Gayfeather, Snakeroot, Liatris punctata

She grows across much of the Great Plains and Midwest of the US and Canada, and part of northern Mexico, and found in a variety of habitats~ ponderosa pine forests, sagebrush and chaparral, grassland and prairie. Punctata means spotted, her thin leaves are covered in tiny dots of resin. She's slow-growing and long-lived, some over 35 years old. She's extremely drought tolerant, with a taproot that can reach up to 16 feet deep into prairie soil; and also fire tolerant, able to resprout from rhizomes (a type of underground stem). She's helpful in revegetating prairie habitats and in reclaiming mining soil. In Colorado, she's the host plant for a hemiparasitic sister, Wholeleaf Paintbrush (Castilleja integra). She is food for elk, deer, and pronghorn, and favored by pollinators, including the rare Pawnee montane skipper.

Kiowa people gathered her carrot-flavored roots in the spring when they are sweet, and baked them over a fire. Other Plains tribes applied her mashed roots to snake bites, and dried roots were burned like incense to relieve headaches and sore throats. Blackfeet people boiled the root and applied it to swellings, and Omaha people dried and powdered the root, making a poultice for inflammations. Here, a Kiowa woman welcomes a prairie sunrise (or sunset?) from a stand of bright dotted blazing star. 

This is an 8×10” giclee print of my original painting, Dotted Blazing Star. It’s printed with archival ink on thick, textured cotton rag paper, signed on the back, packaged in a protective sleeve with backing board, and ready for a standard-size frame.

Archival prints are shipped in a flat envelope through USPS Priority Mail.