Category Archives: Prairie Plants

A Travel Week Plant Quiz

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I’m writing this from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan where I am preparing to speak at and attend the 2015 Native Prairie Restoration and Reclamation Workshop hosted by Saskatchewan Prairie Conservation Action Plan.  It’s my first trip to Saskatchewan, and I’m excited to meet a lot of new people and learn about a prairie landscape I’m not very familiar with.

The view from my airplane window as we approached Saskatoon from the west today. A beautiful landscape with lots of wetlands scattered across it.

The view from my airplane window as we approached Saskatoon from the west today. It’s a beautiful landscape with lots of wetlands scattered across it.

Because of my travel schedule this week, I didn’t have time to write a pithy or entertaining blog post.  Instead, I’m just posting a photo of a prairie wildflower that is common in the sandhills of Nebraska (and other sandy habitats in central North America – including Saskatchewan) to see if you can identify it.  Since I know some of you will get it pretty easily, I’ll put the name of the plant in the comments section below and you can check your answer against it.

Can you name this wildflower? The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Can you name this wildflower? The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Finally, to compensate you for such a short (and odd) blog post, here is a link to one of my favorite posts from way back in January 2011.  Many of you were not following the blog back then, and I think it’s a story worth reading.  I hope you enjoy it.

Photo of the Week – January 23, 2015

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There are a few subjects I can’t seem to keep from photographing.  Milkweed seeds, for example.  Patterns of ice on frozen wetlands.  Dew-covered insects.  And sunflowers.

What flower is more distinctive?  Their bright yellow color and big round flowers stand out, even in the most showy of flowery prairies.  Insects seem to find stiff sunflower attractive too, based on the number of insects I’ve found and photographed on them.

Plains sunflower (Helianthus petiolaris) in restored sand prairie. The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Plains sunflower (Helianthus petiolaris) in restored sand prairie. The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

We’re fortunate to have seven different species of sunflower in our Platte River Prairies, five of which are perennials.  The above photo is of one of the two annuals, plains sunflower, which inhabits the drier sandy uplands of our sites and is very abundant in the Nebraska Sandhills to our north.

I have plenty of sunflower photos I like, but this is one of my favorites from last year.  I like the overall composition, but I also like that the sunflower in the foreground is atypical.  Something has prevented the petals (ray florets, for you botanists) from developing completely.  It’s interesting (and not unattractive), and also stimulates questions about what happened, and why.

I like mysteries…