Closer and closer looks at poverty weed

Again from November 4th and the same part of the greenbelt adjacent to Great Hills Park as yesterday’s view of a densely fluffy poverty weed bush, here’s a closer look at the tufts on a female Baccharis neglecta. In the lower left portion of the image the little seed bundles still hold their fibers mostly parallel, while elsewhere those fibers are losing their alignment and loosening up, soon to be breeze-blown, wind-wafted, later land-linked and root-ready.

And here’s an even closer look, this time at two back-to-back tufts. In the one on the right, the fibers were seemingly still sodden from recent rain.

They say that seeing is believing, but most people who see one of these bushes or small trees wouldn’t believe it’s in the same botanical family as sunflowers. It is.

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman