Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Blue-eyed Grass: Tiny Summer Prairie Wildflower

You might have to look carefully to see Blue-eyed Grass at your feet. These tiny purplish flowers bloom well in the midst of taller grasses, and as the stalks of Blue-eyed Grass look like, well, grass, they will be well disguised.

Blue-eyed Grass. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Blue-eyed Grass, with seed pods. Usually upright, this stalk had fallen or been bent over.  © SB

Once I started looking last week, I found many Blue-eyed Grass flowers, and even more swaying stalks, with multiple seed pods.

Delightful, though too small for more than an instant of joy while searching moist or sandy Prairie areas. (The ones I found were along a train track and in a ditch.)


Prairie Wildflower: Blue-eyed Grass
Location: Muenster, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Photo Dates: July 6, 2015. 


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Friday, July 24, 2015

Late Yellow Locoweed: Creamy white July flowers

Late Yellow Locoweed. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Late Yellow Locoweed. © SB
The creamy flowered Late Yellow Locoweed comes by its name honestly:

  • It blooms much later than Early Yellow Locoweed; and 
  • Both Locoweed plants can apparently affect the nervous system, and thus the behaviour of animals who eat these plants. 

Late Yellow Locoweed blooms in Prairie grasslands, open woodlands and eroded slopes, with the whitish flower stalks rising straight and tall above the leaves.

I saw Late Yellow Locoweed this summer in a corner of a ditch where several other early summer wildflowers were blooming.

The very light colours of the petals were a challenge to capture — too much light, and they washed out; too little, and the detail vanished.

Late Yellow Locoweed. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Stalks of Late Yellow Locoweed, with small creamy white flowers   © SB

Late Yellow Locoweed. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
A stand of Late Yellow Locoweed.   © SB

Prairie Wildflower: Late Yellow Locoweed.  
Location: Near Muenster, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Photo Date: July 8 and 9, 2015.   

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Monday, July 20, 2015

Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch: Blue and Purple Flowers

Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Ascending Purple Milk Vetch flower cluster © SB
The dense purple and blue flower clusters of Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch remind me of clover.

And that's what I thought it might be the first time I saw it — though I've never seen clover the colour of this milk-vetch.

Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch flower stalks are usually erect, and, well, ascending...

Except when they're weak, and slump along the ground...

The flower clusters on Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch are up to two inches long, and when they're upright, rise well above the clearly vetch-like multiple leaflets.

Even from a distance, this is a very pretty Prairie wildflower, with petals shading through lilac, lavendar and white.

It's small enough, though, that long grass can overwhelm it. (Or hide the particularly lovely clusters from this photographer, who doesn't practice clear-cutting other vegetation for each shot.)

Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Flowers of Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch, with leaflets in background. © SB

Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch plants.  © SB 

Prairie Wildflower: Ascending Purple Milk-Vetch .  
Location: 1&2: Near Muenster, and 3: in Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Photo Date: 1&2: July 9, 2015, and 3: June 26, 2015.  

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Thursday, July 16, 2015

Mid-Summer begins with Gaillardia in Saskatchewan

When the bright faces of Gaillardia flowers appear, I know that it must be mid-summer. And so, here's lovely reminder of sunshine — yes, for me... I'll be back to this page again in mid-winter to see this Prairie wildflower...

Gaillardia. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Larger than life, a glowing Gaillardia flower along a gravel Saskatchewan road.  ©SB

Prairie Wildflower: Gaillardia.  
Location: Near Muenster, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Photo Date: July 6, 2015.  

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Monday, July 13, 2015

Branched Umbrellaplant with Pink and White Flowers

Branched Umbrellaplant. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Branched Umbrellaplant ©SB
We found the Branched Umbrellaplant in rock-strewn clay in range land near the Canada/U.S. border, on our way to the southern section of the West Block of Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan.

These hairy gray perennials were so small — less than eight inches in height from woody base to frilly petals — and the nearby Prickly Pear Cactus so flamboyant, that at first, I didn't notice these delicate wildflowers, scattered across the badlands before us.

Like many Prairie wildflowers, Branched Umbrellaplants are best seen at ground level, so I sat in the dirt to look closer at their small, dense umbels of pink, coral and white mini-flowers.

As my eyes became accustomed to the scale, I eventually found a few woolly Branched Umbrellaplants with paler pink and whitish flowers, too, each so tiny that to photograph them is to provide a clear, though partial, answer to the question someone recently asked me...

"Why do you like taking pictures of Prairie Wildflowers?"

Because to photograph is to look, and to look is to see — and my camera with a macro or zoom lens helps me see so much more than my weak eyes alone can manage. Worlds open. I sense more about my surroundings. I'm often in awe of it all.

Branched Umbrellaplant. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Close-up of Branched Umbrellaplant flowers. Delicate and lovely,
each is only a tiny fraction of an inch — a few millimetres — across. ©SB

And the more I learn, the more in awe I am. 

For example, the locally rare (S3, in Saskatchewan) Branched Umbrellaplant or Eriogonum pauciflorum or Fewflower Buckwheat is the sole source of food for the threatened Prairie population of the Mormon Metalmark butterfly — except in adulthood, when these small brown butterflies may also feed on nectar from Rabbitbrush.

Mormon Metalmarks are typically found in the southwestern U.S. They are the only species in the mainly neotropical familyRiodinidae that occurs in Canada. And in Canada, they are only found in B.C.'s Similkameeen Valley and Grassland National Park in Saskatchewan.

Branched Umbrellaplant. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Clusters of Branched Umbrellaplants in the badlands of Grasslands National Park ©SB

Branched Umbrellaplant. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Lighter, whitish flowers clusters, which I think are also Branched Umbrellaplants.
(If not, please let me know.) © SB
Branched Umbrellaplant. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Close-up of an umbel of pink, white, yellow and coral Branched Umbrellaplant flowers  ©SB
Branched Umbrellaplant. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
An umbel of paler pink flowers, on the whitish clusters of Branched Umbrellaplants in the photo above. ©SB  

For more on the butterflies, see the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada 2003 report on the Mormon Metalmark or the related Description of Residence for Mormon Metalmark, which has a map showing its three GNP locations (the middle site is where we found these Branched Umbrellaplants), along with a photo of their preferred habitat — a hillside with rough, disturbed soil that looks exactly like the one that was directly above us. And, for more on these flowers, see Glen Lee's great Saskatchewan Wildflowers website. And, for a related Eriogonum, see the Yellow Umbrellaplant at Grasslands National Park.

My partner wanted to climb that arid hillside, but I was exhausted by the heat. Perhaps one day we'll return to GNP in late August or September, with luck during the few days when these butterflies with white checks and red wing spots mate and fly.


Prairie Wildflower: Branched Umbrellaplant.  
Location: Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Photo Date: June 23, 2015.  

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Sunday, July 12, 2015

Two-grooved Milk Vetch on a Prairie Bluff

We found large clusters of Two-grooved Milk Vetch as we drove along a high track across the Prairie that connected to parts of the West Block of Grasslands National Park. We stopped to enjoy their lovely deep crimson, purple and blue flowers.

Two-grooved Milk-vetch. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Lovely colours of Two-grooved Milk Vetch  ©SB

Two-grooved Milk-vetch. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Clump of Two-grooved Milk Vetch on the prairie.  © SB


Prairie Wildflower: Two-grooved Milk Vetch  
Location: Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan,  Canada.  
Photo Date: June 22, 2015.  

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Friday, July 10, 2015

Oxeye Daisy: Death trap in a Prairie Meadow

Bench with Oxeye Daisies. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
A peaceful place to sit and watch the flowers © SB
An idyllic scene, with Oxeye Daisies:

  • An old bench, its blue paint peeling and wood bleached gray. 
  • Sunset glowing on the tree trunks behind. 
  • In front, a swath of bright yellow and white daisies. 

Sit, relax, and contemplate peace — and death in the Oxeye Daisies. For these innocent looking wildflowers present high risks for the unwary.

Consider, for example, the fate of the fly that does not notice a pale white spider camouflaged against this Oxeye Daisy's white ray florets...

Oxeye Daisies. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Fly captured by spider in Oxeye Daisy  © SB
Oxeye Daisies. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Oxeye Daisy Deathtrap  © SB 
Oxeye Daisies. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
White and yellow ray and disk florets of Oxeye Daisies.
These are introduced plants, i.e., not native,
and can be somewhat invasive.  ©SB 


Prairie Wildflower: Oxeye Daisy   
Location: Near Muenster, Saskatchewan, Canada.  
Photo Date: July 4-7, 2015.


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Thursday, July 9, 2015

Slender Beardtongue - Purple Blue Prairie Flower

Slender Beardtongue. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Slender Beardtongue  © SB
The light blue-purple flowers of Slender Beardtongue swayed gently in the evening breeze in a hollow on the high prairie at Grasslands National Park.

A few weeks later, I saw these Penstemon again, this time in an unmown ditch near Saskatchewan's Parkland region, their tall stems with purple flower clusters and long, slender leaves swaying in the wind.

A closer look inside the mouths of these flowers confirms the source of their name. Yes, the tongues are covered in coarse hairy fibres, like a soft, white beard.


Slender Beardtongue. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Inside the mouth of a Slender Beardtongue flower ©SB 
Slender Beardtongue. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Slender Beardtongue ©SB

Slender Beardtongue. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Slender Beardtongue cluster ©SB

Slender Beardtongue. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Slender Beardtongue at Grasslands National Park ©SB

Prairie Wildflower: Slender Beardtongue  
Location: Top 4 pix: near Muenster;  Bottom: Grasslands National Park; Saskatchewan, Canada.  
Photo Date: July 6, 2015 and June 21, 2012.  

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Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Prairie Cinquefoil or White Cinquefoil - a Relative of Roses

Prairie Cinquefoil or White Cinquefoil is starting to bloom, with clusters of white flowers on tall stalks. I stumbled across — or, more accurately — into White Cinquefoil when I was looking for Prairie wildflowers in a small unmown meadow.

But with petals just starting to form, I couldn't figure out what these white stubs were trying to become. It wasn't until a few days later that another flower fan pointed out a blossoming White Cinquefoil and provided the name.

Prairie Cinquefoil. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
White Cinquefoil, or Prairie Cinquefoil  © SB

A member of the Rose family, the Prairie Cinquefoil has a very hairy and erect stem, five petals, five sepals (is that where cinq feuilles/five leaves name comes from?), and coarsely serrated leaves.

In one of my flower guides, this plant is labelled a Potentilla — but P. arguta is apparently an older scientific name, and it's now classified as Drymocallis arguta (perhaps a helpful synonym for anyone seeking more information)

This white flower must look very different to pollinating insects. Prairie Wildflowers of Illinois says that special filters reveal ultra-violet reflecting patterns in the flowers of many cinquefoils, including Prairie Cinquefoil. These bee-blue markings, invisible to the human eye, may guide insects to nectar.


Prairie Wildflower: Prairie Cinquefoil
Location:  Near Muenster, Saskatchewan, Canada
Photo Date: July 7, 2015. 

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Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Pink Sainfoin in July Saskatchewan Ditches

Sainfoin. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Pink Sainfoin  ©SB
A friend told me he'd seen pink flowers in the grid road ditch as he cycled by.

"Sainfoin," I guessed, remembering that stretch from my daily walk last summer. And I was right...

(But I may not have said this plant's name right, as I'm never sure in Saskatchewan how to pronounce Anglicized French words...)

Sanfoin is a forage crop from Europe that's gone wild and now brightens uncultivated fields and road allowances with its pin-striped red and pink flowers.

It's become a wildflower in the Prairies, though Sanfoin is not a native plant.

Sainfoin. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Pink blossoms on stalk of Sainfoin ©SB


Prairie Wildflower: Sainfoin  
Location: Grid road south of Muenster, Saskatchewan, Canada
Photo Dates: July 7, 2015 and July 21, 2014

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Monday, July 6, 2015

Sunflower in the Setting Prairie Sun

We walked down from Seventy Mile Butte in Grasslands National Park just before dusk, and saw this Sunflower beside the path, backlit by the setting sun.

I sometimes guess at the names of Prairie Sunflowers — there are so many! But I think this is the Common Annual Sunflower. By any name, it was a lovely flash of life on a dark, gravelly part of the trail.

Sunflower. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved



Prairie Wildflower: Annual Sunflower
Location:  Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, Canada
Photo Date: June 22, 2015. 

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Sunday, July 5, 2015

Yellow Flax in the Dry Southern Prairies

Yellow Flax.Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Flax near Grasslands National Park  ©SB
Yellow Flax. The first time I photographed this buttery yellow Prairie wildflower was the day we went hiking in Saskatchewan's Great Sandhills in the southwest of the province.

But that day was too bright, and the gentle yellow and coral colours of these flowers were burned away by the harsh sunlight.

This summer, at the side of a high range road connecting parts of the West Block of Grasslands National Park, near the edge of a bluff only a few miles north of the Canada/U.S. border, we once more found Yellow Flax. And this time, the day was softly overcast, with a giant lightbox for a sky, casting a warm glow over the land.

Vance, Jowsey et al in Wildflowers Across the Prairies say that the habitat for Yellow Flax is in "the dry upper reaches of the Southern Prairies, particularly along old trails and sandy disturbed places." And yes, that sums up our location.


Yellow Flax.Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Flax blossoms, in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada  © SB
Yellow Flax.Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Flax plant, with flowers.  ©SB

Although Yellow Flax can grow much taller, these plants along the exposed side of the hill were only about six inches high. Like many Prairie wildflowers, they were hidden behind grasses, invisible from the road. To see wildflowers is not only to walk the land, but at times, to crawl it...


Prairie Wildflower: Yellow Flax
Location: Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, Canada,  
Photo Date: June 22, 2015. 



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Friday, July 3, 2015

Yellow Umbrellaplant in Grasslands National Park

Yellow Umbrellaplant..Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Umbrellaplant beginning to flower ©SB
The first time I saw a Yellow Umbrellaplant, I was baffled. Its frilly yellow flower clusters had drooped to become coral tubes, which looked like nothing at all in my flower guides.

And yet, these orange-red flowers were fairly common on hillsides in the West Block of Grasslands National Park...

But what were they?

It took a while to decipher the secret of my mystery flowers, with a few dead ends and wrong guesses along the way.

But finally, I realized that this was the Yellow Umbrellaplant, a woody perennial that grows on eroded banks and Prairie badlands.

I remembered that story this year when I visited Grasslands National Park again, and noticed the Yellow Umbrellaplant (Eriogonum flavum) in several stages of flowering. A search of my photo files found more.

These furry dry-land Prairie Wildflowers are at first firm fists of ant-sized yellow-green buds. These open to create umbel-like clusters of frothy pink-tinged yellow flowers, which in turn droop and darken to become very beautiful — and to my eyes, very different but equally tiny — flowers as they age.

Yellow Umbrellaplant..Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Umbrellaplant flowers, a little further along. ©SB
Yellow Umbrellaplant..Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Umbrellaplant: frilly yellow flowers open, a reddish tinge begins
(Note bugs for scale) ©SB
Yellow Umbrellaplant..Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Umbrellaplant as the flowers begin to age, droop and darken ©SB
Yellow Umbrellaplant..Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Yellow Umbrellaplant in in its mystery coral tube phase -
very little yellow or familiar flower shape remain ©SB

(For a related prairie wildflower, see the Branched Umbrellaplant.)

Prairie Wildflower: Yellow Umbrellaplant  (Eriogonum flavum) 
Location:  Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, Canada, and buttes near Val Marie, Saskatchewan.  
Photo Dates: 1 & 2: June 25, 2013; 3 & 4: June 24, 2015; 5: July 27, 2011.  

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Thursday, July 2, 2015

Prairie Smoke (Three-flowered Avens) at Grasslands

Three-flowered Avens: a native plant that looks ethereal after it blooms. But Prairie Smoke is not everyone's idea of loveliness, I learned one day after photographing these in Grasslands National Park.

"Someone asked me what I was doing, lying down," the man next to me said at breakfast at The Convent Inn in Val Marie. "I pointed at the Prairie Smoke, and he said, 'That weed???'"

I laughed, because I, too, had been low on ground, trying to capture some of the beauty of these Saskatchewan wildflowers. I love their white and crimson tassels, which make me think of wild-headed dolls.  

Three-flowered Avens. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Prairie Smoke at late evening,
against the glow of the setting sun.  ©SB

Three-flowered Avens. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Three-flowered Avens ©SB

Three-flowered Avens. Copyright © Shelley Banks, all rights reserved
Three-flowered Avens (Prairie Smoke) with dew at dawn
- and with mosquito  ©SB

Prairie Wildflower: Three-flowered Avens - Prairie Smoke 
Location: First: Grasslands National Park; Lower two: Val Marie Pasture.  Saskatchewan, Canada,  
Photo Date: First: June 25, 2015; Lower two: June 25, 2013. 

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