You may have noticed that yellow composite flowers are a theme in Palouse native flora. There are indeed lots of them. There is a population of this particular one about a mile east of me along North River Road, and before I got serious and learned what they actually are, I called them "Shiny greenleaf balsamroot" because they seemed similar to the more common Arrowleaf balsamroot. I was still in this stage of blissful ignorance when I collected a bag of seeds from this very clump, along with two others, one August. It must have been in the late 90s, so over 20 years ago, that I went around my little Ponderosa pine trees and dug 8-10 clumps of dirt out in what was a pretty weedy field at that point, and planted a handful of seeds in each one.
I had forgotten all about that when, about five years ago, I was walking out there in that spot among the trees, now filled with native grasses, and there's this big old half-deer-eaten blade of one of these leaves--they are pretty distinctive! Each year it has put out more leaves and here it is today...
So, when you see a big clump of blooming Mule's ears out there, you can get an idea of how long it took to get that way. My guess is that I will see my first bloom on this, my only one, in the next year or so.
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