SYCs have master naturalists yelling "uncle".

Birders have long been familiar with LBJs before and even after he became POTUS.  The botanical equivalent has always been SYCs, stinking yellow composites, yellow-flowered members of the Asteraceae, formerly the Compositae, daisies, sunflowers, asters, and so on, and on, and on.  It's a big family, one of the biggest.  And in grasslands, and even old fields, a heap-ton of these flower in the fall.  Everytime you turn around, there is another one.  Some TPP recognizes by sight, but very often it takes a bit of time in the herbarium and with available field guides to determine what plant it is.  TPP is sort of over-seeing a couple of master naturalist projects, and even very diligent and hard working amateurs such as these can often "give up" on STCs. Toughies such as these take lots of practice and experience. Something that doesn't come in a book or bottle.  In particular TPP found that just the sunflowers, genus Helianthus, could be a problem, so using a scanner, he constructed some cheat sheets for our local area using a combination of fairly easy to observe features to document each species.  But clearly more such sheets are needed, and next week he will be in the field to help out documenting the plant contents of some restored prairie patches.  Hopefully, no LBJ will be seen perched on an SYC, although if so, birders usually don't notice the latter.  Hang on troops, help is on the way!

Friday Fabulous Flower - Stiff Goldenrod

Fall in the midwest and on the prairie is mostly about what we used to call SYCs, stinking yellow composites, an equivalent of birder's LBJs, little brown job. And yes, it takes a bit of work and experience to get beyond the it's a composite (aster/sunflower family) and yellow stage. Today's fabulous flower, flowers actually, is a favorite fall SYC that deserves to be in any perennial garden, the stiff goldenrod (Solidago rigida). The leaves of this plant are quite stiff with a rough surface, one of the many stiff, rough, prickly sort of things so abundant on the prairie in the fall. But what makes this goldenrod's floral display so fabulous are the ray flowers, which are only found in a handful of the 50 or so species in northeastern N. America. For those uninitiated to composites, each "petal" is actually a flower whose short tubular corolla has a single strap-like lobe. The corolla of the central disk flowers has five small lobes. In some of these little heads the disk flowers have yet to open. Lots of goldenrods flower this time of year, and because they are conspicuous, they often get blamed for causing people's fall-season hayfever, but because they are conspicuous they don't. Such conspicuous flowers are insect-pollinated, so the pollen doesn't end up inside your nasal passages, but the wind-pollinated ragweeds, also composites, with their very inconspicuous flowers are flowering at the same time.