Friday, August 27, 2010

Pretty picture: Rudbekia hirta


This is possibly a little late; I took these pictures in mid-July, but didn't post them because everybody else already seemed to have the Rudbeckia-photo thing covered. What's actually blooming now is mostly Helianthus and Solidago, which I haven't been taking pictures of this summer because of not having air conditioning in the car anymore. But I figure they're all gold-colored flowers, so if seeing them a couple weeks late is going to be problematic for you, just back away from your computer monitor and squint until they could plausibly be something else.

I really like this picture full-sized.


11 comments:

Diana said...

My Rudbeckia are still going strong. I like the little ring of tiny yellow flowers (?) in the brown center of the first picture. I've never noticed that before. Now I'll have to go look closely at my Rudbeckia.

Liza said...

No air conditioning in the car? You poor baby boy! This is my first year driving a car with a/c, and I'm spoiled rotten now. Seriously - Albuquerque is brutal without air conditioning. I'm guessing with the humidity, Iowa's worse. You have my sympathies!

Darla said...

You can't possibly get enough of this! Beautiful, no matter when it was captured.

mr_subjunctive said...

Diana:

They're in the Asteraceae (formerly? Compositae?), which all have flowers made of multiple individual flowers like that. You can sometimes see the same thing in close-up photos of Zinnia, Cichorium, Gerbera, Pericallis, etc.

Liza:

There was a time when I could probably have handled this -- during college, it was not unheard of to walk across Waco, TX on 90F+ days just to go to the mall -- but at some point in the last few years I stopped being able to handle heat without progressing almost immediately to heat exhaustion. I'd sort of thought/hoped, when we got Sheba this spring, that having to walk her every day would gradually acclimate me to the increasing temperatures, but instead I just had a couple months where I was borderline heat-exhausted every day, until I gave up the walks entirely a couple months (?) ago.

We're going to resume them again once things cool off, and if it's safe to do so (not sure about canine cold-tolerance: I should probably google), we'll probably walk throughout the winter.

The flip side of the intolerance for heat has been an increasing tolerance for cold, to the point where I can walk for fifteen minutes in 20F temperatures wearing only a light jacket over a t-shirt and be just fine (and in fact used to do so routinely, when I worked at the garden center). So you'll probably see all kinds of outdoor pictures this winter. I'm hoping for blizzards.

But then, I always hope for bizzards, and so far I've gotten nothing.

Nancy in Sun Lakes AZ said...

You're not a desert dweller, that's for sure, Mr._S. You're not a visitor between June and October either! You would not be happy to say the least!

Ivynettle said...

Pretty pictures, whether they're late or not (they're still blooming here).
Although this actually looks more like R. fulgida to me.

mr_subjunctive said...

Ivynettle:

It's certainly possible; I didn't get a picture of the tag. I was assuming based on hirta being more widely available.

Nancy in Sun Lakes AZ:

Yep. I was at one time pushing for a move to Canada, or at least Minnesota (you know, for the weather), but now that we have a house, that's pretty unlikely.

Not that it was ever likely before.

Plowing Through Life (Martha) said...

I love rudbekias, so post about them all you like. I think you'd do very well with our weather. There are a few hot and humid days in the summer that you would have to avoid being outdoors but the rest of the spring and summer season is fabulous. This is a dog-loving city, too. I've never seen so many dog owners as I've seen since I've moved here.

Steve Asbell said...

Yeah, I tried squinting and I liked it better before.

Gail said...

One of my favorites~and it's great photo~gail

Tom said...

Pictures of R. hirta are always appropriate!