Day 243: Birders have their LBJs and LGBs (Little Brown Jobs and Little Grey Birds). Botanists have DPDs and DYDs...Damn Purple Daisies and Damn Yellow Daisies, respectively. The latter is sometimes expressed as DYC, the terminal word being "Composites." The acronym is pronounced "Dicks," which gives a sense of the frustration felt by anyone attempting to identify one of its members.
Seen in the corner of my eye, I was about to dismiss this DYD as common hawksbeard (Crepis), but one of the lesser deities of botany was on duty and and grabbed me by the ears before I could walk past. "Leaf," I said, the subconscious observation rising to the surface of my thoughts. "Linear? What the heck...? Aaaaaagggghhhh! DYD!" Only then did I notice that what I had initially taken for abundant ray flowers were in fact far fewer petals, each having three distinct lobes. If I had thought about it at the time, that would have given me a clue because I've seen a much smaller cousin, but I turned to my field guides and Hitchcock as soon as I got the photos out of the camera. I pinned it as Madia almost immediately, but then had the task of sorting out which one. I was guided by leaf shape, number of ray/disk flowers and a hairy involucre to settle on Madia sativa, aka Coast or Chilean Tarweed. Despite the misleading nature of the common name, it is native to the area.
No comments:
Post a Comment