First off (technically second, after the eye candy above), I need to announce that my research on Claytonia (Montiaceae) has been recently funded [yay!] by the National Science Foundation. You can see the abstract here for #DEB1502085:

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1502085

Second (yes, I know, technically third), we should play my favorite game: compare the above eye candy with the below ridiculously beautiful [spring] beauty… SAME? or different. 😉

Now before you answer to yourself, consider that the Claytonia in the above two pictures are considered in the current taxonomy to be the same as the plants in the below picture, all being C. lanceolata [for now]. Check out the variation in those leaves!!! Who cares about the flowers, right? No way…The three photos immediately above correspond respectively with the same three putative taxa [let’s call them operational taxonomic units] in the first three pictures of this blog post. So? SAME or different? Feel free to vote at the bottom, and I welcome any feedback or discussion — I can’t say it all in 140 characters or less.

Third [ok, let’s stop with the sequential nonsense], I took an epic trip across California, Nevada and Oregon during the spring months of 2015 as part of #DEB1502085. While on this trip, I photographed new, mind-boggling [taxonomically speaking], tuberous Claytonia. Almost immediately after that, I took another most epic trip across California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado (with guest appearances in Arizona and Wyoming) with ‘Los Caryophylleros’. Let’s just say, I can’t wait to get my new morphological and molecular data (RADSeq X 2) up to speed…

Lastly [HA! I win!], I’ll finish this [short] commentary with what has been the most difficult collection of photos I’ve ever had to select from for the purpose of sharing, then I need to finish preparing for presentations at BOTANY and the Caryophyllales meetings…

What a wild ride!!!