After the success of our first #wildflowerhour challenge, here’s this week’s theme. It’s the Asteraceae family, which is the largest family of flowering plants after grasses. It includes daisies, thistles, dandelions and yarrows.
Any good wild flower book should be able to give you a good range of Asteraceae members, but this week we will also be giving some tips on this blog on how to identify them. It was formerly known as the Composite family, so if you have an older wild flower book, look out for that. And because many members of this family look rather alike, there will be plenty of opportunity to help one another out with IDs as well.
#wildflowerhour is wonderful because it includes the PhD students and the beginners who’ve only just learned how to identify a thistle. We all share the same delight in the plant world, and what’s especially magical about that hour on a Sunday night is the way we like to offer one another skills, knowledge, and excitement about what we’ve found. So if you know very little about plants, this challenge is as much for you as it is for the pro.
Everyone can find a daisy or a dandelion. What about trying to push yourself and identify a member of this family that you don’t know? Or hunt down a rarer member? But most importantly, enjoy hunting, and share your Asteraceae photos on Twitter using #wildflowerhour or on our Facebook group.
Here are some pictures from the past few weeks to inspire you.
