A closer look at four-nerve daisies

After showing you three good colonies of four-nerve daises in the last post, I thought I should remind you what an individual flower head of this species (Tetraneuris linearifolia) looks like. When I searched through my pictures from April 12th along the right-of-way under the power lines west of Morado Circle, I found this one, which has the advantage of including two stages of a four-nerve daisy. The stage on the right, which follows the one on the left, typifies the way the central disk tends to bulge upward at the same time as the ray flowers fold back, lose some of their yellow, and take on a papery appearance.

In case you’re wondering about the curious configuration behind the two daisies, it was the flower globe of an antelope-horns milkweed (Asclepias asperula) that lay far enough in the background for me to render it out of focus yet still retain its pattern of light and dark. Now that I’ve identified the milkweed I guess I’ll have to show you a picture of some in its own right. You see the globe below when several flowers had opened and a greater number of buds were still to open. The accompanying white flowers are corn salad (Valerianella spp.).

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman