Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Another Autumn Oddiity


Skunkweed masquerading as cactus...

3 comments:

Katney said...

This opened up a whole can of worms for me. Glad I wasn't on a monitored work computer.

What you show looks like what I know as Wooly Mullen (and my son once knew as George, but that is a different story). So I looked up wooly mullen and, though none of the pictures I found had it masquerading as a cactus, it does definitely look the same.

None of the sources called it skunkweed, though. So I looked up skunkweed. That's where I did NOT find reference to this plant, but instead to a particular strain of cannabis.

That's what local common names will do for you, and I may have to take up with learning the Latin names of things as I have been advised.

The WestCountryBuddha said...

Not sure what skunk weed is, but it's very architectural. Does it flower? (It looks like if it does it's over and what's left are seedheads)

The Idaho Beauty said...

Ok, I was afraid I'd get caught out on this. I showed the pic to a local and she didn't challenge my calling it skunkweed, so I thought yeah, I'm right. But after katney's post, I got to thinking maybe it was skunk cabbage instead. I know we called something in this area skunk weed or cabbage.

I too, then spent a little too much time googling. Yes, I found one picture of Wooly Mullen that looks like my plant, but I confess I've never heard that name before. None of the pics of skunkweed or skunk cabbage look anything like what we called by that name. Makes you wonder...

Yes, Anabelle, those long stalks bloom a few flowers at a time starting from the bottom up. The yellow at the top is the last of the flowers and the brown part is the dried up old flowers holding the seeds. These plants are probably 6 feet high.