Sunlight brushes tall grasses, like frost across a tawny beard. The scene is an oil painting. Renaissance-era. Impressionistic. Golden. Chiaroscuro. High-key. Dreamy. And diffuse.
Hidden in this grass are pops of sunlight so yellow, the goldenrod looks limp in its presence. Helianthus schweinitzii. Schweinitz’s sunflowers. Indigenous to York County and parts of the Charlotte region.
Schweinitzes don’t look like sunflowers you might be imagining. They’re not towering, not filled with toaster-bound seeds. They’re barely the size of a lemon. Their leaves are rough like cats’ tongues. They’re waist-high to an adult. They have imposters that fool the uninitiated.
And they’re endangered…