Each season seems to have wildflower colors more common than others. Spring is blue and pink. Fall is purple. Summer is yellow with the sunflower parade.
This begins with brown-eyed susans assisted by yellow ironweed. Then the sunflowers begin.
Lots of Sunflowers
To people driving by the many sunflowers look alike. They have yellow ‘petals’ and a yellow or brown center. They are usually tall with big leaves. Even now the fields of tickseed sunflower are just another in the sunflower parade.
If you stop and look, these plants are not all the same. They are alike in that these ‘flowers’ are really flower heads with bright ray flowers surrounding a disk of small, tubular flowers. But these are different on different plants too.
Look at the leaves. Some pairs of leaves are on opposite sides of the stem. Other leaves aren’t in pairs but alternate on their way up the stem. Some have smooth edges, some tiny teeth, others large teeth.
And the Flower Heads
Some ray flowers are short and broad. Others are long and thin. There are notches in the ends of others. Even their colors are different as some are very yellow and others have orange tints.
The center flowers can be yellow or brown. They put out stamens covered with pollen. Most of these are yellow, but not all. Some make a mound. Others are flat.
Naming Sunflowers
I’ve taken pictures of the different sunflowers for years. Most of them have names like 1 Sunflower, 2 Sunflower.
There are easy ones like Prairie dock with its enormous basal leaves. Tickseed sunflower is another one as the plant has a tapered look, the leaves have big lobes and the ray flowers are broad and thin.
The rest of them are still on my list to be identified. There is a key, several in fact. They haven’t helped much. This year I am looking up pictures to compare with my pictures. Perhaps I will spend some time setting up the pictures to put on iNaturalist in the hopes someone more knowledgeable than I will know what they are.
One other thing I will do is enjoy the sunflower parade even as the asters try to take over and signal the end of summer.
