These have gotten really tall, but I had believed they were Rough Blazingstar that I thought I had put in this spot. I tried pulling a shorter one today and it is in the ground good! I hope you can see enough detail, if not I can take another picture, they don't look to be going anywhere. :)


Here it is alongside another plant I thought was a tall native, but I am beginning to think it might be a horse weed.???


Thank you for any help.

Need to see mature flowers. Maybe a Ambrosia.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It is a Liatris of some sort. Hard to say if it's Rough Blazingstar (Liatris aspera) or another species of Liatris without a better look at it.

And yes, the plant on the right side of the second picture is a horse weed (Conyza canadensis). They do a pretty good job of blending in with blazingstars, at least until the bloom season rolls around.

Thank you for the replies. I'll get more pictures on here later. I took the photo last Wednesday and there has not been a lot of change in the blooms since then.

I finally got some new pictures. I hope they will help.




And as a comparison, this is some buds forming about halfway up a known Rough Blazingstar. The top flowers are starting to open up. You can see how slightly elongated the buds are.


This is off topic: I saw somewhere on the site that they want photos without other objects if possible. Understandable. There is a lot of green, so used my hand. What is the best way to show contrast in the photo without using something or resorting to cutting off a chunk of the plant.? I do not like cutting off native flowers to give them all a chance to go to seed and hopefully spread.

I'd lean more towards Meadow Blazing Star (Liatris ligulistylis) than Rough Blazing Star (Liatris aspera). The flower heads on Rough Blazingstar are usually sessile, while those of Meadow Blazingstar are more likely to be stalked, like many of those in your pictures.

Also, it's early for Rough Blazingstar to be blooming in Iowa, it's mostly a late summer/fall bloomer. Meadow blazingstar starts blooming a month to six weeks earlier (like about now).

However, the only way to be "sure" is to tear the flower heads apart and count the individual florets. Rough blazingstar will normally have 12 - 30 florets per head, while Meadow blazingstar will have 30 - 70.

You could show contrast with a piece of white typing paper behind the parts of the plant you're photographing. It's less distracting than a hand.