While actively seeking links to put into other posts I found only one picture to drop into a random log.
Cute Things
Ganked from HowToMeowInYiddish.blogspot.com; Google traced the picture to an Italian site, notes that it's been copied into paint-by-numbers kits, and says the flower is Pulicaria dysenterica. With a Latin name like that it ought to be an interesting plant. Google says it's what Europeans call fleabane. North Americans gave that name to another plant so, when this one occasionally turns up in our meadows, we call it Meadow False Fleabane. (I'll take their word; I've never seen it.) They say you burn it like incense for an insect repellent. Since it apparently does drive away insects Europeans tried it on disease germs, but had less success with that.
What Americans call fleabane is one of those flowers that most of my neighbors fail to appreciate because it's wild and pops up in gardens. It grows in my not-a-lawn and is welcome. Serena says the crushed leaves really do discourage fleas; she likes to lie on a clump of it. The plant is hardy enough to have kept growing despite this. Soaking up the rain we've had every day, often twice a day, my fleabane's been overgrowing just as my jewelweed has. Both plants normally grow about four feet tall but are now producing stalks twice that height.
Photo donated to Wikipedia By Fan Wen - Own work http://www.flowersview.com/Erigeron%20annuus/02-IMG_6816.jpg.html, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43556051
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