But some orange is nice!

I revamped this blog and got rid of that horrible orange Blogger template. But I kept an orange-ish colored title. Then I posted pictures of flies on Oxeye, which is pretty orange. Now, since Oxeye (False Sunflower) is one of my favorite meadow flowers, you are probably going to have to put up with even more orange over the course of several posts. Get used to it.

In this little gallery (just a taste of things to come) we see a typical flower head with nearly all of its disc flowers fully open. Notice the Hemipteran insect (bug) “walking the plank” on one of the ray flowers. Then I’ve zoomed in on a group of disc flowers to show their intricate design and precise alignment. (Click on the pictures to get their full impact.)

All this talk of flower heads, ray flowers and disc flowers may be confusing or arcane for those of you not familiar with members of the composite family (daisies, asters and the like). Our oxeyes are usually taken as single flowers, when in fact they are actually big, precisely organized groups of specialized flowers. The “she loves me, she loves me not” “petals” are really individual “ray flowers” consisting of one petal and little else. The central disc is made up of somewhat more complete flowers with the reproductive parts, either stamens or pistils or both. The whole assembly is precisely designed to attract pollinators, reward them with nectar and then have them unknowingly do the vital work of pollination.

In the last post, I copped out of explaining the “false” in the name of False Sunflower. I’ll continue to do that until I find a photograph that shows the critical feature clearly enough to be convincing. (Actually, the extreme close-up view does show the feature in the lower right. But it's a rather shriveled up example, so I'll make you wait--I'm sure that you'll be holding your breath!)

Some (but probably not many) may be wondering why I spell “disc” with a c rather than with a k. Disk is certainly an acceptable spelling, but with the advent of “compact discs”, almost always spelled with a c, I’ve chosen, for the sake of consistency, to take a C grade on my report card, rather than a K grade. And that, dear friends, is a joke so private that only a few old Ramsey High School teachers would get it.

But at least I’ve got you wondering. Please email me at tomburr@optonline.net if you get it or would like an explanation of “K grades”.