Cowpen Daisies
A little bit of rain late in the summer and the fields and road medians all around Santa Fe have exploded with yellow daisy-like flowers. They are Verbesina encelioides, or cowpen daisy.
All spring and summer the roadside fields and street medians were simply dry brown hardpan. Not a blade of grass or anything green for months. It looked clean and spare but uninteresting, and very, very brown.
In late July the monsoons came, first with a devastating flood, and then later in the summer with a few inches of rain here and there. Nothing like the constant downpours over the mountain range to our east, but we got some. And that's all it took.
The narrow, sand covered medians on the main street in our neighborhood went wild. Feathery grasses and cowpen daisies sprang up.
All through our neighborhood any untended area looks like this, with purple Russian sage, delicate orange spikes of globe mallow and yellow cowpen daisies happily mingling together along with lots of green weedery.
All year it's so dry here -- the scant rain that New Mexico gets all comes in the late summer, so September is an absolute riot of flowers and greenery and weeds and wildflowers and beautiful grasses and cowpen daisies, cowpen daisies and more cowpen daisies everywhere.
On my walk around the neighborhood the other day I saw nothing but fields of flowers in all directions. One of the real benefits of this development is the system of walking paths, all paved, that snake around and behind every cluster of houses. There are miles and miles of wandering paths, and on this September day they were lined with yellow flowers.
Even where the terrible July flood had washed out the arroyo around the corner from us (and several houses near us were flooded), cowpen daisies now line the path of destruction, undaunted by nature's havoc.
Every bit of open space around town is a sea of yellow flowers and green grasses.
In the washed out arroyo there are pink Apache Plume shrubs in bloom, and they seemed to shrug off being flooded out too. These are tough shrubs, and like chamisa (rabbitbrush) they grow wild and big everywhere and they are weedy, but interesting.
Apache Plume flowers are frothy pink starbursts, and they make up for the ungainly foliage and form of this plant. I've seen some Apache Plume shrubs well pruned, and it makes a difference. This can be a nice landscape plant with some work.
All over town wildflowers are blooming and grasses are setting tawny seedheads, roadside sunflowers are nodding, and asters are making a show, both the shy little purple rayed ones and sunny yellow hairy goldenasters that grow in every gravel crack available.
But it's the cowpen daisies that blanket the landscape absolutely everywhere the eye can see. I took so many iPhone shots on my walk around our immediate neighborhood, until I tired of pulling my phone out at every step.
Here's a photo (not mine) of what it looks like in so many areas outside of town.
Weeds and wildflowers, and wow, what a show.
All spring and summer the roadside fields and street medians were simply dry brown hardpan. Not a blade of grass or anything green for months. It looked clean and spare but uninteresting, and very, very brown.
In late July the monsoons came, first with a devastating flood, and then later in the summer with a few inches of rain here and there. Nothing like the constant downpours over the mountain range to our east, but we got some. And that's all it took.
The narrow, sand covered medians on the main street in our neighborhood went wild. Feathery grasses and cowpen daisies sprang up.
All through our neighborhood any untended area looks like this, with purple Russian sage, delicate orange spikes of globe mallow and yellow cowpen daisies happily mingling together along with lots of green weedery.
Even where the terrible July flood had washed out the arroyo around the corner from us (and several houses near us were flooded), cowpen daisies now line the path of destruction, undaunted by nature's havoc.
Every bit of open space around town is a sea of yellow flowers and green grasses.
In the washed out arroyo there are pink Apache Plume shrubs in bloom, and they seemed to shrug off being flooded out too. These are tough shrubs, and like chamisa (rabbitbrush) they grow wild and big everywhere and they are weedy, but interesting.
Apache Plume flowers are frothy pink starbursts, and they make up for the ungainly foliage and form of this plant. I've seen some Apache Plume shrubs well pruned, and it makes a difference. This can be a nice landscape plant with some work.
All over town wildflowers are blooming and grasses are setting tawny seedheads, roadside sunflowers are nodding, and asters are making a show, both the shy little purple rayed ones and sunny yellow hairy goldenasters that grow in every gravel crack available.
But it's the cowpen daisies that blanket the landscape absolutely everywhere the eye can see. I took so many iPhone shots on my walk around our immediate neighborhood, until I tired of pulling my phone out at every step.
Here's a photo (not mine) of what it looks like in so many areas outside of town.
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| not my photo, but it looks like this everywhere |
Weeds and wildflowers, and wow, what a show.
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