Wednesday, May 13, 2009

deltoid balsamroot
Balsamorhiza deltoidea
Asteraceae

This reminded me a little of prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) from Ohio because of the wide leaves but without the tall flower stems.

ps 05/09/10 - I posted this last year under unknown yellow flower. Can you tell I am totally unfamiliar with flowers? At least I knew it's an aster. Thanks to a lovely photo book, I was able to pin it down to balsamroot. My second guess would be arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata). Based only on the CalPhoto pics, it would be challenging to distinguish between the two. I do think the leaves and flower petals above are too wide to be arrowleaf. Most importantly, the elevation of Yosemite Valley is only 3966 ft. and arrowleaf grows between 4300-8300 ft. In the process of searching this, I rediscovered a cool site I had forgotten about: Calflora What Grows Here search.

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