Category: Sunflower

Long-Bracted Tickseed Sunflower

All along the roadsides. Rich warm yellow greets the cars and trucks that pass. Long-bracted Tickseed Sunflower (Biden polylepis). It’s native to eastern and central United States and south-central Canada.

The leaves of Long-Bracted Tickseed Sunflower are quite distinctive, with sharply toothed margin, opposite and pinnately compound.

These flowers bloom from late summer to early fall. Attracting all sorts of insects — bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, skippers, beetles and more. Along with these Tickseed Sunflowers on the roadsides there are other shining yellow blooms. Other species that I’ll write about one day soon.

Sunflower

Sunflower (Helianthus). The happy flower. You bet.

Today would have been my Dad’s 96th birthday. He LOVED sunflowers. He loved to grow huge sunflowers!

This post is a salute to my Dad’s favorite flower. A flower that’s popular with many creatures including bees.

A flower that brings on the butterflies.

A flower that inspires artists. A flower that inspires me to do pastel paintings.

A flower that invites birds to dine. A Tufted Titmouse to munch.

A flower that prompts me to pull over to the side of the road to get a picture in New Mexico.

A flower that looks like its name.

A flower that is lovely even from behind, with light shining through its petals and leaves.

A flower that knocks my socks off even before it is a flower.

A flower that comes in surprising colors.

A flower with seeds that follow the pattern of the Fibonacci sequence. Well, if the seeds were there!

A flower that completes the scene in Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

A flower most wonderful. Good choice Dad!