Silver-rod

Just as all that glitters isn't necessarily gold, all that's called goldenrod isn't always golden... well, not completely. Let me explain—twice, because there's something dreadfully wrong with this image. Oh, the plant is real, and it's a bona fide goldenrod that goes by the scientific name of Solidago bicolor, or, as we mere mortais know it, Silver-rod. As you can see, it has white petals, and this makes it an outlier in the genus Solidago. It is also flowering dreadfully late for the species, which I normally find in mid-September. But the drought kept Silver-rod bloomless, and perhaps it would have done so all autumn, except that today, which from the photo looks bright, sunny, and dry, was actually monsoonal. I didn't take any photos, but I did, on a rather wet walk, find the first S. bicolor finally in bloom, so, truth-in-journalism, here's a look at what I captured a couple of days later.