Not this sort of cow pen! (Though they look quite content.)
Nor this kind of cow pen–which is apparently a maternity pen. I didn’t know there was such a thing and judging from the look on this cow’s face, neither did she!
This is the kind of Cowpen I’m talking about–the flowery kind! Check out a couple of yellow daisy flowers bobbing above the grey-foliaged shrub and just in front of the yucca.
These are two Cowpen Daisy, Verbesina encelioides, plants that I popped into the ground in late May or early June. On a drippy day I walked Duke the Dog, poop bag in one hand, leash in the other and came across two seedlings tossed on the wet sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s house–where she grows scads of Cowpen Daisies. This was during the late spring/early summer rainy period, oh-so long ago. Sigh. I imagine the gardener tossed them as she weeded, maybe earlier that morning, as the seedlings looked fresh. I picked up the two abandoned plants and finished my walk with the dog-on-the-leash, the poop-bag-in-hand, and carefully cradled Cowpens.
I planted the seedlings in the front of my front garden, watered a couple of times, and promptly forgot about the garden newbies. Later in summer, I thought I’d lost them. But here they are, all grown up and ready to bloom!
Cowpen Daisies are native to a wide range of the Continental US and are an annual plant. Being annuals, they grow from seed, flower during the growing season and set seed, then die in the winter. The fallen seeds germinate in the ground during the next spring, grow, flower, and die, thus continuing the cycle. The neighborhood school is just across the street from the Cowpen house and I can attest that these wildflowers seed out prolifically–like so many other native wildflowers. The school garden now grows quite a few Cowpen Daisies without assistance from students or adult volunteers.
I have two individual plants now, but that number will at least double by next year. Many of my natives re-seed joyfully, so this doesn’t scare me, but will entail weeding out unwanted seedlings. Who knows–perhaps next year, during a rainy period, I’ll be tossing out extra seedlings and someone will pick them up for their garden!
Cowpen foliage is attractive with a nice grey-green tint and interesting serration around the edges of the leaves. Cowpens like the soil dry and the sun at its fullest. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center indicates that Cowpens are especially important for butterflies, but what I’ve observed are a variety of native bees working these blooms.
My best guess is that this little bee is an Oil-collecting bee, or Melittidae.
These two Cowpens fit nicely in their new garden community. For now, they’re a bit overwhelmed, but once they get going with more of their kind, the pops of pretty foliage and sunny daisies will complement the native grasses and shrubs.
