yellow star-thistle ~ 08/26/14 ~ Wishing Well

yellow star-thistle

Centaurea solstitialis

Cal-IPC links

Asteraceae

This cheery yellow flower is easily in my top 5 most despised plants in the state of CA, which gained a foothold here sometime before 1869 and hails from southern Europe and western Eurasia.  It's super pokey and stops me in my tracks while out hiking.  I realized recently that I may have been mistaking another star-thistle tocalote for this yellow star-thistle, so I made a point to find it on the road outside the west entrance to Pinnacles National Park to take a closer look and these pictures.  If only it weren't such a great reported butterfly nectar source...

tocalote ~ 08/12/14 ~ Pinnacles

tocalote / Maltese star-thistle

Centaurea melitensis

Cal-IPC links

Asteraceae

This is the plant that while it was blooming, I had mistaken for yellow star-thistle.  There are large patches of tocalote inside the National Park and almost no yellow star-thistle (thanks to an aggressive targeted weed management program).  What made me realize I had been mistaking this ID is that while I was hiking past it, it dawned on me that it didn't hurt as much as I thought it should if it were yellow star-thistle.  No kidding.  I'm apparently not the only one who mistakes the two related plants, because Anna Bennett did a nice job comparing the two on CalPhotos: here, here, and here.

Mylitta crescent ~ 07/10/14 ~ Podere di Farfalla

male Mylitta crescent nectaring on tocalote

male Phyciodes mylitta mylitta nectaring on Centaurea melitensis

for more information, click here and here

Asteraceae

The first crescent butterfly I became familiar with was in Ohio, the pearl crescent (Phyciodes tharos).  It became my mental model of what a crescent should look like on the top, something I liken to a grandmother's lace doily (don't ask me why, it just worked for me).  It was such an immediate ID clue for me that I don't think I ever really bothered to look at the underside (ventral) of the wings.  It wasn't until I recently picked up Art Shapiro's Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions that it finally dawned on me why crescents are named such.  Just look at that white crescent shape, along the margin in the middle of the ventral hindwing!  Cool.  Note: not all crescents have such strongly marked crescents.  Also to note:  female Mylitta often have more strongly marked topside (dorsal) patterns.  Ah, I'm slowly getting the hang of local IDs...

acmon blue ~ 07/10/14 ~ Podere di Farfalla

acmon blue (blue male top, brown female below) nectaring on tocalote

Icaricia acmon (aka Plebejus acmon) nectaring on Centaurea melitensis

Asteraceae