100 Species Challenge #73

Specimen #73 Cup Plant
Silphium perfoliatum

Photo by me (so glad I had the cell phone along for once)

Location: along the city biking trails


I always thought it was a sunflower with funny leaves, but when I looked in my good old Peterson field guide, I found that I was wrong.

These plants are everywhere around town, native to Iowa, and fairly noticeable because of the leaves. The leaves named the plant -- the base forms a cup around the stem.

Use and classification of Cup Plant is all over the place -- it's a weed, it's threatened, smoke from the roots and tea from the leaves have different Native health benefits, it grows in dry prairie, it grows in wetlands, etc. Flip flop and flop flip. I will just say that I enjoy being able to positively identify it.

University of Illinois Extension Office has an account here.

100 Species Challenge #72

Thanks, blogger, for flipping my photo. You think you're so smart, no matter what I do to the original image.

Specimen #73

Plains Prickly Pear
Opuntia polyacantha

Photo by me, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota

Here's another plant I found everywhere during my South Dakota trip. I hadn't seen grass and cacti mixed together until I got to the reservation. Prickly pears are native to North America. Many uses listed at this link: ethnobotany.


The entire plant forms a low, matted clump. I didn't see any fresh flowers, but if they were fresh and not dried up, from what I could tell, they would probably be yellow. Prickly pears come short and tall, singly and in large groups, but always in the pear shape. In _North American Wildlife_, size is listed from 4 - 12" tall, but I saw many shorter ones. Growing conditions are sun and dry land.

100 Species Challenge #71

Specimen #71 Native American Sage (the silvery white plants)

Location: Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota

Photo by me.

This sage is not like the herb we cook a turkey and stuffing with. It does smell nice, and you can make a healing tea with it, but it is not the same as your garden variety sage. This sage grows everywhere in the reservation, in the Black Hills, and the "Badlands." It can be short, up to 2.5' tall, single stemmed and spindly, or branched and bushy, but the color is always silvery. It is very easy to spot from a distance.

 It is used by the Lakota for healing, purification, and prayer. They will make a smudge, or bundle of dried sage stems that has been lit for its smoke, to wash away the negative from a person, room, etc.

Sage smudges are also used to cleanse rooms or areas of negative influence, as well as to purify sacred items such as pipes, drums, and eagle feathers.