Clasping-leaf coneflower

Many more people are familiar with Mexican hats, black-eyed susans, and coreopsis, than are familiar with this wildflower that closely resembles each of those others in one or more ways. It’s the clasping-leaf coneflower, Dracopis amplexicaulis. Here you see a flower head of one at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center on May 6th. The pleasantly contrasting background color came from a colony of prairie brazoria, Warnockia scutellarioides. The picture below explains the “clasping leaf” part of the plant’s common name.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman