Happy New Year! To celebrate, let’s play THE PLANT GAME!
You know it, you love it. It’s the game in which you have to figure out which plant name is not real. More specifically, one name in each of the following lists is NOT the official common name of a plant found in Nebraska. It’s a silly way to poke fun at the ridiculous names we’ve chosen for the plants that live around us. I’ll post the answers in a day or two.
In the first list, there are five plant names with way more hyphens than seem necessary. The names are almost short stories. Good luck.
In these other two lists, all the names are crazy. You just have to figure out which crazy names I made up.
Bonus question – can you name this flower? If you’re a Nebraska botanist, there is only one known location of this plant in the state. Good luck…
The Prairie Ecologist 
Very curious to learn about the tiny yellow mystery flower!
Is this Agoseris glauca (False Dandelion)??
An excellent guess, and close, but no.
Botany on a cold snowy day, it doesn’t get any better! Thanks Chris :-)
Looks like a Tragopogon species. Perhaps pratensis? I imagine dubius is pretty fairly common.
Krigia virginica?
😆
Good guess, but no.
Your mystery flower surely does look to me like Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus. Neither BONAP nor the USDA shows it in Nebraska on their maps, but I’ll still go with that for the ID. Whatever it is, one known location is pretty interesting!
I’ll give it to you. It’s actually P. grandiflorus, but getting the correct genus is impressive enough to warrant the award. Nice work!
Of course, a common name is “Texas dandelion,” and down here on the Gulf coast, it’s one of our most common spring flowers.
A Tragopogan species?
So it has a habitat in Nebraska? Fairly close to Kansas border? Noticed it occurs in TX , OK, KS. ( Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower data base)
Actually, the only known population in Nebraska is in some loess hills along the Platte River in Hamilton County (north of Aurora).
This is so awesome! Never know what gold we will find here on the Plains in South Central NEBRASKA ! Another ‘dandelion ‘ to stop, really look at, and appreciate their beautiful sunny yellow flowers. Thanks for brightening these cold days Chris!
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More, more!
Chris, I must have missed the answer to what this plant is. Can you share? Thanks. >
Hi Ed. Not sure which plant you’re asking about. I put all the answers in the next blog post – https://prairieecologist.com/2018/01/05/photo-of-the-week-january-5-2018/. Let me know if you don’t find what you’re looking for.
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