On Monday, after hiking most of the length of the Billy Goat A trail, I arrived at the place where my friend and I had found this plant a few days before.

orangegrass
Hypericum gentianoides
Hypericaceae

About eleven species (ten native, one alien) of Hypericum (St. Johnswort) can be found in the Maryland Piedmont. In many of the bedrock terraces in the Potomac Gorge I’ve seen good-sized stands of H. prolificum, aka shrubby St. Johnswort, like this:

The flowers of shrubby St. Johnswort are showy, up to an inch across, with numerous stamens.

The flowers or orangegrass, not so much.
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Here’s most of a plant:

Orangegrass, also known as pineweed, is an annual that can stand up to a foot and a half tall, but the stems are so slender and the leaves so minute that it’s likely to be overlooked as “just another tuft of grass” when not in flower. Orangegrass is an eastern North American native, endangered in Iowa.

Granted this is not a spectacular flower, but I’m always happy to find something I’ve never seen before.