August EcoQuest - Magical Mentzelias!
Mentzelias, commonly called blazing stars or stickleafs, are a magical member of the local flora. You may walk down a trail in the daytime and never even notice these plants, because their flowers open at dusk! These flowers remain open overnight into the early morning before closing, providing an important source of nectar for moths, as well as bees and butterflies. They are called stickleafs because the leaves are covered with Velcro-like hairs which stick to nearly everything they encounter.
There are four species of large-flowered Mentzelia common in the Denver metro area – M. decapetala (ten-petal stickleaf), M. multiflora (Adonis blazingstar), M. nuda (bractless blazingstar), and M. speciosa (jeweled blazingstar). These Mentzelias can be found on sandy roadsides, shale slopes, and open prairie. These Mentzelias are really not that hard to tell apart. The first character you can use to distinguish among these species is flower color – M. decapetala, M. multiflora, and M. nuda have white petals while M. speciosa has bright yellow petals. Mentzelia nuda then differs in having white or pale yellow stamens (giving the flower a nearly all-white appearance), while M. decapetala and M. multiflora have bright yellow stamens (giving the center of the flower a yellow appearance versus white). Lastly, M. decapetala has large flowers about the size of the palm of your hand, while M. multiflora has much smaller flowers. Now you, too, can distinguish among the Mentzelias!
One of the most magical moments is watching hawkmoths visiting flowers of Mentzelia decapetala just at sunset – a frenzied event that lasts only about 15 minutes. See if you can locate some Mentzelias and help Denver Botanic Gardens by photographing as many plants as possible in the month of August. Maybe you can capture some pollinators too! Post your findings to iNaturalist so they will automatically be added to the Denver EcoFlora Project.
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