Stephen Koch

Photo: Stephen Koch 2010

While climbing the north face of the Grand Teton earlier this month I took photographs of this beautiful, rare and unusual looking flower which I had never seen before, called Alpine Lantern, at about 11,900 – 12,000 feet, just below the Guano Chimney. After some searching and inquiring about it, this is what Dick Scott, author of The Alpine Flora of the Rocky Mountains: Volume 1, The Middle Rockies, wrote to me about it:
It’s an uncommon plant, often overlooked, of rocky places above timberline. We have it from cirque walls, moraines, fellfields, talus, scree, and other rocky places in many, but not all, alpine ranges of western Wyoming. It has sort of a disjunct distribution pattern, skipping from one range to another in western North America. I’ve seen it and collected it, here and there, from the Wrangells in Alaska to the Uintas in Utah. If you’d like to see a distribution map for the Middle Rockies you might check the Jackson Library for a copy of my book, The Alpine Flora of the Rocky Mountains: Volume 1, The Middle Rockies (I’m still plugging away on the Southern Rockies and the Northern Rockies). – Dick Scott

So it seems like this may be the first sighting and recording of it in the Tetons. Pretty exciting!

Help support StephenKoch.com with a sweet pair of Steiner Binoculars, to view alpine flowers on your next adventure, from Backcountry.com!