Do you recognize this?

Do you know what this is? It's pretty common in my yard, and probably in many other yards and gardens around the area -- probably throughout the country. If you recognized it as a seed head from a Rudbeckia, or "Black-eyed Susan", then you'd be right. Sort of.

Normally I'd say you're definitely right, but right now I'm looking for a different answer. I was actually looking for the answer "a whole garden's full of Rudbeckia seedlings". You don't see it? Is it hard for you to imagine all of those seeds germinating in your yard? Let me help you to visualize it...

***

How about  now?

The seeds never got a chance to fall, but they still germinated! This probably happens quite often, but I've not seen it before. It really surprised me!

I was doing a little bit of cleanup in the yard:

The Rudbeckia is laying down at the edge of the driveway, at the bottom left corner of the image. It must have been on the ground all winter, and maybe covered in leaves to hide it from the birds.

It's quite amazing to me:

It's a complete ecosystem in miniature, as there's even a small earthworm in there!

Although this was headed for the compost pile, I decided to put it back on the ground where I found it:

It's not like more than a couple of those plants have a chance to make it to a reasonable size, but I thought I'd give them every opportunity. Of course there are probably thousands of those seeds all through my yard right now, and they don't really need help from me.

Incidentally, this is the "after" photo from my cleanup job:

Clearing a lot of the "browns" from my yard is really helping the emerging green to become the focus.

I've often wondered just how many of the seeds from the ubiquitous Black-eyed Susans would germinate in my garden, and now I think I have a good idea: pretty much every single one.

.