secondpage

Plant: Blanket Flower

Name: Gaillardia pulchella Aster family	Description: Hairy annual plants to 2' tall, with stalkless, alternate leaves up to 4" long and seldom over 1" wide. The leaves are variable and may be smooth-edged, toothed, or even lobed. Flower heads are single at the tops of the branches, with each head 1 1/2 -3" wide, and consisting of 6-16 petal-like ray flowers surrounding a reddish purple, rounded, central disk with numerous tubular flowers. Each broadly fanlike ray flower is 3-lobed and deep red, usually with a yellow tip. In rare cases the ray flowers may be all red or all yellow. Late spring-early fall. HABITAT/RANGE: Widely distributed in dry, usually sandy, soil in the southern Great Plains, but occurring in tallgrass prairies as a native plant only in the soutwesternmost tallgrass region, from northeastern Oklahoma southward; commonly cultivated and escaping as a weed through much of the tallgrass region. COMMENTS: This is the state flower of Oklahoma. (A Falcon Guide by Ladd/Oberle: Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers)
Image:	Location: