Who Knew

Caution: this post contains extremely bad snapshots of weeds.


The rest area was wide and paved. Traveling as many backroads as we do rest areas are usually gravel. This one also had lots of Jersey Barriers.

All this attention and expense must indicate there is something special here. We grabbed our cameras and headed down the wide gravel footpath toward the river. It was a brown mess of swirling water. Not worth a photo. Confused, we headed back to the vehicle. Then I spotted something new.

While I didn't know its name at the time, I intended to look it up when we got to camp. It's a White Admiral.

Since I was taking snapshots of interesting things, I took this one of daisies.

I started considering the interesting things one can find at an average rest stop. Things like the above photos and fireweed.

There was a plant that looked like a weed from home, yellow sweet clover, but was white. It turns out it’s white sweet clover.

Yellow Sweet Clover

(Not my photo)

White Sweet Clover

Then I saw a purple one!

Could it be purple sweet clover?

Sometimes you think you know something, but it is just wrong. Remember when you found out Santa wasn't real. That’s the way I felt. The purple plant was ALFALFA!

I thought alfalfa was a grass. It turns out it’s a bean! Beans are higher in protein than grass, which in the correct circumstances make it an attractive feed. I looked the plant up online a couple of ways to verify I had the right plant. How could I not know this? My horse owning friends have failed me!

When people travel they expect to learn things: geography, geology, culture. Not me, I travel 2,884 miles to discover alfalfa is a bean.

At least I know now.

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