portrait day

Plant portraits are fun to do. They almost always reveal something about the flowers or plants that I did not realize before doing the portrait. New Mexico is said to be the epicenter of sunflower species, though I don't know them all. I think that this one is Helianthus annuus, the common annual sunflower, since it is growing roadside, and the immature flowers (not seen above) are not hairy as they are in H. petolaris. Look for the spider.

Eriogonum anuum (below) is a roadside plant and can be a garden weed since it self-seeds prolifically. Who knew that it was this beautiful? Eriogonum is of the family Polygonaceae which means "many knees" (named such due to the swollen joints), and Eriogonum itself means 'hairy knees." You may be interested to know that all polygonaceae have involucres, or a bract under the flower head.


I have mentioned before my fascination with milkweed flowers. Silly me, I thought that milkweed flowers were all pretty much the same, but I'm noticing now how different they all are. This one is Asclepias latifolia, the broadleaf milkweed. The leaves are indeed broad and cardboard stiff in texture. Although milkweeds are known for being the food source for monarch butterfly caterpillars, I have noticed that the broadleaf milkweed is extremely popular with aphid-farming ants. These are ants a good 3/8 inch long. Asclepias are in the family Apocynaceae, which contains plants such as Plumeria, Nerium, Stapelia, Carissa, and Pachypodium.