ATDTDA (17): prairie-smoke (472.2)

[Tim Strzechowski]

"Down they journeyed, out of the mountains, seldom looking back, down through the prairie-smoke of eastern Colorado ..." (p. 473).
 
 
This is a beautiful plant that is usually less than a foot tall, with numerous basal leaves and hairy stems. The flowers are a rose color, but the fruits are the showiest parts of the plant, with plumes up to two inches long. Mature plants may form dense mats. Prairie Smoke will flower after its second year if grown from seed, if grown from division, it will flower its first year. [...]
 
http://www.nps.gov/archive/miss/restoration/gallery/sedges/prairie_smoke.html
 
Here's a pdf. file on "geum triflorum":
http://web4.msue.msu.edu/mnfi/abstracts/botany/Geum_triflorum.pdf
 
http://www.reflectiveimages.com/prairiesmoke.htm
 
http://www.carsoncity.k12.mi.us/~hsstudent/wildflowers00/rosaceae/prairiesmoke.html
 
 
This is another example of Pynchon's use of vegetation and foliage as an image, symbol, etc.
 
Cf. _Vineland_, for example:
 
"Later than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window ..." (3).