Field of Science

Score one for the Phactor!

Everyone likes a challenge, and the latest Get Your Botany On plant ID quiz was indeed a challenge, but an educated guess (false toadflax) based on what the plant clearly wasn't (Comandra unbellata), together with its boggy habitat, scored one for the Phactor!  Yea!  Now to try and impress my taxonomy class of plant ID neophytes; now that's tough.  The key observation was that everything else with similar leaves, based on what you can see in a picture, has the leaves arranged in an opposite pattern, which eliminated a lot of possibilities. Gee, do you think the botanist is suffering from a bout of cabin fever?  For the record, the only time the Phactor has seen the false toadflax was on the Door Co. peninsula in WI, possibly at the Ridges Sanctuary in Bailey's Harbor.

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