Some years, I find wildflowers still blooming this far into autumn. But I haven’t been out with my camera lately, and everything’s gone to seed along the wooded trail where I often walk my dog.

So I dove into my files and pulled out a selection of wildflowers I’ve found in October. I took most of these pictures in 2016, when unusually warm weather seemed to extend the blooming period for some species (and inspired me to spend more time on my bicycle).

While riding through Water Works Park in early October 2016, I was struck by a common sunflower plant.

On different stretches of trail, I found a colony of asters with white ray flowers and yellow disk flowers. John Pearson of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources identified them as frost aster or hairy aster because of the long branches and hairy stems.

Blue wood asters were out in force near Greenwood Pond in Des Moines. (A few years later, Katie Byerly featured this species in a separate Bleeding Heartland post.)

Also in October 2016, I found fruit forming on this bur cucumber vine. I don’t see these vines in the area where I often saw them six or eight years ago. I wonder what displaced them.

Another tricky aster! Leland Searles had previously identified these plants as a calico aster subspecies, Symphiotrichum lateriflorum ssp. lateriflorum.

I don’t seem to have done any wildflower photography in October 2017 or 2018. But I made a special trip to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in early October 2019 after confirming that sawtooth sunflowers (which I’d been meaning to cover for years) were still blooming. Here are a couple of shots from that day (you can find more here).

The same month, Kim El-Baroudi invited me to photograph the zigzag goldenrod in her Des Moines backyard. Some plants had gone to seed, but others were going strong.

The other plants blooming next to the zigzag goldenrod are white snakeroot. Some years I still see those flowers in October, but this year, they’ve all gone to seed in my neighborhood.

Later in October 2019, the tiny flowers on clearweed were long past, but the leaves were as shiny as ever.

I didn’t take any wildflower pictures in October 2020, overwhelmed trying to cover election news and surging COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

In early October 2021, I returned to the small patch of Siberian cranesbill (a non-native species I’d found in the woods) to photograph the developing seed pods.

Later the same month, I was surprised to find flowers on some Missouri goldenrod plants behind my alma mater, Clive Elementary School (now called the Clive Learning Academy).

Other plants in the same colony had finished blooming, as you can see near the top of this photo.