The life of a biology professor can be intense and often leaves little time for field work, including for collecting research organisms in the field. Sometimes, this means that you need to look for your target plants at dusk, as done here in Cedar Bluff State Park, Kansas in October 2024.

However, there are plants for which the time of sunset is the perfect time to be identified and collected. Take, for example, Mentzelia decapetala of the plant family Loasaceae. This herbaceous biennial species, which is commonly known as “ten-petal evening star”, blooms primarily at dusk or at night. In early October, most of its flowers are already spent, but there are still enough diagnostic parts present to make an unambiguous species identification.