A field day

 Today was the quarterly trip to a new-ish park (former golf course) in town to try to find and categorize what's flowering, and get voucher specimens. My fairly new colleague is heading this up and I'm happy to let her run the show (I presume I will get some credit for assisting, and I may write part of the eventual paper). We had four of her botany majors as well to help carry stuff and to do the pressing of the plants at the end.

It was pretty tiring. My knee has a limit for walking on uneven ground and I was hurting a lot by the end of the three hours, but maybe ultimately it will be good for me to do it? Anyway, I'm pretty good at spotting stuff and good at remembering the names of things.

The warm season grasses aren't flowering yet (hopefully we get good rain so they will flower and we can check them out in July or August).

But there was a fair amount of stuff flowering. The last two photos will be a little blurry given that I was getting tired and it was very bright out and I couldn't see well to focus.

But anyway. One of the first things was Coreopsis, probably tinctoria. It's a pretty thing, it's not always got so much of the darker central part of the ray flowers but I think the ones that have that are particularly attractive:

 

 

there was also a lot of wild petunia (Ruellia humilis) out there, it's another attractive one and as I remember, this is one that also grows well in naturalized gardens:

 One of the St. John's worts (Hypericum). I don't know the local species of these as well. Someone suggested H. crux-andrae but when I looked it up, there are only four visible petals on it (makes sense: like St. Andrew's cross). It might be punctatum, I know it's not got enough stamens for prolificum

We also saw a member of the mint family, germander (Teucrium) near one of the wetter areas. 

 

 

 There was Diodia there as well, which I don't see often, but at that point I was tired and it was hard to get a good photo. It's in the Rubiaceae, which is the madder family and also the coffee family. 

The two I had a harder time getting a good focus on were Linum (Flax) 

 

And also Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) You might guess from the name "Deptford," it's not native here, it's native to Europe and particularly known from the UK. It's not particularly invasive and it is kind of a pretty little thing:

 And there was a lot of meadow-pink (Sabatia campestris)

 After we got done, I rushed home (ticks are out here, and while I was doused in enough DEET to give myself  a headache later today, I worry about getting bites; alpha-gal syndrome is a thing here and I know someone who has it, and there's also rocky mountain fever carried by ticks). Showered, threw my clothes in the wash, and grabbed a slice from the local pizza purveyor who is a few blocks from me (I felt like a quick lunch was called for)

 Hawaiian pizza, and it seemed unusually good (Though Geo's is a good pizza place). Maybe I was just hungry...

 I did run over later and get one more chapter done for the "accessibility" standards. 

I'm taking tomorrow off; I have errands I need to run and it's going to pour on Saturday.