Castillejas, Evergreen Road, July 11, 2014

Back to my favourite local population of Castillejas! The only species listed for my immediate area is C. miniata, but there are several other species in the foothills, and/or farther north/south. It has been suggested that this population (and there are apparently others like this) represents some type of natural hybrid- even though it seems the species would have crossed some distance away, and the hybrids spread on their own (since there are no other species close by, at least not that I have seen).
Whatever they are, they show a very interesting range of colours- typical miniata salmons, corals and scarlets, through pinky-true reds to near white, near yellow, and bi/tri colours.
They are growing at this site at the edge of a fairly mature mixed but mostly poplar woodland, among and beside young trees. I assume if the woody cover continues to mature, the plants under the saplings will become shaded out, but they have room to expand farther into the grassy area toward the road, where saplings were cleared a couple of years ago- assuming that area is not sprayed for weeds too much by the county.
This is a wonderful site, with many other common and locally uncommon flowers of woodland and woodland edge/meadow. For more photos , check out this album

https://plus.google.com/photos/111492944361897930115/albums/6037980988903948945?authkey=CIOdtLXq9v3wsAE

Later I will add another album with more of the other plants at this site.
Here are some close-ups. Most of the plants fall into the normal colour range for miniata, but of course the ones that do not are more interesting to me!

Hard to capture the true pinks and reds for me, but this is close..

Love this colour.

Nearly white, some of my favourites.

Probably the best yellow I saw.

These mixed colours are especially fascinating.

There are a few of these nearly/ yellow. A couple of the likely candidates for the hybrid with miniata are yellow species..

A few overviews of the site.

The really intense truer reds  and real pinks (vs orangey) are also not that common.

Standard colours- salmon/coral/orangey through scarlet- still predominate here, though there are plenty of the others.

Standard colours- salmon/coral/orangey through scarlet- still predominate here, though there are plenty of the others.

As you can see, all the colours grow together. I've collected and distributed seed several times, but have not yet grown any myself, so no idea how common the non-standard colour seedlings are.

Hard to see in this shot, but the Castillejas are just in front of and among the small trees and shrubs.