Both of these are the same plant: common mullein in its first year, when it's all leaves and no stalk yet. That felted, silvery texture is a mat of fine hairs, a trick dry-slope plants use to cut wind, reflect sun, and lose less water, and it makes the leaves less appetizing to nibble too. It's a European import, not native, but it's completely at home on disturbed, sunny foothills ground like this. Next summer this same rosette will send up a tall spike of little yellow flowers, so mark the spot and come back. People have used the dried leaves and stalks for cordage and tinder for centuries, so it's a weed with a resume.

This one's a garden plant gone rogue, not a native, but you see it all over Boulder foothills neighborhoods where it's jumped the fence line into gravelly disturbed ground. It's a Mediterranean import, tough as nails, blooming hot pink through the dry summer when a lot of natives have already called it quits. The waxy blue-green leaves help it hold water, which is exactly the trick you need on a south-facing slope in July. Bees love it, and honestly so do I, it's a scrappy survivor even if it doesn't belong here by birthright.

A cheerful little sunflower relative pushing up through bare, sun-baked dirt next to sagebrush, which tells you this is a dry, open, low-nutrient spot typical of foothills scrubland. The gray-green fuzzy leaves are doing the same water-conservation trick as the sagebrush next to it, this is classic shortgrass-meets-foothills transition habitat. These composites are workhorse late-summer bloomers, feeding native bees and butterflies right when a lot of the spring wildflower show has faded. Nothing fancy, just a tenacious yellow daisy holding its ground in tough soil.

That shaggy lavender-purple flower head is wild bergamot, a mint family plant you can practically identify by nose, crush a leaf and you get that oregano-ish, minty smell. It likes these open, gravelly foothills slopes and forest edges, and it's clearly doing its job today, it's got a fritillary butterfly working it in the photo. This is a great one for Bob's plant-pollinator brain too since bergamot is a magnet for native bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds all season. Square stems if you feel for them, that's your mint family tell every time.

A spiky purple thistle head doing its best pom-pom impression, growing right out of gravelly trailside soil with bunchgrass crowding in. If the flower head nods and the leaves are extra spiny with a whitish midrib, that leans musk thistle, a Eurasian species that's become a real nuisance on disturbed ground across the West. If it's a native Cirsium instead, it'll be an important nectar source instead of a management headache, worth checking the bracts closer next time. Either way, thistles like this thrive exactly where soil's been disturbed, which fits this gravel-edged trail perfectly.