Did he say flowers?

In the last post I mentioned that Eastern gamagrass, Tripsacum dactyloides, produces flower stalks that can rise as much as 10 feet (3 m) above the ground. Flowers? Yes, grasses are flowering plants, but most people don’t think of them that way because their flowers are small and don’t look like lilies, roses, daisies, etc. But grasses ignore our limited imagination and keep on producing what they are sure are flowers.

The picture above shows that the type of green stalk seen in yesterday’s photo will blossom into two sets of flowers that look quite different, the male above and the female below. The male flowers are tiny tubes attached in pairs to the stalk by little threads. With almost any breeze at all these flowers twirl and dance about in the wind, so photographing them often requires a fast shutter speed. The female elements, of which you can see a few, resemble old-fashioned pipe cleaners, except they’re a dull red. The male flowers can vary in color from the yellow of the photo below to the yellow-orange of the photo above and even to red and brown.

(For more information about Tripsacum dactyloides, including a clickable map showing where this species grows, you can visit the USDA website.)

© 2011 Steven Schwartzman