Look What's Blooming Now!

Marilynne Keyser, Native Plant Coordinator

Despite the dry, hot and smoky summer, which cut short our early summer blooms, we can still enjoy these lovely late summer to fall native plants. 

Fall is the season of rabbitbrush glory.  Green rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus visiciflorus), pictured right, flowers first, beginning in August, followed by gray rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseousus), pictured left, in September. Their tiny yellow flowers are almost indistinguishable, but the stems and leaves allow you to differentiate them.  Green rabbitbrush has woody, brown stems and small linear leaves that often are slightly twisted.  Gray rabbitbrush has woolly stems that appear gray due to the soft white hairs and small linear untwisted leaves.

 

Smoothstem blazing star (Mentzelia laevicaulis) has large, yellow star-shaped flowers that bloom at the tip of erect, widely-branching whitish stems.  The leaves are deeply lobed and coated with stiff barbed hairs.  It starts to bloom in July and continues into September.  This plant is found sandy, gravelly soil, or rocky canyon slopes.

 

Richardson’s penstemon (Penstemon richardsonii) is a late summer bloomer that can last into October.  The beautiful pink flowers are prolific, growing at the tips of many upright hairless stems.  The leaves are opposite on the stem, lance-shaped, and deeply saw-toothed, which accounts for its other common name, cutleaf penstemon. This penstemon is found on cliffs and in rocky areas where moisture is conserved by the rocks.

 

Western Goldenrod (Euthamia occidentalis) has tall erect stems, branched only near the top, where yellow flowerheads cluster. Leaves are alternate, long and narrow with edges dotted with resin, making them feel rough. This late bloomer is often found along river edges.

 

Blue Mountain buckwheat (Eriogonum strictum var. proliferum) is a large, rounded plant with many branched stems.  Like other eriogonums, this plants has erect basal leaves, but there are no leaves on the flowering stems. The tiny white flower with dark pink vertical lines on the petals eventually ages to a dark pink. Both the stems and the bracts of the flowers are covered in white woolly hairs.

 

Hoary Aster (Dieteria canescens) is a spreading to erect plant with grayish stems and and narrow, sometimes lobed leaves.  The flowerhead has two to three rows of distinctive, sharply pointed bracts, purple ray flowers and many yellow disk flowers.

Keep your eyes peeled for these colorful autumn blossoms when you are enjoying the outdoors in Central Oregon.