Sunflower colony

A colony of sunflowers, Helianthus annuus. Click for a more detailed view.

What is it about people who prefer a stubblefield to a piece of land covered with plants? When I returned yesterday to the bit of prairie I visited on May 17 and wrote about in the post entitled “Sunflower’s New Leaves,” I found that some nefarious entity had mowed down the young sunflower plants I’d photographed, along with everything else adjacent to them. Inexplicably, just a little further south, no mower had chanced to go, and there I found the gorgeous colony of fully flowering sunflower plants shown here. Though fields of cultivated sunflowers have their charm, they’re missing the appealing wildness of a colony growing by the rules, or lack of rules, of nature.

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman

(Look here for information about Helianthus annuus, including an enlargeable map showing where the species grows.)