(Click on image to enlarge)
I finally received my copy of Newcomb's Wildflower Guide and I've begun the slow and painstaking process of identifying the wildflowers that I've been looking at for all these years without ever knowing their names. The guide is cleverly designed to accommodate botanical ignoramuses like me, but even so, I find you have to look very carefully and think the same way Mr. Newcomb does: for example, I tried working backwards from a flower I already knew — chicory — and I found that whereas its leaves to me looked "whorled," Mr. Newcomb considers them "alternate."
And then I went out into the meadow to look at these flowers that spring up to great heights on a single stem from a clump of wide basal leaves and open their yellow blossoms late in the summer. I looked at those basal leaves and thought they were "entire," but Mr. Newcomb said they're "toothed," and, indeed, on close examination of the leaves I found he was right. They're very, very finely toothed.
And so I identified Prairie Dock. It's nice to finally have a name to go with the familiar face!
This photo is of a specimen about 6.5 feet in height. I didn't get the clump of big, wide leaves at the base of the plant, but that's because I was also trying to get a good shot of that other native species of Ainsworth, the stopped freight train. He was sitting there waiting for a signal from headquarters to let him proceed westward toward the Ainsworth crossing.
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