Golden columbine

Description:

Low bushy plant with bright yellow, five-spurred flowers.

Habitat:

Damp wooded canyons with filtered sunlight, throughout American southwest and northern Mexico. Hundreds of these flowers lined the banks of Wet Beaver Creek, running through a valley of open broadleaf forest in Montezuma Well National Monument, south of Sedona, Arizona.

Notes:

"Montezuma Well" is a spring-fed limestone sinkhole 300 feet wide. Wet Beaver Creek runs through a valley beneath the well. Paralleling the creek is an irrigation canal, built and used by native Americans between 700 and 1400 A.D., and still flowing today. A delightful habitat--running water in the desert.