More Late Summer Yellow

In an earlier post, I remarked that late in the summer it seems that the preponderance of roadside wildflowers are yellow. I photographed lots of Madia, Star Thistle, Gumplant, etc., and began to speculate on why this would be so. I left open the possibility that my observations were biased. Yesterday, while rushing toward meeting with one of my students, I saw lots of the aforementioned species blooming along the east and north shores of Lake Almanor, then saw a wonderful patch of Blazing Star in full bloom. These large (4" or so) five-pointed stars are impressive. I didn't have time to stop, but vowed to photograph some of these on my way back. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. Well, I didn't get back to this spot until 4:30, and by then they had mostly closed up for the evening. I took a few shots anyway, and here they are. You'll have to imagine what they looked like when fully open. Or, I may dig one out of last summer's archive and post it here later. More yellow - more questions....