Tiny flowers with big beauty

We took a Sunday drive up to Little Shasta Meadows Botanical Area on the east side 

and were gifted with Pygmy Lewisia in bloom in the still-wet-sand of the meadow.

Two other tiny flowers: Dwarf Waterleaf, herding her flowers under her wings, like a hen brooding chicks, and the belly-flowered Miner's Lettuce (belly flowers are so small you have to get on your belly to see them!).

It was too early for the beautiful blue Camas lily, but we saw plenty of buttercups and purple larkspur.

Careful observation reveals secret worlds

My husband, in his daily rounds caretaking our lovely white oak and chaparral scrub home, discovered these little beauties coming up in an old roadcut on top of the ridge.  He was baffled at how the entire plant was yellow! And has no leaves!  It's true, because the plant has no chlorophyll--it's parasitic to the roots of neighboring plants.

Orobanche fasciculata, commonly known as Clustered broomrape, is native to California.

Here's another Orobanche, the purple-flowering O. uniflora or Single-flowered broomrape, 

that lives in the lean serpentine soils of China Hill, just to the northeast of Yreka.