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I took the left picture this week out on a back road by Earlham, Iowa. This is how I'm used to seeing Echinacea pallida. But about three years ago, I was driving around between Guthrie Center and Stuart, Iowa, when I saw some tall yellow flowers down in the road ditch. I stopped and backed up and was very surprised to see yellow colored Pale Purple Coneflowers. There was a whole colony of them growing in a small area of the ditch, along with purple ones and several other varieties of native wildflowers. I thought at first, that they had mutated, but after doing a little research, I found that the Yellow Coneflower's (Echinacea paradoxa) range is the Ozark Mountains. I had never seen any around Iowa before so it was a very pleasant discovery. They have wider petals and a smoother stem than Echinacea pallida (Pale Purple Coneflower). They also grow in small clumps.
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