Walk In The Field Part 5 - Yellow Flower

What struck me about this flower was the 8 point star on a lot of them. It just really stood out on some that were not opened all the way.

Not all of them had 8 points, however.



This next one is all open (center and outer), not as dramatic or interesting.



And yet another one, closed center, open outer, yet the star shape is still prominent.



And here we have the full length view:


This one was difficult to track down cuz I could not find it listed at npwrc.

I think that's because it is a not a native plant.
It's an alien! lol

Anyhoo...somehow I landed at this interesting site that offers to sell you a book where you can learn botany in a day.
Sounds good. lol
It is highly rated and cheaper at Amazon.
All his books are highly rated. I might have to buy some of those.

I figured the yellow flower was in the aster family so I went to that section.

Scroll down, and viola! There it is.
Identified as a Tragopogon spp., Salsify or "oyster plant."

So then, I did find a write up about it at the Fargo
ndsu ag site.
Common Name: Goat's beard, Western salsify
Species: Tragopogon dubius Scop.
Synonym: Tragopon major Jacq.
Family: Asteraceae - Sunflower Family
Origin: Introduced species from Eurasia.

So I'm happy. It grows in North Dakota. Salsify, Tragopogon--close enough.

NOTE: Pics taken Fri 26 Jun 09. On Sun 28 Jun 09 they were gone. Not a yellow flower in sight. It was windy Saturday. Stormed Friday night?

Walk In The Field Part 4 - Penstemon Gracilis

Slender penstemon (Penstemon gracilis)
ALSO CALLED
Slender Beardtongue (Penstemon gracilis)

single sterile stamen
four fertile stamens as well
Greek paene, "almost", and stamon, "thread" (filament) or "almost a stamen."
Gracilis means "slender" in botanical Latin.

Scrophulariaceae (The Figwort Family)

More Penstemons listed at Figwort Family link above and also here.

NOTES:
enature:
Penstemon gracilis = Lilac Beardtongue
Penstemon australis = Slender Beardtongue
figwort or snapdragon family
48 results for penstemon search
12 results if narrowed down to plains region

Google images on penstemon gracilis.

Walk In The Field Part 3 - Unknown Hairy

It stood out and was in its prime.



I loved the hairiness of it, which extended all the way down and into the leaves.



Best pic of the bud/blossom:



Closer:



UPDATE: Tue 30 JUN 09

Aha! "Hairy" is a coneflower.





It's gonna be coneflower heaven out there pretty soon. Stay tuned.

npwrc ref:
Purple Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia)
Purple Coneflower (ref2)

Walk In The Field Part 2 - Thistle

A thistle in its prime.









Flodman's Thistle (Cirsium flodmanii)
OR
Wavyleaf Thistle (Cirsium undulatum)

Asteraceae (The Aster Family)

More Thistles:








And here's one I found by the road. "Bushy Von Haven" (I'm into these, can you tell.)



View from the top:

Walk In The Field Part 1 - Purple

I walked in the field and took tons of pics of things in the grass. I didn't see one coneflower this year. I'm surprised by that. Previous years pics were in July, so I'll look again later.

I tried to identify the plants when I could.

Purple flowers:



Earlier in June I saw some that had mostly one color, a red purple. Now they are mulicolored and very pretty. They are like a clump here and there in the field.



I would put this one in the Fabaceae (The Bean Family) section. But I didn't see anything that really nailed it for sure. The flower petals part looks kinda like purple locoweed, which can be toxic to cattle, but a plant view doesn't look the same.

Here's my process for ND plant id.

MAP
Start Here
Plants
Prairie Wildflowers and Grasses of North Dakota
Spring Wildflowers
Purple locoweed

OR
Start Here
Plants
Native Wildflowers of the North Dakota Grasslands
Lists the Families here.
(Note: NATIVE. If it's an alien, it's not listed. More on that later.)

Under Fabaceae is
Purple Locoweed (Oxytropis lambertii)

Those two pics look totally different to me.
So, google it.

Now things start to look more like what I have...or not. lol

This one shows hairy texture and an ant.



This one shows some of the pretty bokeh I got straight out of the camera and cropped, no post-processing.



Zoom in a little from the full plant view:

Lisa Marie Presley - Now What - Music

So I was reading some of the stuff on Michael Jackson and came across
Lisa Marie Presley's post on myspace.

What she wrote about MJ reminded me of that movie, A River Runs Through It, because it had that similar theme of watching someone self-destruct and feeling powerless to stop it.
(See wikiquote.)

I ended up listening to LMP's songs while I was there and really liked
"Now What." A sad slow goodbye song.

It's been a l-o-n-g time since I've found a new song to listen to.



Song lyrics snippet:

"...When I left and I said goodbye
Did you know that I meant it that time?
And damn it if I didn't try to do
Everything that I was supposed to
And now - what do I do now?
Oh, I don't know
Oh, I'm leaving..."

Fog On The Forty

Morning walk on our land, about 10 minutes after official sunrise.


The mowed trail makes a pretty picture.
Even with the trail, I was sopping wet afterward anyway cuz lots of moisture, but I didn't care, as long as I can see where I'm going.

Look at those ears peeking up over the hills/grass:





Fog, deer -- all fairly common.

Boy, was that deer surprised. Like he couldn't believe what he was seeing out there on HIS turf, usually no humans. It was funny.





Looks like houses in the background on last pic, but that is all just fog winding up thru the valley crevices.

Alice In Wonderland March 2010

Hey, I didn't know there was an Alice In Wonderland movie coming out.
It looks good.



I found a bunch of links on the movie at slashfilm.com.

Here's one with
HUGE nice pics.
Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland Logo and High Resolution Photos/Concept Art



And here's one with a Glossary of Terms For Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

The images I posted here were cropped, layered, and lightened a lot to show more detail.

Discussion and scans of a magazine article about the movie at timburtoncollective forum.
Scans are as images and then as text further down in the thread.

Soap Bubble Photography

Wow.
These are beautiful.

akindofmagic.eu

Via ColourLovers.com

I adore the one that looks like a dolphin.

Butterfly Identification - North Dakota

I found a really good place for North Dakota butterfly info.

I know about the North Dakota State University Agriculture and University Extension (Fargo, ND)

I know about the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center (Jamestown, ND)

However, navigating those sites and finding the info I want can be rather difficult. Often it's thru the back door (googling) that I find what I want at a specific site.

Butterfly Gardening in North Dakota

Download the pdf file, e1266.pdf at the top where it says:
"Click here for an Adobe Acrobat PDF file suitable for printing. (350KB)"
This has big color pics, calendar, names.

At npwrc:
Atlas of North Dakota Butterflies
Lists the Brush-footed butterflies.

Miller Moths

(Pic added Thur 25 Jun 09. Caught one in the screen door in all his ew-icky-yuckness.)

Miller moth season again. Yeah, they get in the house. They like my bright computer screen and sometimes fly in my face.
Ick, ew, yuck.

Googling it...(Colorado has a problem with miller moths, evidently.)

The thing about trying to identify is that all the pics/illustrations show moths with open wings. I never see them that way. When they aren't fluttering around they are sitting with their wings shut and look very dark to black. If I ever get the opportunity, I'll try getting a good pic of one.

Moths of North Dakota

six species:

"...six of the more common and economically important species of Noctuinae in the Dakotas."

1. Black cutworm
Agrotis ipsilon (Hufnegal 1766)
Common name: Ypsilon dart/ Black cutworm.

2. Dingy cutworm
Feltia jaculifera (Guenée 1852)
Common name: Dingy cutworm.

3. Army cutworm
Euxoa auxiliaris (Grote 1873)
Common name: Army cutworm

4. Pearly underwing
Peridroma saucia (Hübner 1808)
Common name: Variegated cutworm/ Pearly underwing.


(I created the image summary for my reference. Pic was cropped to fit my blog. See site for full pic.)

5. W[ell]-marked cutworm
Spaelotis clandestina (Harris 1862)
Common name: W[ell]-marked cutworm.


(I created the image summary for my reference. Pic was cropped to fit my blog. See site for full pic.)

6. Greater yellow underwing
Noctua pronuba (Linnaeus 1758)
Common name: Greater yellow underwing (Europe).

Longer List
Economically Important and Common Moths

Families of Moths

"...about 1,400 species of moths are known from the Dakotas."

One other reference relevant to North Dakota, dated 6 Jun 02.
ag.ndsu

My abbreviated notes from above link:

Miller Moths are the adult moths of cutworms, Family Noctuidae.

The main species flying around is the Army cutworm, which will migrate to the Rocky Mountains for the summer.

It then returns to the plains in the late summer to lay eggs in fields.

Several migratory moths are also arriving including:
Black cutworm
Variegated cutworm.
Striped cutworm (early Jul)
Red-backed cutworms (mid-Jul)
Dingy cutworms (Jul thru Aug)
Dark-sided cutworm and Bronzed cutworm (Aug-Sep)

Most adult cutworm moths will live about 21 days or more.

Family Noctuidae - Owlet Moths
Pronunciation:
nawk-TOO-ih-dee

Wheat Revisited

Wheat Pic



The blue looked kind of blah, gray, dull.
So subtle improvement with curves:


Curves setting:


How about something completely different:


I grayscaled it and layered it with this:



Just a cloud texture filter and a lens flare filter.
I like it.
Got the idea from a photo I saw on Flickr. Don't have a link, though.