Penny Cress Saves the Day

Our one flowering wildflower on this wonderful day was the pretty perennial called penny cress or candy tufts. It is the former Thlaspi fendleri, but is now Nocceae fendleri. That’s my photo of the plant and it doesn’t do the plant justice. If you get a chance, you should look it up at the web site SEINet. Alligator bark juniper apparently is an old common name. Now a days it is simply alligator juniper. I’m now up to date, but after seeing all those male juniper plants getting ready to explode with pollen I’m thinking it could be called “pollengator juniper.”  (check out my photo below...yikes!) The botanical name is still Juniperus deppeana and alleluia to that. In central Texas and the land of Juniperus ashei folks suffer terribly from the pollen and call their suffering cedar fever. We’ve been in Santa Fe when the Juniperus monosperma were releasing their pollen making much of the populace quite miserable. I don’t remember anyone having a name for their misery, but we heard many nasally profanities during our stay.