Thursday, April 16, 2009

Native plant photo contest: one of my favorite flowers

Gardening Gone Wild has a photo contest- a picture of a native plant in a garden setting. The prize- eight agastaches from High Country Gardens! This contest gave me the opportunity to look at a bunch of pictures and think about a lot of plants in a different way.

I fanally settled on this picture of a false dandelion (Agoseris glauca). It is one of my favorite wildflowers, and one of my favorite native plants for the garden. It is very drought tolerant- it grows on the west and south face of Missoula's Mount Sentinel, which gets hotter than the sun in summer, and it is easy to grow. It produces a showy large flower on top of a 2' tall stalk and it blooms continually from late May through July (and even beyond if you were to give it additional water). It is a prolific seeder, and readily volunteers, but since this is one of my favorties, I don't think of this as a bad thing.

In the picture above it is shown growing with (and towering above) an understory of prairie arnica (the darker yellow flowers; Arnica sororia), nodding onion (the little purple flowers; Allium ceruum), and a ground cover of hairy golden aster (Chrysopsis villosa).

13 comments:

  1. Nice photo, nice choice. Hope you win!

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  2. Wow, I like this photo. Planting native plants has so many benefits for all sides - for us and for nature!

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  3. Is this also known as Salsify? My Sister lives up in Lakeside on Flathead Lake and something that looked very much like this was growing in the empty lot next door. We identified it in the wildflower book as Salsify. Were we wrong?

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  4. Although the flowers may look somewhat similar, salsify (Tragopogon dubius) is a non-native (native to parts of Europe), weedy plant that is invasive in many habitats, both in agrucultural settings and natural areas. The plant you saw was probably salsify, but it is not the same as Agoseris glauca.
    Thanks for the question-
    David

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  5. Great photo! I'm still agonizing over it...I think we should all post our rejects on our own pages (since we get to submit only one)

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  6. Great photo! i hope you win. dont forget to share your award... hehehe..

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  7. I rather prefer the white stone pavement not to be seen but only one zoomed flower surrounded by just plenty of the same flowers in the back.
    Though it doesn't meen I'm good, but you can see.

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  8. Hi Dave,

    I also live, garden, bird in Missoula. Do you ever have tours of your gardens?

    Mariah Crossland
    mjxland@hotmail.com

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  9. Nice photo - good luck

    Thanks for the heads up on the contest. I won't enter - I'd never be able to decide what photo to enter but I will be looking at everyone's pics.

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  10. I'm not familiar with this plant, but it is a beautiful shade of yellow. I like Town Mouse's idea of posting rejected photos. Wildflowers & native shrubs & trees are all so wonderful.

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  11. That's a great plant and a great photo of it. The interesting details in the center of the flower really come out nicely in the image.

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  12. Well the contest is done and results posted over at GGW early next week. Thanks for your entry and I am giving each photo bit of constructive criticism.
    Yours would benefit putting flower a bit off center and let the pathway behind add to a bit of dynamic movement.

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  13. Hi Saxon,
    Thanks for the critique- good suggestions.
    David

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