Really, the only mystery about this flower is based on my inadequate identification skills. I’m sure it has a name and a history and a place in the Ozark ecosystem. I tried finding a match for it in my usual identification guides, but without a picture of the leaves, I’ve come up empty.

It’s adorable to my eye nonetheless. The flower is more yellow than this photo depicts, but it is a pale yellow, a buttercup yellow. I found this plant and a few more nearby in the mowed area of the pecan plantation. As far as I can tell, they had grown in the few weeks since the area was shorn. Whether the flowers were there all along and merely stood out now without scrubby competition or whether the plant has sprouted because it can finally get sunlight, I can’t say. These flowers were more than a foot off the ground, so they certainly would have been cut down had they been there at mowing time.

I always like these little surprises; they’re like rewards for paying closer attention.

Missouri calendar:

• Chimney swifts begin migration.
• Blue jays gather acorns and fly to other trees to hide them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 1:01 am and is filed under Green Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.