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Lunchtime Photo

This is a patch of "swamp daisies" on Lake Martin in Louisiana. I believe they're actually called Spanish Needles, though I'm not sure about that. But a couple of different guides assured us that among swamp aficionados they are just swamp daisies.

November 4, 2021 — Lake Martin, St. Martin Parish, Louisiana

5 thoughts on “Lunchtime Photo

  1. Steve_OH

    There is a plant called swamp daisy or swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius), but this is not that. The leaves are the wrong shape, and the center disk is the wrong color.

    There is also a plant called Spanish needles (Bidens alba), but this is not that, either. Spanish needles has smaller, white flowers.

    It could be some other Helianthus. (It looks a lot like woodland sunflower, H. divaricatus, which I'm familiar with, as it grows in my yard, but the swamp habitat is wrong.) But there are many, many species of aster that mostly kind of look the same, so there are many possibilities.

    1. mudwall jackson

      spanish needles has a couple of cousins that have yellow petals and a brown cone and found in wet habitats, b laevis (burrmarigold) and b mitis (smallfruit beggarticks) which might conceivably be called spanish needles by some. i can't tell enough from the photo to rule them in or out. maybe a sharper eye can. there's also butterweed Packera glabella which does grow in louisiana's swamps, but it tends to bloom in spring and the foliage appears wrong.

    2. Rattus Norvegicus

      As my dad, a botanist, called them: DYC's. Damn Yellow Compositae because they can be quite hard to identify properly.

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