SOME PRAIRIE AND ROADSIDE WILDFLOWERS; AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES

ROSINWEED

BEARDTONGUE

COMMON MILKWEED

DAISY

Saturday, 8:00 AM.  62 degrees F, wind NW, just strong enough to ruffle the aspen leaves.  The sky holds a few high, wispy white clouds, and the barometer foretells the same.  It will be a nice, but perhaps on the warm side.
    I came across a few interesting prairie and meadow plants on our trip to the southern part of Wisconsin; three native and one introduced.
    Rosin weed, Silphium integrifolium, is native to dry prairies of the Midwest.  It has a typical, daisy-like Composite family flower and rough leaves that clasp the flowering stems.
    Beardtongue, Penstemon gracillis, is a very pretty flower of dry, open woods and prairies of the upper Midwest, and a member of the Scrophularia family.  Its seed pods are like diminutive pepper shakers, and the tiny black seeds like freshly ground pepper in appearance.
    The common milkweed, Asclepias syriacus, in the milkweed family, is a common but quite beautiful and very fragrant native flower of meadows and roadsides, and the obligate host of the monarch butterfly caterpillar.  When Linnaeaus named it he incorrectly assumed it was from the orient, and thus the species name.
    The common white daisy, or Marguerite,  Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum, “a pernicious but beautiful weed”, was introduced from Europe.  Our roadsides would be far poorer without it.
    Political commentary:  the President’s claim of executive privilege in not disclosing documents in the “Fast and Furious” gun-running debacle is raising persistent questions concerning a cover-up, but of what?  One quite, I believe, possible cause for a cover up of the entire affair would be that it was engineered from the start to ensnare legitimate gun dealers in the Southwest in a scandal that would discredit the entire firearms industry and the so-called “gun lobby.”  This would be very popular with anti-second amendment rights elements of the Democratic Party.  Is this an over-the-top conspiracy theory?  Perhaps so, but if not that then what, and why the reluctance to put all the facts before Congress and the people? When the truth is withheld, conspiracy theories thrive.