Migrating Butterflies Love Rabbitbrush

"Kathy, I was at your plant walk Saturday at Devil's Backbone and today, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of butterflies there!"

I'd just picked up the phone in mid morning, Sept. 22. To be alerted by Sandy to the butterfly migration.

I'd read something about a butterfly migration in the Denver Post : more than the usual number of painted lady butterflies moving south along the Colorado Front Range.

I went to see for myself.

Hawaiian Tea

Tea from Hawaii?

tea 

Tea, Camelia sinensis, is a major tropical crop. Hawaii is the only state in the United States with a tropical climate, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Hawaiians are growing tea. But it did!

Plant Story--Rubber Rabbitbrush, Painting the Landscape Gold

Every fall, the Rocky Mountain foothills turn golden as the very-abundant rubber rabbitbrush, 

Ericameria nauseosa, flowers. It is a spectacular display, coming at the end of summer when most plants are through folowering.

The Late Season Flowers

Rabbitbrush in August

I planned to write about rabbitbrush, Ericameria nauseosa, but on August 23, the plants weren't flowering at all. I went back August 31. On Aug. 31, I could have gathered a bouquet from a hillside of covered in rabbitbrush but fewer than one in 20 inflorescences had open flowers. It will be a good flowering year, but the flowering season has hardly started.

Who would have thought that late August would be too early for flowers?