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Instead of hijacking someone's triplog (sorry tibber), i thought this topic might be a good discussion. what do you think makes the difference between light, moderate, or even extreme wildflowers? is it variety or is it quantity? discuss. oh, and if someone can make a poll for this, that'd be awesome.

There's no wrong way to use HAZ!

For me, the first four levels are just quantities. A solid carpet of poppies is substantial.
I'll only use option #5, Extreme, when there are a variety of colors. All the other levels can be a single flower type.
[Insert former flower bouquet smiley here ]

(PS. Anybody can create a poll on a thread they start ... just edit the post, and select the poll tab at the bottom. Fill in the blanks.)

hallelujah, a topic about something other than weather or politics

good to understand the person reporting
- poppies are likely the measuring stick for most on extreme
- as much as I enjoy solid yellow hills of brittlebush I notch it down for poppy snobs
- cacti blooms don't register much on my radar ( sorry tibber/bifrost ), they store water and bloom religiously, about as exciting as gummo going to the zoo petting tigers and hugging bears
- regardless of isolated to extreme I most enjoy the rarely observed

Personally I try and keep it relative to the area for wildflowers and foliage. What I consider extreme autumn foliage in AZ is a yawner to the northern states, Canada, etc

The rating is subjective. Most seem to be within reason to the person observing. I tend to rate against the valley wide super bloom of 2001 and lesser of 2008.

When you can't make it to the top of a summit because it's surrounded by beautiful yellow wildflowers, but also armed with thousands of bees I'll say that's extreme! I tried to make it up Apache Peak today in Cave Creek but the flowers and bees weren't having me.

for me, it's about quantity. what percentage of the landscape is covered in any flowers? if it's 1 percent, that would be isolated. and then as the percentages go up, so does my opinion of how flowerific everything truly is. also, as joe mentioned - i do like variety, especially seeing a flower in the wild that i have never seen before - and getting a great picture of it. but for my wildflower reports, i consider any and all flowers, cactus included.

joebartels wrote:about as exciting as gummo going to the zoo petting tigers and hugging bears

I gotta go with quantity. Did an in town fairly mundane hike of Shadow Mountain last week for the exercise, and was literally brought to a halt a few times by the sheer mass of brittlebush. The whole north face was solid yellow. Mighty impressive. Went by Sears Kay on Sunday and was overwhelmed with sheer volume of flowers, but 8 or 9 different types made for great variety. Butterflies seemed to be in a drunken haven there were so many choices. So I guess a bit of both, but quantity overpowers variety.

I'd rather count multi-colors for that glorious extreme rating but if you have trouble moving through the desert without stepping on flowers I'd say they're pretty abundant. Maybe that should be the rule, since you can't walk through cacti or stinky brittlebush anyway, they shouldn't count.
*Is stantial better than substantial?