Semi-desert. Shrublands, openings. Spring, summer.
Corona Arch Trial, Utah, May 5, 2005.

Where is Mesynium aristatum?  To find it, look at the bottom left of the picture and you will find the white base of the plant's stem leaning to the right.  Follow the main stem and you will come to the yellow flower at the top of the picture.  Start again at the bottom and follow each branch.  One branch to the right will take you to another yellow flower.  A second Linum aristatum plant can be seen just to the left of the bottom of the ruler, immediately above the white rock.  Linum aristatum obviously has a very open, airy growth pattern and it is the flower that one first notices.  Leaves are slightly longer and more numerous along the base of the stems.

The arching leaves and white flowers belong to Eremocrinum albomarginatum.

Semi-desert. Shrublands, openings. Spring, summer.
East of Bluff, Utah, May 3, 2007.

Buds are very sharply pointed, and flowers open to a shiny five-petaled delight.  The narrow, sharply pointed ("attenuate") sepals are a distinguishing characteristic of this species.

George Engelmann named and described this plant in 1848 from a specimen collected in Mexico, just south of El Paso, Texas, by Frederick Wislizenus, his medical partner and fellow botanist.