{"id":303,"date":"2009-06-04T14:58:38","date_gmt":"2009-06-04T20:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=303"},"modified":"2009-06-04T14:59:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-04T20:59:05","slug":"more-wildflowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=303","title":{"rendered":"More Wildflowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since it looks like the rain has left us for the summer (hope not, but the long-range predictions aren’t good), I’m posting flower pictures while we have some–and we have some.<\/p>\n

An increaser in the west grass, mentioned before, is the Illinois Basketflower, Centaurea americana<\/em>.\u00a0 this tallish forb’s buds look a lot like thistles:<\/p>\n

\"basketflower-bud007\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s not a thistle, though.\u00a0\u00a0 The flowers attract butterflies, bumblebees and other bees, various flies, and are large and beautiful:<\/p>\n

\"basketflower002\"<\/p>\n

Like many of the native plants, they move around from year to year, giving us a surprise.\u00a0 We used to have a lot in the “entrance meadow” of the creek woods, but this year we have only a few small ones.\u00a0\u00a0 Something else new this year, that I’ve noticed only in this part of the west grass, is association of carrot-family plants with the basketflowers:<\/p>\n

\"basketflower-and-cowparsley006\"<\/p>\n

The yellow-green flowerheads of Prairie Parsley, Polytaenia nuttallii<\/em>, are interspersed with the basketflowers in this patch, and in an adjoining patch it’s mostly Queen Anne’s Lace.\u00a0\u00a0 Since some of the swallowtails lay their eggs on the carrot-family plants, and nectar on basketflower, this is a handy association.<\/p>\n

The various coneflower-group of wildflowers are peaking now; the commonest is the Prairie Coneflower, Ratibita columnifera<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"coneflowers026\"<\/p>\n

It forms a rather messy mound; the proportions of yellow to red, and the depth of the red (can be mahogany brown) vary from clump to clump.\u00a0 Most of our plants have a double-frill of ray flowers.<\/p>\n

\"coneflower-group024\"<\/p>\n

Less common, and forming a neater clump with fewer individual flowers (usually) is the yellow coneflower, another Ratibita<\/em>, possibly tagetes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"yellow-coneflower023\"<\/p>\n

Individually, the\u00a0 flowers are a brilliant pure yellow.<\/p>\n

\"yellow-coneflower298\"<\/p>\n

All the yellow coneflowers have a single row of ray flowers; I enjoy the differences between the two related species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since it looks like the rain has left us for the summer (hope not, but the long-range predictions aren’t good), I’m posting flower pictures while we have some–and we have some. An increaser in the west grass, mentioned before, is the Illinois Basketflower, Centaurea americana.\u00a0 this tallish forb’s buds look a lot like thistles:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7],"tags":[13,32,70],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-plantlife","tag-beauty","tag-native-plants","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}