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Mystery Mexican Hat

13 years ago

I found this lone plant growing along the side of our rural road outside of Dripping Springs, TX (Texas Hill Country). There are other Mexican Hats growing there, but only one that looks like this. Upon close inspection, those tiny yellow curly-looking things are VERY tiny petals--similar to the bottom row (the hat brim) but very tiny. This is the strangest Mexican hat I've ever seen.

Has anyone seen this or know what it is called?

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Comments (2)

bostedo: 8a tx-bp-dfw
13 years ago
That does seem to be a very nice and unusual find. I believe those small yellow "petals" are common on most (all?) ratibida columnifera, just rarely that big and never open all at once (that I've seen, anyway). More common to see them open as a ring that moves from bottom to top of the cone.... linked some photos below that show this.

Looks unique enough to work as named cultivar if someone could figure out how to legally tame it into a reliable performer. Thanks for sharing your find.

Here is a link that might be useful: Flower head of Mexican hat (Ratibida columnaris)
GreatPlains1
13 years ago
It would be interesting to see what Mr. Smarty Plants has to say about it at the Lady Bird Wildflower website. I'd be interested in seeds myself and would go back and gather some later on if you can remember where it was or mark the plant. It might be a new cultivar of the species.
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Thanks for the link. Problem I'm having is that the leaf details vary a lot by age (top vs bottom) of the plant. Attached link shows this a bit better. The following photo has leaves of the known r. columnifera on the left and one of the "weeds" on the right. Top leaves are from the upper part of the plants and bottom ones from the lower. The new plants already have pretty long tap roots, so may transplant some of the smaller ones and just wait to see what blooms if nobody can distinguish at this stage. Here is a link that might be useful: Ratibida columnifera (MO Plants)
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Parker, both mean the same. By default, there is only one scientific name for a plant. When a synonym is listed, that means the species was previously listed under a different genus, or sometimes, its an acknowledgement that there is still some disagreement among botanists as to when genus it belongs. Knowing the former name is important if you're looking for information on the internet, because some of the earlier listings haven't been updated. For example, the Sandmats were previously listed as Chamaesyce, and have now been folded into Euphorbia. If you do a search for C. hyssopifolia, the results may differ from an E. hyssopifolia search because some of the sites weren't updated to reflect the change.
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