I have been a goldenrod lover for a very long time. When I was younger, people with allergies that appeared in August usually blamed goldenrod for them. But these showy yellow-flowered plants have been much maligned. It seems the pollen from the sunny flowers of these plants is too large to drift through the air so that it can annoy our eyes and nose.
Nope, goldenrods have been thought guilty by association. It seems that their diminutive neighbors, the nondescript ragweeds, are the ones sowing all the sorrow.
I have looked and looked for the proper name for the goldenrod pictured at the top. I never saw it until we moved here. It's become my favorite, the one I call twirly goldenrod because of the way the flowerets cluster in bunches around the central stem.
The last picture is of a variety called early goldenrod because it blooms the first week of August. Its appearance signals the dying back of the chlorophyll in the leaves and another seasonal change is well underway.
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