This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s the purple haze of coming autumn days, Blue Mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum).
Blue Mistflower is a clumping perennial most often found in sunny wet patches along woodland edges. It grows densely and fairly low, spreading outward as it goes. Leaves are held apart and opposite each other. Leaves that are almost triangular, crinkly, and a dark-green with burgundy accents on burgundy stems that hold up flower heads. Each stem ties together a bouquet of blossoms at its peak. Blossoms of blue and violet melted over one another onto fuzzy filamentous petals. Each kernel of color is a cluster of flowers clumped with others into an arrangement that’s fractally reflected across the stand of plants.
A purple haze appears to hover above the vegetation to the far off observer. Those who approach find a mist of blue punctured by lively orange and yellows, contrasting flashes fluttering like leaves over smoke. Blue Mistflower is a wondrous nectar plant. It’s placement at the nexus between wetland, forest, and glade creates the opportunity to view many species on pollinators seldom seen together, intermixed with one another. A fog of flies, bees, & butterflies surround our flower and settle like dew upon its petals. We see this phenomenon a lot with our late blooming wetland wildflowers but it is never less impressive with subsequent iterations or alternative floral presentations. Our wetland plants are often prosperous where they find purchase but isolated from their kin. So they bribe the bugs as heavily as they can for even the chance of them delivering pollen to off.
