The Last Player on Deck

It’s official. We’ve tipped beyond summer and are sliding into fall. Rabbitbrush is the tell. The bush is just now offering its precious golden blossoms.

Rabbitbrush is the prairie’s last holdout, the last hurrah. In Montana, long after gayfeather have purpled and faded and the blue grama grasses have turned dun, rabbitbrush suddenly flares—the yellow flowers like bright sparks frozen in place where they were struck.

You’ll often find rabbitbrush where the earth looks too tired for anything else—on gravelly presentations of worn earth, populating the hard scrabble between sage and stone. It will tolerate the longest winter and shrug off the sharpest wind.

Early homesteaders named it rabbitbrush because jackrabbits were often seen sheltering beneath its rounded crowns. But rabbitbrush gives more than refuge to hares. Its late flowers are a final feast for bees and butterflies, and the blooming persists long after the fussy, water-loving flowers have flourished and failed—on into the first days fringed white with frost.

A Rabbitbrush at My Drive

A Bumblebee at Work

—Mitchell Hegman