Coneflowers = Happy Memories

One of the delights in the prairie this year is how many more of certain types of flowers there are than there were last year. Gray-headed and purple coneflowers are two particularly beautiful examples. 

Last year, there were a handful of each type. This year, they are everywhere. Gray-headed coneflowers can grow quite tall - 5-6 ft. - and the flowers wave on slender, fragile-looking stalks. Whenever anyone sees them the first time, they are surprised, as I was, at the name. Instead of the dull image implied by the name, the petals are yellow and look like a summer skirt, flowing down from the center. It's a bit of a stretch to say that center is gray, but it's certainly not as dark as the center of a black-eyed Susan. The petals of purple coneflowers also hang down from their burnished red/gold centers, but not so gracefully as the yellow petals.

These gray-headed coneflowers remind me of the hollyhocks that grew on our farm. As little girls, my sisters and I spent many happy hours fashioning the hollyhock blossoms as skirts for clothespin dolls. I don't have hollyhocks in my garden, but my son does.  I hope his daughters have fun playing dress up hollyhocks like I did. 

And when they come to visit our prairie, we'll gather coneflowers to build more happy memories.

Is it all yellow?

I took my husband with me when I walked out to the prairie this morning. I couldn't resist having a photo to mark brilliant sunshine on such a mass of yellow flowers. And they are gorgeous!

"Are they all yellow?" David asked.  Sure looks like it, doesn't it? So far, they're all Black-eyed Susans, but more types of plants are close to blooming and they all look to be opening up yellow, too.  Or so it seems on first glance.

Just this week, I spotted the first Purple Coneflower. A single purple bloom standing amidst all that yellow. How brave. How beautiful.

Since most of the plants are quite tall - at least the ones that appear close to blooming, I pick my way through the prairie, generally looking up. I look down in a sometimes futile attempt not to step on plants I've been trying to nurture.

On one such downward glance, I spotted another dot of purple. A plant I had not seen before and did not know by name. The distinct blossom of Purple Prairie Cover was easy to identify in my prairie flower book. Tucked in amongst the taller prairie plants (look closely; can you see it?), the clover - only a foot tall - would have been easy to miss if not for its purple flower.

This walk in the prairie reinforced an axiom I learned about nature during a walk in Alaska: it pays to look up, look down, look all around. The walk in Alaska involved a moose. But that's another story.