It is spring time in Texas and the wildflowers are coming up. Pictured above is an example of Tetraneuris scaposa, the Four-nerve Daisy. This member of the Aster family (Asteraceae) is an early spring splash of color in an awakening landscape.
Four-nerve Daisies are perennial plants and they bloom from March through October. You can find them growing in dry grassland areas all over Texas.
Here you see the grass-like leaves that form the base from which the flowerstalks grow. The reddish brown stems seen here are the flower stalks.
The final image shows two defining characters for these plants. Notice the three notches in the tips of the petals and the four dark “nerves” on the underside of the petals. In my experience with these plants, the nerves are not always distinct in younger plants and seem to become darker and more pronounced with age. What I have seen may also be variation in the expression of this characteristic. However, the multiple flowerstalks arising from a clump of silvery, greenish gray grass-like leaves to produce yellow centered flowers with 3-notched petals having 4 dark nerves on their undersides should be enough to call them Tetraneuris scaposa, the Four-nerve Daisy.
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