Anyone knows what this supposed to be? The photo is taken on June 18 at Red Butte near Salt Lake City, Utah. Did not manage to go there again and look for the flowers. Thanks
Most likely an Asclepias spp. You might have noted a milky sap. Common names for a few of the species are milkweed and butterflyweed. On some the flowers are a very intense red-orange, but certainly not all of them. I believe all of them have a very long tap root, making them drought resistant, but it is a large family.
Looks just like what folks up here in Oregon call evening primrose, same leaf color, etc. Oenothera of some kind?
Thank you, saltcedar, thanrose and Ann! All three suggestions were sometimes very close. But what was always missing - these nice symmetrical rosettes of leaves. And so, I decided to go up there and try to find what was left (after recent snowfalls). Not easy - this was the only place where I was without my GPS - but I was lucky! The first picture shows that it was Asteraceae. Going through the whole Utah list did not produce exact match in the internet, even after I dug out a flowering photo (the second one) from my own archive, also from Red Butte. The closest match was to Golden aster, Heterotheca villosa, which however has more elliptic leaves (the third photo taken 20 miles to the south). The triangle leaves of the Red Butte plant makes it either a local variety of H. vilosa or some close species not represented by pictures on the web.
Wow, Andrey! What a difference a bloom makes! And you are one determined person - thanks for tracking it down, so we could all know!
