Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Horseweed

Last year I was posting all the pretty late-summer wildflowers. Now I guess I have to do the ugly ones. "Have to," that is, in the sense that some impulse toward completeness drives me, not that somebody threatened to beat me up if I don't.

Anyway, here's another addition to our inventory of ugly wildflowers.


(Click on images to enlarge)

Here are the blossoms, such as they are. The little flowers are about 1/8" in diameter. They sit there day after day all wrapped up, looking as if they're thinking about blooming properly. And then suddenly they're puffy blobs of seed parachutes. I don't know how they do it.



This stuff is also known as Marestail. Here is a nice website if you'd like to see this boring wildflower in all the stages of its boring life.