Grasses, Sage and a Little News - Laura Gillis

I think I may have mentioned before how much I like the grasses... so, here are a couple of pages of grasses with a little sage thrown in there (‘cause I liked it a lot). These were all found in Mueller State Park, Colorado.

From left to right: Unidentified - this looked a lot like wheat but was different; Witchgrass,Panicum capillare; Letterman Needlegrass, Stipa lettermanii; Orchard Grass, Dactylis glomerata; Purple Reed Grass, Calamagrostis pinpurascens or Spike Trisetum, Trisetum spicatum; Fringed Brome Grass, Bromus (Bromopsis) ciliatus; and on the far right, the very fragrant and beautiful Arctic Sage, Artemisia arctica.

These are my best guesses on the names... adding to the challenge of identifying the grasses is the fact that it was late for most of these and the flowers and seeds were already gone. Sometime I would like to find a botany book that has photos or drawings of plants post flowering. So many books focus only on the flowers and if the flowers aren’t there, you are just out of luck.

This is the last of the Colorado vacation sketches. I will be back sketching Texas and maybe some more bugs now that we are back home.

I do have some exciting news about the bug sketches and sculptures though... Bob Phillips and a crew from the Texas Country Reporter show came to visit me yesterday and the bugs and I are going to be on an upcoming episode! (Most likely in December.) The crew came up and filmed me most of the day and Bob did the interview sitting in my workshop with me, the bugs and Shorty the dog. It was really exciting and I have a whole new appreciation for people who do that kind of thing. I was wiped out at the end of the day but I am anxious to see how it all turns out.

Pen & ink on hemp paper in the nature journal