Revisiting the Gumplant

At this time of year it seems that a high percentage of flowering plants along the road sides have yellow blossoms and are in the Family Asteraceae.  This includes Goldenrod, Sunflowers, Arnica, and Gumplant.  I posted photos of Gumplant in 2012, but I haven't really paid attention to it this summer until today.  I've been driving past a patch of it on Highway 70 near Cromberg for several weeks.  Today I actually planned a stop.  The above photo included a beautiful Caterpillar.  As I look over the dozen or so photos I took during my brief stop, I realize that the magic of technology, both camera and laptop, allows me to do a kind of "magic schoolbus" journey into the details I couldn't see while taking the photos.  The scientific name is Grindelia nana.  Tomorrow morning I'll select my favorites and post them.
Nearby, I made another stop to explore a patch of Sunflowers, and that produced some surprises.  I wondered about the origin of the name, although it's pretty obvious that there's a resemblance of each flower (composed of two kinds of flowers, disc and ray) resembles the Sun.  I also thought about the many times in the Sacramento Valley west of Colusa I have seen fields of cultivated Sunflowers facing the early morning Sun as I drove by, then still facing the Sun in the afternoon on my return trips.  So, I wondered if the name could have originated from the fact they "follow the Sun."  With that in mind, I was startled to see that in this patch near Cromberg, all the blossoms were facing away from the setting Sun.  Hmmm.  Tomorrow I'll post my favorites of the Sunflowers, too.