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 - yellow-flowered wild ginger

The warm weather this week pushed a great many spring plants into flower; many of them had been in a swollen bud stage for a couple of weeks held back by the unseasonal cold weather.  Oh, yeah, like the weather today.  This particular spring flower does well in shade and our gardens are so shady, there is a constant quest for new shade-loving plants.  TPP well remembers the first time he observed this plant at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden on our 1st botanical geek tour.  We knew we'd never seen it before, but the family was clear; it was a member of the Aristolochiaceae, the birthworts.  A bit of searching in the patch failed to find an identifying label, so it took some research to discover that this yellow-flowered upright wild ginger, as it is sometimes called, was Saruma henryi, a native to China. Some diligent searching finally discovered a nursery selling some and it's been in our garden ever since, a small presence, but not very vigorous either.  It's doesn't seem to like leafy mulch, or maybe it's in a bit too much shade as a result of the growth of a biggish anise magnolia. At any rate, rather than hiding it's flowers like native wild ginger, and rather than having purple-brown flowers, this ginger (not a real ginger) has bright yellow flowers that it holds upon top of dullish, hairy but typical heart-shaped leaves on annual stems that will stand some 8-12 inches tall at maturity.  Now the plant is relatively common in the nursery trade; what a difference a decade makes.