Not Your Typical Wildflower! The Breathtaking Green Gentian

It only happens once every so many years, and this just happens to be one of the summers that it does. Green gentians, also known as monument plant or elkweed, are exploding across high country trails and alpine meadows in a super bloom involving hundreds and even thousands of flowering stalks in a relatively small area.

This massive, synchronized flowering, termed a “masting event” by botanists, s…