimes the stamens are a pastel blue but more often they’re fairly vibrant.
I think the purple/pink and blue in the flower above are perfect together, a gorgeous color combo hidden in the tiniest of packages.
News flash: I purchased a lens just like the one I rented and it arrived today! Which is why this email is a bit on the late side — I had to give it a thorough tryout.
So precious!
Such fabulous shots of simply gorgeous, teeny-weeny, spectacular wild flowers. Thanks for such a treat on a Monday!