FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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A CLOSER LOOK AT NARROW-LEAVED MULE EARS By Bob Young This is the fifteenth of a series of articles describing the flowers pictured in our wildflower brochure. —ed.
Narrow-leaved Mule Ears (Wyethia angustifolia) is shown in the brochure “Common Native Wildflowers of Edgewood,” published jointly by the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve. The genus name honors Nathaniel J. Wyeth, the collector of the original species Wyethia helianthoides probably in eastern Idaho in 1833. Wyethia angustifolia is a perennial plant, growing one to two feet high. It appears in grasslands, under 6000 feet elevation, from southern Washington and western Oregon, south to Monterey County, and sparingly in the Sierra Nevada. The specific epithet angustifolia comes from two Latin words: angust, meaning drawn together, or narrow; and foli, meaning leaf. On Edgewood, Mule Ears blooms in April and May on non-serpentine soil. In the summer, all parts of the plant dry and turn brown, the roots going dormant until the next season. Mule Ears is in the Sunflower Family of plants. The large, yellow flower is similar to the agriculturally-grown sunflower and to the florists’ sunflower. The diversity of plants in this family can be seen by comparing the size and shape of the Mule Ears plant with the two other members of the sunflower family in our wildflower brochure: Goldfields and Tidy Tips. Even more diversity within this very large family can be found in plants such as thistle, marigold, chrysanthemum, sagebrush, lettuce, and others. A web site (www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/nwythint.html) contains a biography of Nathaniel Wyeth, many pages of his journals, and selected letters. He organized and led two expeditions to the fur country, with the purpose of establishing a fur trapping business to compete with the entrenched companies. In one of his letters dated 1833 to Thomas Nuttall, botanist and ornithologist, he mentions that he had sent “a package of plants collected in the interior and on the western coast of America.” Nuttall, an Englishman, was a lecturer in natural history at Harvard. He resigned that post in 1834 and joined Wyeth’s party, traveling to Idaho, then to Fort Vancouver, Washington. He later traveled to Hawaii. It was Nuttall who wrote up the botanical description of Wyethia, naming the plant in honor of its first collector. On Edgewood Natural Preserve, we also have another plant in the genus Wyethia: W. glabra. This plant, known commonly as Mule Ears, has very broad leaves and therefore is easily distinguished from Narrow-leaved Mule Ears. |
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