Same Name, Different Flower

Living in Boulder, Colorado (at the time I write this in February; by August, who knows where I'll be?), I have discovered that the Rocky Mountains are the borderland between the east and the west. Oh sure, this is called the high plateau, and the short grass prairies of this area gradually become the tallgrass prairies as you head eastward, and we call this the Central Plains, but it's still just east, isn't it? You go up and over these Rocky Mt. peaks and it is a different world, totally unlike everything east of the peaks. The landscape is different; habitats and environments are different; even the people are different. Some of the same ol' things have different names, and some very different things have the same names.

Take Blazing Star, for example.

East of the Rockies, Blazing Star is mostly a prairie species. Several of them, actually. Varieties include Rough Blazing Star (Liatris aspera), Prairie Blazing Star (L. pycnostachya), Large Blazing Star (L. scariosa), Dense Blazing Star (L. spicata) and Dotted Blazing Star (L. punctata). They are members of the Aster of Composite Family (Asteraceae or Compositae), and they produce showy spikes of pink or rosy-purple flowers; they are a spectacular sight in among other prairie species, and often turn up in gardens. (When I worked in the garden nursery in Columbus, Ohio during the spring of 2002, I often steered folks to the Blazing Stars.) And I have written about them here: Blazing Star, Its Secrets Revealed (Ho-Hum), August 28, 2001, and Liatris Do-Over, October 10, 2002.

The Blazing Star west of the Rocky Mts. is a whole 'nother thing. I haven't written about this Blazing Star ... until now.

The Blazing Star (Mentzelia laevicaulis) west of the Rocky Mts. isn't a member of the Aster Family, but is a member of the much smaller Stickleaf Family (Loasaceae), the members of which occur mostly in the warm and dry areas of the Americas. And they don't produce spikes of lovely pink or rosy-purple flowers, but many big, showy, bright yellow star-shaped flowers. Completely different from those eastern wildflowers they share a name with, they are no less grand and eye-catching.

These Blazing Stars were another of those many wildflowers I ogled in field guides like a teenager with his first girlie magazine, and like that same teenager, I wondered if I would ever be lucky enough to see them, gulp, in person. I finally found these starry flowers along the road that ran alongside Twin Lakes, California, near Mono Lake and the eastern side of Yosemite. Anybody who knows this area knows the habitat: gravelly, arid, sandy. And this is exactly the environment this Blazing Star prefers, which makes it seem all the more remarkable.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic