A Goat’s Beard

Yellow Goat's Beard (photo by Kate St. John)

June 8, 2014:

Yesterday morning I helped count birds at the Emerald View BioBlitz with David and Colleen Yeany and Eva Simms.   Eva showed us the new trails in Olympia and Mt. Washington Parks.  What a lot of work to build them — but well worth it!  Check out the trail map.

Above Route 51 in Mt. Washington Park we found unusual flowers three feet tall with daisy-like heads, thin leaves, and long puckered buds.  I used my photos to identify them when I got home.

Yellow Goat's Beard, Emerald View, Pittsburgh, PA (photo by Kate St. John)

Yellow Goat’s Beard (Tragopogon dubius) is an introduced annual (or biennial) from Eurasia so I’m not surprised we found it growing in a sunny area reseeded by PennDOT several years ago.  It’s distinguished by the green bracts that show around the edge of the flower.  Fortunately we were there in the morning.  This flower closes in late afternoon.

None of the flowers had gone to seed so we didn’t see the reason this plant is called Goat’s Beard — its huge fluffy seed head.

Goat's beard seed head (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Goat’s beard seed head (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

This is not the only “Goat’s Beard” and for a moment I was excited by the thought of another one, Aruncus dioicus, which hosts the rare Dusky Azure butterfly (Celastrina nigra).  Though similarly named they are unrelated and don’t even resemble each other.  Aruncus dioicus is a native in the Rose family and grows in shady and moist deciduous woods.

One of many goats’ beards, this one is yellow.

(photo of seed head from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original. All other photos by Kate St. John)

2 thoughts on “A Goat’s Beard

  1. Thank you! I saw one of these plants last year growing in gravel in a Burger King drive through last year and couldn’t figure out what it was. The seed head looked like a dandelion on steroids and I was intrigued! Of course it would be non-native, but still nifty to see.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *