Plains Coreopsis

About the Plains Coreopsis

Golden daisies with a mahogany-red ring at the center, held on wiry stems that set whole colonies nodding in the slightest wind. Plains coreopsis follows the bluebonnet season, washing low roadsides and moist field corners in yellow through May and June, often in stands of thousands.

It is an annual native to the plains, quick to claim disturbed and seasonally wet ground - roadside ditches are modern buffalo wallows as far as this flower is concerned. Each "flower" is really a composite of dozens of tiny florets: the dark ring is a bullseye visible in ultraviolet, guiding bees to the nectar at the center.

Native peoples brewed a red-orange dye and a tea from the plant, and it remains one of the easiest natives for a Texas gardener to grow - scatter seed on bare ground in fall, then stand back in spring.

For photography, the trembling is the challenge and the charm. On a still morning you can stack a colony in crisp focus front to back; the rest of the year, lean into the motion and let the yellow blur into brushstrokes.