Liatris Do-Over

Last year, in The Secrets of Liatris Revealed - Ho Hum , I bored readers to death with a knock-off article that wouldn't have lit a cigarette no matter how much gasoline it was soaked in. I'm not sure what that means, but it was a bad article. A stinker a skunk would turn its nose up at. And boring. Boring, boring, boring.

Well, I can't promise this will be any better (though even a spoonful of Alphabits would be an improvement over last year's Blazing Star debacle), but it will have the subtle aroma of glee. Why glee? Because I've come across two new species of Liatris, species I didn't cross paths with up north, or out in Kansas. And in Mississippi, of all places, land of the swamps and the roadside garden variety wildflowers.

After three months of sandy beaches, Laughing Gulls and the relentless ebb and flow of the tide, my wife and I drove inland, in search of something new, or, if not that, something different. (Could it be, we were missing more familiar habitat?) We were rewarded with a prairie-like piece of ground full of small butterflies and 6' tall spikes of Blazing Star. Further investigation of the land revealed the much shorter, fewer-flowered Scaly Blazing Star.

Scaly Blazing Star (Liatris squarrosa) is a short - up to 2 1/2' tall - unbranched plant typical of the southern half of the tallgrass prairie region. It is usually found in dry, rocky prairies and open woods, often in acidic soil. It has pointed, grass-like leaves that can be as long 10". They get progressively shorter higher up on the stem.

The flowers of Scaly Blazing Star are about 1/2" wide, and widely spaced along the upper portion of the stem. Each flower head has a base of overlapping pointed bracts. The bracts bend sharply outward at the tips, giving the flower heads a spiny appearance.

Each flower head has 20 to 40 small disk flowers. Typical of all Blazing Stars, each has a small, 5-lobed tubular corolla and a pair of protruding thread-like styles.

Scaly Blazing Star blooms throughout the summer into early autumn, overlapping with the blooming season of L. tenuifolia, which blooms from August into October.

Known simply as Blazing Star, this species of Liatris is easily the tallest of all those I have hiked among. We look each in the eye.

Like Scaly Blazing Star, its lower leaves, at 6" long, are much longer than those at the top of the plant. The leaves are so small way up there the stem appears leafless. The flower heads usually have only 5 flowers. The bracts typically have pink, translucent margins. The plant grows in the pine barrens and open woods of the coastal plains, from Florida up to North Carolina.

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