Two Ends of an Elephant

I don't read the funnies much anymore, but all the best stuff isn't around any more, is it? The Far Side. Bloom County. They're both gone. Doonesbury's still around, but I no longer relate to it's commentary; everybody has an opinion and whether it's a right wing red neck or an open-minded liberal talking, rhetoric's rhetoric, even if it is in a cartoon strip. No, there's just not much in the way of funnies anymore.

I do still have a stack of funnies cut out of papers from years past; I think I mentioned this a couple years ago in my burdock article. Well, another keeper from the past comes to mind this week, a Frank and Ernest from about twenty years ago.

In this strip our heroes are astronomers in the observatory, standing near a telescope. One informs the other, the other end of the Horsehead Nebula has been named after him. Pretty funny, huh?

The reason I mention it is this week, I'm going to dabble with wildflowers named for two ends of an elephant: Little Elephant's Head (Pedicularis attolens) and Elephant's Foot ( Elephantopus carolinianus). (Phew! Elephant's Foot and not, well, the other.) It made me think of that Frank and Ernest cartoon.

These two plants are as different as, well, heads and feet. Little Elephant's Head, a member of the Figwort Family (Scrophulariaceae), has showy clusters of flowers; Elephant's Foot, a member of the Aster family (Asteraceae), doesn't. It's flowers, which remind me of rather smallish Chicory flowers, grow one to a stem. There are several to a plant, but it's hardly the same.

Elephant's Foot grows in the woods and open areas, from Pennsylvania south to Florida and west to Texas and Kansas. I found it an open area somewhere along the Gulf Coast, in Mississippi. It wasn't much to look at, in my opinion, but it was something new, so...

Those small, kind of Chicory-like flowers are only about 1/3 of an inch across, and range from white to purple in color. The basal leaves of the plant are arranged such that they bring to mind the footprint of an elephant ... I think. Related species include another Elephant's Foot (E. tomentosus), which is found throughout the southeast, in thickets and dry open woods, and Tall Elephant's Foot (E. elatus), which grows in dry woods and pine barrens, from South Carolina to Florida and over the Louisiana.

Where Elephant's Foot doesn't grab your attention, Little Elephant's Head grabs your attention and shakes it around a bit. It can even manage to standout among the lupines and Giant Paintbrush and other wet-loving wildflowers usually found growing with it.

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