SYCs review

OK a couple of readers don't quite get the disk/ray flower thing that TPP mentioned in last week's FFF on goldenrod.  So here is a better example, the ordinary sunflower, Helianthus annuus.  This is not a flower, it is an inflorescence that mimics a flower's image.  When you have little flowers, best to group them together because the bigger the display, the more visitors you get, the more pollination, and so on and so forth (my major professor always used to say that when he thought the explanation was obvious).  At any rate what appear to be petals are a ring of ray flowers with one long corolla lobe making the ray flowers highly bilaterally symmetrical.  They surround a spiral array of radially symmetrical disk flowers.  The inner most ones are still unopened buds, so start taking a close look at those composite "flowers".  Dandelions have all ray flowers, and others have nothing by disk flowers.  Enjoy.  

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.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Yellow Coneflower

The sweltering heat and humidity of the midwestern summer season are upon us, and many of my exotic babies, natives of milder climates, suffer, while a few plants hailing from more southern climates, rejoice. But the plants that do best, year in and year out, are natives. So this friday's fabulous flower is a native of the tall grass prairie, the yellow coneflower (Ratibida pinnata). Some people confuse the yellow coneflower with the black-eyed susan, which is in another genus altogether. Both are members of the sunflower family, so actually this isn't a fabulous flower, but a fabulous inflorescence composed of brown radially symmetrical disk flowers centrally and yellow bilaterally symmetrical ray flowers appearing like petals (as in "she loves me, she loves me not") around the periphery. The yellow corollas of ray flowers droop downward (as shown), while the corollas of black-eyed susans are held more or less out at right angles (there are other differences too). The disk flowers in the center (top) of the button haven't opened yet. Inflorescences like these present the appearance of a single flower because that's the point, to cluster a bunch of small flowers in such a way as to present a bigger display. Pollinators always looking for the biggest reward are attracted to bigger displays, and inflorescences like these are one way plants with small flowers enhance their attractiveness and reproductive success.