🖤 SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 🖤

Mule & Magpie is rooted in field notes, photography, seasonal observation, folklore, regional history, memory, and time spent exploring the prairies, mesas, foothills, forests, and historic towns and sites of Colorado and the American West.

The illustrations, photographs, and writings shared here are shaped by many sources: botanical guides, historical archives, oral histories, museums, libraries, local legends, conversations, ranger-led talks, old photographs, and years of my own research and field observation.

While many pieces are imaginative or interpretive, I care deeply about honoring the people, plants, places, and histories that inspire them. I continue learning as this project grows.

Historical Research

Historical illustrations and stories are informed by books, archives, museum collections, newspaper records, oral histories, and regional historical societies. While some artistic interpretation is inevitable, I strive to represent people, events, and historical context with care and respect.

Selected references include:

  • A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains - Isabella L. Bird

  • Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth - Kristen Iversen

  • Baby Doe Tabor: The Madwoman in the Cabin - Judy Nolte Temple

  • Colorado’s Eccentric Captain Jack: A reprint of The Fate of a Fairy or Twenty Seven Years in the Far West - Ellen E. Jack

  • Colorado’s Mrs. Captain Ellen Jack: Mining Queen of the Rockies - Jane M. Bardal

  • Chipeta: Shawl for a Queen - High Country Spotlight

  • History Colorado

  • greeleyhistory.org

Botanical + Field Guide Sources

Research and identification references include a combination of field guides, native plant resources, conservation organizations, and regional ecology materials.

Selected references include:

Bloom periods, elevation ranges, colors, and growing conditions can vary significantly from season to season depending on snowpack, drought, rainfall, wildfire, and climate conditions.

Mistakes are always possible, and plant identification is an ongoing learning process. If something has been misidentified or lacks important ecological context, thoughtful corrections are welcome.

Ethical Observation + Conservation

Please avoid picking rare flowers, trampling alpine tundra, disturbing cryptobiotic soil, or sharing sensitive locations for threatened species. Leave plants, seeds, rocks, and artifacts where they are whenever possible.

Many of the landscapes represented here are increasingly affected by development, drought, wildfire, overcrowding, invasive species, and climate change. Protecting native habitats matters.

This project encourages observation, curiosity, reverence, and stewardship over collection or extraction.

Indigenous Knowledge + Land Acknowledgement

The landscapes represented throughout this project exist on ancestral Indigenous homelands.

Many plants in the American West carry long histories of medicinal, ceremonial, ecological, and cultural knowledge held by Indigenous communities long before modern field guides or settler naming systems existed.

This project is not intended as a source of Indigenous plant knowledge, and any references to traditional uses are approached cautiously and with respect. I continue learning from Indigenous writers, botanists, educators, and cultural organizations whose work offers deeper understanding of these landscapes and relationships.

With Gratitude

Thank you to:

  • historians, archivists, librarians, museum staff, and historical societies preserving the stories, records, photographs, and artifacts that connect us to the people of the past

  • researchers, writers, and storytellers helping keep regional history alive and accessible for future generations

  • botanists, ecologists, and naturalists who dedicate their lives to studying native plants

  • native plant societies and archivists preserving ecological knowledge

  • park staff, trail crews, and conservation workers protecting public lands and historical sites

  • photographers, hikers, and amateur naturalists who generously share observations and identifications

  • Dennis B., the best and most patient trail partner 🖤

  • the land itself, which continues to reward slowness, attention, and wonder

Mule & Magpie, and its archive of wildflowers and historic women is always growing and evolving, like the seasons and land that shaped them.

~ Kris Elliott