Rankweed

Rankweed is one of our most common desert wildflowers. We named it for the rank smell of the flowers. It has a Latin name, of course, but I've never gotten around the checking it in our flower books. It grows in profusion -- these clumps in North Arroyo were 4 feet tall, which is an astounding amount of biomass for the desert. Notice the green hill in the background -- we had a LOT of rain in 08.

Here's a closeup of the flowers. Rankweed produces lots of honey that has a slightly rank flavor. Sometimes people return it, saying, "There's something wrong with this honey." Actually, there's nothing wrong with it -- that's just the way God made it. We've learned to mix rankweek honey with alfalfa honey to dilute the flavor. It's a great honey for allergies.