IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — Officials with Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve have a new tool to help visitors: a smartphone app that identifies 100 of the most common plants and wildflowers found at the Idaho park.
Ted Stout with the monument’s outreach program told the Post Register (http://bit.ly/AfKuMk ) that this summer is the first time the park has made the technology available to visitors. Visitors can download the free app to their Apple or Android devices and use it to search for plants by color, shape and other characteristics.
A variety of flowers already are blooming on the park’s sagebrush-covered slopes and up through cracks in the lava, with the most blooms usually showing up on the cinder slopes in mid-June and early July, Stout said.
Dwarf monkey flower, dwarf buckwheat and silverleaf phacelia make up the bulk of the display on the cinder cones, but the varied habitats of the park support more than 700 different types of plants.
Guided walks and evening programs at the park begin this Friday.
“We’ve done these ranger-guided flower walks in June ever since we’ve been a park, practically,” Stout said. “The good thing about this app is only so many people can go on those walks. What this does is it allows people to identify flowers on their own, or they can come out with a ranger.”
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Information from: Post Register, http://www.postregister.com
