Saturday, December 10, 2011

common yarrow ~ 12/10/11 ~ Los Padres Dam


posted 12/29/11 - When I started this blog 2 1/2 years ago, I focused on colorful, sunny flowers and animals that were already familiar to me. It's been a real joy learning more about my local natural world. My learning curve was a sharp incline at first and then it flattened out, partially due to blogging fatigue and partially due to my hesitancy to show off how much I don't know.

Without flowers, I'm often at a loss as to what a plant is. It's time for me to start looking at leaves. Once again, thanks to Flickr and Nature of a Man blogger randomtruth, I received help for the ID of this very common plant.

The white blooms in the last picture might be a type of naked buckwheat (Eriogonum nudum), but really I have no idea. I had several pictures of this buckwheat, but none of them turned out very well since my point-and-shoot couldn't find a focal point. Once again, I should have looked for the leaves to be able to make a better determination.

4 comments:

randomtruth said...

Always happy to help. :) And speaking of - it's Eriogonum nudum. The flowers of elongatum "chain" with flowers at the nodes, as in: flower-tuft, stem, flower-tuft, stem, flower-tuft. E. nudum just has flower-tufts on the ends of the stems.

Katie (Nature ID) said...

The other pictures I have may well be elongatum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/50922984@N08/6594663139/in/photostream

Anonymous said...

Finally had a chance to come back here on my real computer (and not my phone) to leave a comment on this post. I love this plant! The leaves are so elegant. They're going to make an excellent pattern for a craft project I think.

I know I don't comment often here, but I really enjoy your blog!

Katie (Nature ID) said...

Thank you, Chris.