asteraceae

when my husband or best friend and walking partner ask me “what flower is that?” i will often answer, i don’t know but i am sure it is the Asteraceae family. it’s an inside joke.  because after eight years of looking up new-to-me wildflowers, it seems that the overwhelming preponderance of them belong to the asteraceae family. the other thing i have noticed, is that wiki is getting updated all the time as new genetic identification reclassifies many of our wild plants. in fact, just tonight, i saw for the first time at the top of the Asteraceae page on wiki, the following: “TheAsteraceae family includes over 32,000 currently accepted species, in over 1,900 genera (list) in 13 subfamilies.[7] In terms of numbers of species, the Asteraceae are rivaled only by the Orchidaceae.[5][8] Which is the larger family is unclear, because of the uncertainty about how many extant species each family includes.”. so, my inside joke, my intuition, has been right all along.

aster blossoms