White Everlasting Flowers: Pussytoes

White Everlasting flowers dotted the lower slopes of 70 Mile Butte at Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan in June.

The guide who first showed me these native plants called them Pussytoes, but whether that's in any way a technical name, I don't know. It is, however, an apt description for these bundles of white wildflowers that surge up through the grasses like little kittens' paws.

Everlasting flowers are exactly what I'd expect in the grasslands: spiky, dry, enduring...

That's a description, too, of the prickly pear cactus that grows here, though not of the cactus's lush, soft flowers.

In fact, many prairie wildflowers are wildly luxurious: Prickly roses, Blazingstars, and the Gumbo Evening Primrose.

Everlasting: white pussytoes   © SB

Prairie Wildflower: Everlasting - Pussytoes (Antennaria neglecta? Antennaria aprica?)

Location: Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Photo Date: June 23, 2012.  

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