Blue Toadflax | New Hampshire Garden Solutions

Posts Tagged ‘Blue Toadflax’

Here, There and Everywhere

Posted in Aquatics, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Arrowhead Blossoms, Ashuelot Falls, Atlantis Fritillary Butterfly, Beauty in Nature, Blue Toadflax, Blue Vervain, Butterfly Eyes, Canon SX70 HS, Doll's Eyes, Garden Phlox, Great Blue Heron, Great Spangled Fritillary Butterfly, Half Moon Pond, Hancock New Hampshire, Hobblebush Fall Colors, Keene, Late Summer Flowers, Monarch Butterfly, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Obedient plant, Olympus TG-6, Purple Aster, Roadside Wildflowers, Summer Aquatic Plants, Summer Flowers, Summer Hiking, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tall Phlox, Tansy, Turtlehead with Mildew, White Admiral Butterfly, White Ash Fall Colors, White Baneberry on September 2, 2023| 28 Comments »

Now that fall is almost here we’re having some summer weather so I’m getting out more. I went to where I used to work in Hancock recently and one of the first things I stopped to admire was this view of Half Moon Pond. For seven years I started each work day standing in this spot, looking out over the pond and drinking in the quiet. Since I grew up awash in quiet that part of the job was a perfect fit from the first day. The experience was a unique one for me though, because working so close to the pond meant I could watch all of its changes as they happend. It reinforced what I’d had an inkling of as a boy growing up along the Ashuelot River; life is a circle and from hour to hour, day to day, and year to year it is in a state of constant change, like a great wheel slowly turning. Following that lead you discover something that is unchanging, and it is found inside us all.

As I was leaving Hancock I saw a small stream with its banks full of flowers of all kinds. There were white asters, pink Joe Pye weed, purple loosestrife, white boneset, and yellow goldenrod growing there. It was a natural garden; a beautiful spot.

There were flowers everywhere, like a roadside Monet painting. Who needs riches when we have places like this? We are already rich, but most of us don’t see it.

I didn’t see any purple asters there but I am starting to see them in other places.

I’m also starting to see monarch butterflies, but not here in Keene. This one was in Hancock, probing for nutrients in a gravel road. There seem to be few to none in Keene this year.

I also saw a white admiral that day, looking a bit tired. In fact I thought it might have died but it slowly lifted its wings when I moved closer so I knew it was alive. I took a couple of shots and moved away to let it rest.

The clear white flowers of arrowhead have appeared. Each one of these had tiny flea like black insects on it but since they grew just offshore I couldn’t get close enough to see what they were. The centers of the flowers look like little clown noses.

There are plenty of great spangled fritillary butterflies in Keene. They love Joe Pye weed, and we have lots of it.

Great Spangled fritillaries look to be about the same size as monarchs, but I find them to be much more approachable. This one let me get quite close. I thought of trying a shot or two with my phone but I decided I might scare it away.

I was able to get a shot of this one’s eyes but when I got home and saw that they were an orangey-reddish color I was surprised, because I have other shots of them with blue eyes.

In this shot I took on Pitcher Mountain years ago this fritillary butterfly’s eyes are obviously blue. Why would one have blue eyes and the other red? According to Butterflies of the Adirondacks “The Atlantis Fritillary has blue-green or greyish blue eyes, while both the Great Spangled Fritillary and the Aphrodite Fritillary have amber to yellow-green eyes.” So the blue eyed one shown here is an Atlantis fritillary and the other in the previous shot isn’t. I obviously saw amber eyes as red so I’m going to stop there, because according to Butterflies and Moths of North America the other differences between the butterflies are slight, as in shading of certain colors and slight variations in markings. For me it’s their eyes that tell the story so from now on I’ll just look them in the eye, tell them how beautiful they are, and let it be.

I wasn’t going to say anything but I thought you should know. As I’ve said before, fall starts on the forest floor and this hobblebush shows it.

This young white ash tells me that fall is creeping up into the understory.

I stopped at the Ashuelot Falls one evening to see if the light had turned them to gold. It had, but there were other things going on as well.

A heron fished below the falls. It had spotted something and as I watched it caught what I think was a small frog. Down it went with a flip and a gulp. Canon bridge cameras are notoriously inefficient in low light and though the light was really too poor to be taking photos, I tried anyway.

When I saw this over my shoulder I decided to leave the heron to its hunting. It was a good thing too, because as I got to the car those extra-large raindrops that make a loud splat! started falling.

On another evening I tried a blue vervain plant in low light. I loved the way the small blue flowers glowed with a light that was more in them than on them. They were so beautifully blue; truly the center of attention, but though they took center stage it was the light that put them there. Sometimes it is the quality of light more than what it falls on that can stop us in our tracks.

I forgot to look for the flowers of white baneberry this past spring but I remembered to look for the plant’s berries this year. White berries at the ends of pink pedicels are hard to miss. They’re called “doll’s eyes” for obvious reasons and they’re very toxic. They’re also very bitter, which makes it doubtful that anyone would eat enough to be harmed by them. These plants are having a good year.

Tansy is just coming into bloom and before long each flower head, shown as a disc shape in this view, will grow into a fluffy mound of tiny blooms. The aromatic leaves were once used to repel insects like bedbugs, and it was brought to this country by the first settlers for that reason, as well as for its medicinal uses.

Some turtlehead plants are covered in mildew, and that is no surprise considering all the rain and humidity we’re having. In a garden mildew usually means poor air circulation and not enough direct sunlight. Both are conditions that can often be remedied my moving the affected plant or by creating more “breathing” space around it by moving any plants that might be crowding it.

Garden phlox is a plant that is often very susceptible to mildew but I haven’t seen any yet this season. This one was very pretty, I thought.

Here was another pretty phlox that was mildew free. The plant is also called “tall phlox” and many varieties are very fragrant. I think plant breeders have also bred them for mildew resistance over the years.

Pretty little blue toadflax is still blooming and probably will into October. One story says that the “toad” part of the name comes from the way the flower opens like a toad’s mouth when each side is pressed with the fingers. I’ve done this with yellow toadflax and it is true but with the tiny flowers of the blue, I’m not sure. Another story says that toads took refuge among the branches, but I haven’t seen many yellow or blue toadflax with branches.

If I had to offer advice to those who are just starting out in gardening it would be to beware of friends bearing plant gifts. Oh, they mean well enough; they have more of this plant than they can use so they might as well share. Right there is where you should stop and ask yourself why they have so much of this plant. Is it aggressive? Will it take over my garden? If it is an obedient plant the answer to these questions is YES. Obedient plants get their common name from the way the flower stalks stay where they are bent for a short time, so in this way they are “obedient.” The name does not come from the way the plants stay in one place. No, they are a native member of the mint family and they can act just like an invasive and take over a garden. The solution is, if you’re given a plant you don’t know anything about, plant it off by itself somewhere where it can’t overrun other plants. Just let it be and watch it for a year or so, and when you are satisfied that it doesn’t want to rule the world, move it into the garden.

Though the native obedient plant is everything I’ve said above plant breeders have been working on it, and I just read about a cultivar called “Miss manners” which is said to form upright clumps that don’t spread. It sounds truly obedient and would be a great addition to the garden if it was. The snapdragon-like flowers are very beautiful and they attract plenty of bees. Obedient plants grow naturally along riverbanks from Canada South to Virginia and west to Texas, but I’ve never seen one in the wild. Plants I’ve grown in the garden never seemed to need any extra watering as you would expect a riverside plant would.

Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all come. ~Michelangelo

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Walking Near Water

Posted in Amphibians, Animals, Birds, Flowers, Insects, Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Beautiful Spring Days, Black Locust, Blackberries, Blue Eyed Grass, Blue Flag Iris, Blue Toadflax, Bristly Locust, Canon SX40 HS, Chalk Fronted Corporal Dragonfly, Dame's Rocket, Damselfly, Eastern Cottontail, English Plantain, Great Blue Heron, Keene New Hampshire, Nannyberry, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus TG-6, Oriental Poppy, Ox Eye Daisy, Red Clover, Snapping Turtle Laying Eggs, Spring Flowers, Spring Plants, Swanzey New Hampshire, Vetch, White Admiral Butterfly, Yellow Hawkweed on June 10, 2023| 37 Comments »

These trees aren’t pines but I thought of John Muir when I saw them. He said “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” This is the kind of place I’ve been spending time in lately and he was right, but I don’t think the species matters. There’s a doorway to a new world between every two maples as well.

There is a lot of water where I’ve been walking and on June first, just like clockwork the big female snapping turtles came up out of the water to find some warm, soft soil to dig their nests in. This one was there beside the road, waiting to start digging when I happened by. From what I’ve seen egg laying seems an exhausting process for a turtle and it didn’t appear that she was in any hurry to start. At least once each year she must sacrifce the lightness of her existence for the good of her kind. Here she is no longer bouyant. She bears the full weight of gravity because the continuation of her species is all that matters.

I looked a little closer when something didn’t look right and saw that she had lost an eye. I’ve debated whether or not to show you this photo and I finally decided that yes, you should see it. I’m here to report on nature, not to sanitize it or to lie to you about it and the truth is, when you spend a lot of time in nature, you regularly see death and injuries. It is something you have to be able to stand apart from, just as at times you must be able to stand apart from yourself. Death is a natural part of living and when I see a dead animal I know it was its time. Often I also know that because of its death another animal was likely able to stay alive, or maybe even feed its family. It’s just the way it is; every living thing gets eaten eventually, be it by predator or microbe.

I walked around this mother turtle and saw that her other eye was fine. I also saw deep peace in that eye; an eternal peace, and I knew she would be well. I wished her an easy time of her egg laying and left her to get on about her business.

All of the sudden pretty little blue toadflax is lining the sides of roads. It’s funny how so many things seem to wait for June. All of the sudden it’s June first and there they are, just like the turtles.

I’m seeing lots of nannyberry blossoms this year. This native viburnum is common and easy to find, especially in spring when it blooms. The numerous small, five lobed white flowers are very pretty with their five yellow tipped stamens. They’ll be followed by edible dark blue, juicy one seeded berries (drupes), which are sometimes called wild raisins. They and many other native viburnums and dogwoods are great for attracting birds and wildlife to the garden. They’re also strong native plants that don’t need any special pampering. In fact most of them do best when just left alone, so they’re a great choice for the occasional gardener.

Blue eyed grass is another plant that just seems to appear one day. First you can’t find it anywhere and the next day it’s everywhere. I found this one in the shade and I admired the way its petals looked as if they had been cut from satin cloth. The plant is in the iris family and has nothing to do with grass but I don’t name them, I just introduce them.

Ox eye daisy. Is this really what an ox’s eye looks like? I suppose I haven’t paid attention, but I can’t remember the last time I saw an ox. One thing I’m sure of when it comes to this flower is, even if you put them directly into water they’ll wilt as soon as you cut them. When I was married (In June) we didn’t have money for flowers from a florist so we picked daisies. The next day at the wedding reception every table had a vase full of wilted daisies on it. My father in law wore a crown of them.

Our native blue flag iris is another flower that waits for June. It likes wet feet so it can be found in ditches and along riverbanks or pond edges, sometimes growing right in the water. They’re very beautiful and I look forward to seeing them each year. When I see them I know it’s June, so who needs a calendar?

Vetch has come into bloom and since I see purple as blue and blue is my favorite color, I’m happy to see it. The only thing I might have an itch about when it comes to vetch is how, from a distance I always wonder if it might be some other rarer blue flower, so I always have to walk over to it and find out. It’s not a real problem; I get to see a lot of vetch that way.

A rabbit looked over its shoulder as if to ask “What are you doing here?” If I had spoken rabbit I would have said “I’m part of all this, just as you are.”

Blackberries seem to be having a good year so far. Blueberries have blossomed heavily as well, so the bears will be happy.

When I went by them the first time it was early in the morning so the yellow hawkweeds were closed against the dew. When I retuned later they burned as bright as the morning sunshine.

A damselfly hugged a grass seed head, hoping to get some of that morning sunshine for itself. This day started off quite cool, but it warmed up quickly.

All of the sudden red clover blossoms have appeared and I’m enjoying seeing them in the morning all covered in dew. It wasn’t always this way; I once despised them because I saw them with a gardener’s eyes; I saw how two or three of them could make a garden seem disheveled and uncared for, the way they sprawled all over. You couldn’t pull them because their roots seemed to reach to the earth’s core and if you weed wacked them you were left with an ugly stump, so you had to dig each one, and that took extra time. They were high on my list of despised weeds until one evening I saw the day’s last ray of sunlight falling directly on a red clover, as if it was lit by a spotlight. I walked over to it and knelt to take its photo and everything changed.

Can you lose yourself in a flower? Yes you can, the same way you can lose yourself in music or art or mathematics. And you can find yourself as well. That evening I saw for the first time how very beautiful each tiny orchid like flower was. As I knelt there in the grass before this once despised weed it was as if a space had opened in my mind. There was room for everything in this space and I saw how beautiful life was, and how much easier it became when nothing had to be excluded. All traces of plant snobbery washed out of me that evening and I have loved all flowers ever since, be they roadside weeds, rare wildflowers, or prized garden specimens. In case you were wondering, that is why you find them all here on this blog.

There was no breeze so English plantain was still, quietly offering its flowers to any passers by. Maybe when the breeze came up and it could once again dance there would be more takers.

I sat on a log beside the water waiting for a dragonfly to come along, and this one did. I think it was a chalk fronted corporal. They’re skimmers and they have two vertical white bars just behind their head that don’t show well in this photo. As you can tell by its shadow the sun was fully out at this point. It had gotten hot quickly and I was starting to feel it so I took a couple of quick, not very good shots and left. It would reach into the 90s F. on this day but I made sure I was inside by the time that happened.

I went back to the same spot a couple of days later when it was cooler but this time instead of dragonflies I saw a great blue heron fishing. It stood playing statue, watching me for about 15 minutes before deciding I wasn’t a threat. I watched it catch a nice fish but I didn’t get any good shots of it happening. I also saw an American bittern this day but I wasn’t able to get a shot of it either, because it quickly disappeared behind a clump of cattails. That was too bad, because I’ve heard that bitterns are rare birds, rarely seen.

In another spot this white admiral butterfly landed on a dry gravel road in the hot sun, which butterflies seem to do a lot. I believe this one was “puddling,” which is drawing up moisture and nutrients from the soil. It tried several spots before it found one it liked and then it went into a trance, as if it was mesmerized.

It would slowly raise and lower its wings as if keeping time with a heartbeat so I walked slowly around it, trying to get a shot of its wings fully open. Open or closed they were very beautiful and there wasn’t a mark on them from birds. This butterfly has several variants so if it doesn’t look like the white admiral you know, that could be why. Some of them are quite plain.

The freeze we had in mid May killed off most of the black locust flower buds but I found a couple of protected trees blooming beautifully. I love these native trees with their fragrant flowers that hang like wisteria blossoms. Black locusts are another plant in the huge pea / bean family and like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains.

Bristly locust blooms when black locusts do but are really more shrub than tree, though they can reach 8 feet. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems, which are easily seen in this photo. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs. Bristly locust is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use. The beautiful pinkish purple flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I find one in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees, which makes getting photos a challenge. If you’re looking for a beautiful “plant it and forget it” native small tree that would do well on the edge of the woods and which pollinators would love, this might be it.

I went by the local college to see what was blooming and found some huge oriental poppies in bloom. They’re beautiful flowers that are even more beautiful when massed together. They’re also easy to grow.

For years I’ve thought that the beautiful berries of silky dogwood, which are blue and white for just a short time, must have influenced the blue and white porcelain made in China. But the wheel? I never thought much about it until I looked inside this poppy. I had looked at thousands of poppies, but I had never really seen one until this day and imagine; this pattern perfectly reflects that of a wheel found on an archeological dig near Edinburgh Airport in Scotland. A well preserved charitiot fron 475-380 BC was unearthed and on its wheels were 12 spokes with the same symmetry seen on this poppy. It is said that Roman chariots were influenced by Celtic chariot design. I thought about that and realized that there was once a time when one person’s design couldn’t influence another, because man and nature were all there was. All creative inspiration had to come from the patterns, forms, and shapes found in nature, because there was nothing else. Maybe the poppy was part of that.

I found a beautiful river of rocket. Dame’s rocket that is, and it was early enough in the morning to smell its fragrance. I had heard about how fragrant it was in the evening but apparently it is sunshine or heat that turns off its fragrance, because on this cool morning most of the plants were in the shade and they were heavenly fragrant. They aren’t native but no matter where they grow they’re another wonderful gift from nature.

Nature is not a place to visit, it is home. ~Gary Snyder

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More Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Allium, Arrow Wood Viburnum, Blue Toadflax, Bowman's Root, Bristly Locust, Canon SX40 HS, Clematis, Common Speedwell, Cow Vetch, Fawn's Breath, Forget Me Nots, Fragrant White Water Lily, Goat's Beard, Japanese Iris Rising Sun, Keene New Hampshire, Lupines, Maiden Pink, Maple Leaved Viburnum, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus TG-6, Ox Eye Daisies, Pipevine Flowers, Red Clover, Rugosa Rose, Spring Flowers, Spring in New Hampshire, Spring Plants, Spring Wildflowers, Yellow Hawkweed, Yelow Flag Iris on June 15, 2022| 10 Comments »

Since I started the last flower post with blue flag irises, I thought I’d start this one with yellow flags (Iris pseudacorus.) There is a difference other than the obvious color difference; this one is originally from Europe and is very invasive, while blue flags are native. It was introduced in the mid-1800s as a garden plant but of course it escaped and began to naturalize and was reported near Poughkeepsie, New York in 1868 and in Concord, Massachusetts in 1884. Today it considered highly invasive and its sale and distribution is banned in New Hampshire. As you can see though, it doesn’t care a hoot about being banned and grows in the Ashuelot river in Keene. I’ve seen it take over entire ponds so only time will tell what it does in the river.

Just up the river bank from where the invasive yellow iris grow is a garden bed with more yellow iris in it, but these are not invasive; they were planted. I don’t know for sure but I believe they are a Japanese Iris called “Rising sun.” (Iris ensata v. Rising sun.) You can see how the petals have pointed ends, rather than the rounded petals on the yellow flags. It’s a beautiful thing.

You might not think that forget me nots would be water lovers but the largest colony of forget me nots I’ve ever seen was growing on a river bank that flooded regularly. This small clump also grew on the riverbank, maybe a foot from the yellow flags. It might become a large colony one day.

Last year a machine came along and cut the one bristly locust (Robinia hispida) plant that I knew of that grew along a rail trail, but when I went back this year there had to have been a dozen of them. I believe new shoots grew from the roots of the original plant, which is a habit that locusts seem to have. In any event I was happy to see them because the flowers are beautiful. Bristly locust is more shrub than tree, though it can reach 8 feet. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs.

A close look at a bristly locust shows that it is in the pea family. It is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use. The beautiful pinkish purple bristly locust flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I’ve see it in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees but this year there were just a few buzzing around.

Fawn’s breath I think is a great name for a flower, and it has just come into bloom. The flowers dance at the end of long, slim stems in the slightest breeze, as in the breath of a fawn. It is also called bowman’s root (Gillenia trifoliata) but though I search each year for the origin of that name I’ve never been able to find it. I like the asymmetrical appearance of the flowers. They look as if a chubby fingered toddler had glued them on. This is a native plant that really should be used more than it is, in my opinion. I know of just one place where it grows.

Ox-eye daisy blossoms (Leucanthemum vulgare) appear in June and very rarely before then, in my experience. It’s another European native that escaped gardens and is now found in meadows in every state in the U.S. including Alaska and Hawaii. A vigorous plant can produce up to 26,000 seeds. In tests 82% of those seeds remain viable even after being buried for 6 years, so don’t look for this one on the endangered list any time soon. I see them everywhere and I’m happy that I do.

The highway department planted the daisy in the previous photo alongside a highway in town, and when they did, they also planted lupines. The daisies thrived but the lupines did not, and now there are only five or six plants left. The flowers in this photo may be the last I see in this spot but thankfully I do see them in other places.

I saw more single flowered pink roses but these had a white eye. I believe they are another rugosa, the old standby, and just about the toughest rose known.

I saw a white allium but the Olympus macro camera saw it differently.

I’ve heard that pretty maiden pink flowers (Dianthus deltoids) get their common name from the way the petals look like they were edged with pinking shears, but did pinking shears exist when they were named? This plant is a European native that has escaped gardens and can be found in lawns and meadows in many states in the U.S. A very similar plant is the Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria) but its flowers have much narrower petals and it blooms a bit later.

What I think might be cow vetch (Vicia cracca) is a native of Europe and Asia that loves it here and has spread far and wide. According to the Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States the vining plant is present in every U.S. state. Cow vetch can have a taproot nearly a foot long and drops large numbers of seeds, so it is hard to eradicate. It is very similar to hairy vetch, but that plant has hairy stems. I like its color and I think it’s pretty. I enjoy seeing it sprinkled here and there among the tall grasses.

Arrow wood viburnums (Viburnum dentatum) have come into bloom. These shrubs get large, often growing to 6-8 feet tall and 10 feet wide at the edge of the forest, but each individual flower is hardly bigger than a pencil eraser. An easy way to identify viburnums is to look for the five petals (or lobes) that they all have. Native dogwoods, which should be blooming any time now, will always have 4 petals. The glossy, toothed leaves are a good indication that this plant is an arrow wood viburnum. The name “arrow wood” comes from just what you would expect; the straight, hard wood is excellent for making arrow shafts. The white flowers are followed by small, dark blue fruit that birds love.

Maple leaf viburnums (Viburnum acerifolium) have also started blooming. They and most of all the other viburnums are valuable plants to wildlife. Many songbirds eat the berries and beavers, rabbits, deer and moose eat the bark, twigs and leaves. What I like most about this plant is the way its leaves change colors in the fall. They can go from deep maroon to orange red to light, pastel pink and can be mottled with several different colors at once. Note how different they are from the viburnum dentatum leaves we saw in the previous photo. But also notice how alike the flowers are.

Clematis have also just started blooming. Unfortunately I don’t see many of these beautiful flowering vines.

Dutchman’s pipe vine (Aristolochia durior) has just started blooming but you have to search for the flowers under the very large, heart shaped leaves. The vine has historically been used as a privacy screen or for shade on porches and arbors. You can still see it used that way today, but most don’t see these small flowers. They’re mottled yellowish-green and brownish purple with a long yellow tube, and are visited by the pipevine swallowtail butterfly, and other insects.

But I think an insect would need a very long tongue to get in there. The heavily pebbled, rough surface must be to help insects hang on, I would guess. Dutchman’s pipe is native to some south eastern hardwood forests and has been cultivated in other parts of the country and Canada since the 1700s. All it needs is something strong to climb on. I would definitely not fertilize it, because once it gets going it grows fast.

I find goat’s beard (Tragopogon pratensis) growing in a meadow in full sun. This is an oddly behaving flower that closes up shop at around noon and for this reason some call it “Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon.” I remembered to go and see them at around 11:30 am, and many had already hung out their do not disturb signs. Why the one in the photo was still wide open, I don’t know. Another name for goat’s bead is meadow salsify and its spring buds are said to be good in salads, but since a kind of bubble gum can be made from the plant’s latex sap you may find your salad is a bit chewy. It is a biennial, which means it grows a low basal rosette of leaves the first year and then flowers and dies the second year. It is native to Europe, Central Asia and Turkey but it could hardly be considered invasive here; I have a hard time finding it. It has a large, fuzzy seed head similar to a dandelion seed head and that’s where the “beard” part of the name comes from.

Yellow hawkweed (Hieracium caespitosum) is blooming better than I’ve ever seen it this year and I’m seeing large clumps like this one wherever I go. They should bloom right into October.

There was a time when I hated having to deal with red clover but I once was blind, and now I see.

I found a small group of blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) and every plant was covered with insect webs. They looked more like a spider mite than a spider web. I almost always find blue toadflax growing in hot sandy waste areas and along roadsides but I’ve even found it on mountain tops and in woodland clearings. It will bloom all summer, right up until a killing frost.

Common speedwell (Veronica officinalis) is blooming better than I’ve ever seen it. This creeping “weed” is a European native that is very common here in lawns, pastures and along roadsides, which is where I found the one in the photo. It has been used medicinally for centuries in cough medicine and its leaves have also been used as a tea substitute. In France they call it “Europe tea.”

The flowers are tiny, fused into a tube with the lower petal (lobe) smaller than the others as is common in all speedwells. They grow in a spike (raceme) and can be white, blue or purple with darker stripes. They are about 1/4 inch across and have 2 stamens and a single pistil. They’re very pretty little things and masses of flowers like I’m seeing this year can put on quite a show.

In this area fragrant white waterlilies (Nymphaea odorata) start to bloom in June, and I know of a pond near a highway that has many hundreds of them in it. I’ve noticed over the last two or three years that more and more people are showing up there when they come into bloom. Some just walk slowly, some fish, some take photos and some just sit. With a busy highway so near you couldn’t really call it a tranquil spot but still they come, and several of them have become regulars now, I’ve noticed. It’s always nice to see more people getting outside and I wouldn’t wonder that they’d come out to see such a beautiful thing.

I’ve seen great blue herons, geese, ducks, all kinds of songbirds, and even a mink here. I know there are beavers here too, though I’ve never seen one. The naked flower stalks with all the flowers and leaves gone tell me there is also a woodchuck living here and I always hope to see it. Of course I also come to see the waterlilies, and I always look for that one might be tilted just right so I can see the beautiful golden flames that burn in its center. I can’t say why the others come but I come for the beauty of the place and I always find it, in all seasons.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

Thanks for coming by.

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More Mid August Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Arrowhead, Asiatic Dayflower, Blue Toadflax, Canon SX40 HS, Daylily, Deptford Pink, Groundnut, Hancock New Hampshire, Heal All, Hog Peanut, Indian Tobacco, Joe Pye Weed, Keene, Knapweed, Lobelia Inflata, Mid August Flowers, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Obedient plant, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Phlox, Queen Anne's Lace, Roadside Flowers, Rudbecia Sonora, Self Heal, Shasta Daisy, Summer Flowers, Summer Hiking, Summer Wildflowers, Summer Woods, Swanzey New Hampshire, Swanzey NH, Willowleaf Angelonia on August 25, 2021| 18 Comments »

If you happen to see something like this on a vine that is climbing over nearby plants you might want to take a closer look because they are groundnut flowers, one of our most unusual and pretty wildflowers. The outside of the flowers seen here always remind me of tiny Conquistador helmets.

The chocolaty brown insides of the groundnut flowers (Apios Americana) are very pretty. They are borne on a vine that winds its way among other sunny meadow plants and shrubs like blueberry or dogwood. This plant is also called potato bean because of the walnut sized, edible tubers that grow along its underground stem. They are said to taste like turnips and were a favorite of Native Americans. Henry David Thoreau thought they had a nutty flavor.

This year I was able to watch how these flowers work, and I noticed that the two maroon colored “wings” start out tucked up inside the “helmet” (standard) and slowly, over a few days, they unfurl into the position we see here. They are landing pads for visiting insects and they, along with black angular lines inside the flower, direct the insect to the prize inside. These flowers must be loaded with nectar, because I’ve seen maroon “teardrops” of nectar on their outside surfaces. Groundnuts are legumes in the pea/ bean family and this one was taken across the Atlantic very soon after Europeans arrived. It was listed as a garden crop in Europe in 1885.

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) has quite a long blooming season but I’m seeing fewer flowers each week so I think they’re nearing the end of their run. I’ll miss seeing them swaying in the breeze, especially in the morning when they sparkle with dew.

So where have all the Shasta daisies been hiding this year? Here it is August and these are the first I’ve seen. I’m guessing two years of drought have slowed them down a bit but here they are, back with the rains. I’ve always liked their brilliant white flowers. White and gray are important in gardens with a lot of color in them, because they allow the eye to rest a bit between colors. I always tried to have white, gray and/ or silver in any garden I built, especially perennial borders.

Centaurea is sometimes called basket flower or cornflower but it’s still a knapweed used in a garden setting. I’ve always liked it.

I showed this flower in a recent flower post and called it a rudbeckia, but someone wrote in and thought it was a Gaillardia. I planted some Gaillardia for a customer probably 40 years ago and they were disappointing, so I haven’t ever used them since and really don’t know them well. Since I couldn’t say for sure that it wasn’t a gaillardia I searched for its name and found that it is indeed a rudbeckia like its leaves told me it was. It is called Rudbeckia hirta, “Sonora.” Essentially a hybridized black eyed Susan.

I saw a colorful daylily that seems to be gaining in popularity, if I go by how many different gardens I’ve seen it in.

All the little heal all plants are still shouting yay! Do you hear them? Yay! How can you not feel joy in your heart when you see something like this? Heal all has been used medicinally since ancient times and the plants were once thought to be a holy herb sent by God to cure man’s ills. Or maybe they were sent simply to bring happiness. Maybe happiness is a large part of the cure.

I was surprised to find some beautiful little Deptford pinks (Dianthus armeria) still blossoming. I usually see them in July and they never seem to have a very long blooming period but you can occasionally find them still blooming in September. Though they originally came from Europe they can hardly be called invasive. I find them blooming in tall grasses usually in threes and fours.

This common arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) plant grows in a wet ditch behind a shopping center. They usually grow just offshore in ponds but I didn’t see a single one blooming in a pond this year. This plant is also called broadleaf arrowhead and duck potato, because ducks eat its small, potato like roots and seeds. The pretty, clear white flowers are about an inch across.

Native hog peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata ) flowers are small but pretty, and unusual. Like the groundnut that started this post this plant is a legume in the pea/ bean family. Like a true peanut, after pollination some of its flowers bury themselves in the soil and form a small, edible, bean like seeds that give the plant its common name. Mice collect these seeds and store them in large caches that Native Americans used to search for. They can be eaten raw or cooked. The plant also forms inch long, pea-like, above ground pods that contain three or four inedible seeds.

As usual I tried many times to get a photo looking into these tiny but pretty flowers, but this is the best I could do. They’re such an odd shape sometimes it’s hard to know which way is up. Hog peanut is a strong, wiry vine that can cover large areas of forest floor and choke out other plants. It is also good at tripping up hikers.

Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium) starts blooming in late July but it is another flower that seems late to me this year. This is the first one I’ve seen that could be said to be in full bloom and it’s now almost September. This is a good plant for gardens because monarch butterflies love these flowers.

The little lobelia called Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata) blooms quite late but is almost finished for this year. Its small flowers are about 1/3 of an inch long and pale lavender to almost white. It is the only lobelia with calyxes that inflate after the flowers have fallen and to identify it, I just look for the inflated seedpods.

Indian tobacco gets its name from the way its inflated seed pods resemble the smoking material pouches that Native Americans carried. The inflata part of its scientific name also comes from these inflated pods. The pods form so quickly that they can usually be found on the lower part of the stem while the upper part is still flowering.

I found this beautiful white phlox blooming in a local garden. Tall garden phlox is often very fragrant but I couldn’t smell any scent from this one at all.

Even though they are everywhere I go I’ve had to search all summer for a queen Anne’s lace flower head (Daucus carota) with a tiny purple flower in the center, and I finally found one recently. They aren’t usually so hard to find.

Legend says the tiny purplish / reddish flower at the center of the flower head is a drop of blood shed when Queen Anne pricked herself while making the lace. A more believable story says that it helps attract pollinators, but the truth is scientists don’t really know why it’s there. I’ve seen lots of insects go to them but then turn away as if there was nothing of interest there for them. These flowers are so small I can’t think of anything to compare them to. A tick, maybe? I’ve never seen one with white specks on it like this one had. I assume they must be pollen from the white flowers.

For years now I’ve found one or two Asiatic dayflowers (Commelina communis) in a local park but that bed has now been dug up, so I was happy to find a large colony of this pretty little flower at the local college. It’s supposed to be highly invasive but it really doesn’t fit that description in this immediate area.

Obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) gets its common name from the way it will stay in position for a while after the stems are bent. Individual flowers will do the same. Though it is native to central and southern U.S. it’s a very aggressive plant and can take over a garden if it isn’t kept under control. Flowers can be white, pink, or purple and there are cultivars available. An particularly unusual thing about this plant is how I can’t find any reference to it being used by Native Americans, medicinally or otherwise. I think I can only say that about two or three plants, after years of searching to see what uses plants had.

I found willowleaf angelonia (Angelonia salicariifolia) growing in a local garden and had no idea what it was at the time. After some digging, I found that it is a perennial native to Puerto Rico and grows year-round there. The plant is covered with sticky hairs and has spikes (racemes) of small, pretty 5 lobed flowers that come in a few different colors including pure white. Another name for it is granny’s bonnets. This is a hard plant to find any good information on but it would be worth searching for. It’s about a foot or so tall and in my opinion is very pretty. Because of the location I found it in I would guess that it wants plenty of sunlight.

Here is this week’s look at our late summer roadside flowers. No New England asters yet but there is boneset, Joe Pye weed, Goldenrod and purple loosestrife here. They made a beautiful scene, I thought.

I’m going to leave you with two quotes today from two men born more than 60 years apart; one a physicist, the other a naturalist, each saying the same thing.

Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star. ~Paul A.M. Dirac

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. ~John Muir

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Late June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Bearded Iris, Blue Toadflax, Canon SX40 HS, Elderberry Flower, Hancock New Hampshire, Keene, Knapweed, Moneywort, Motherwort, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Partridgeberry, Peony Flower, Pineapple Weed, Privet Flowers, Purple Flowering Raspberry, Snowberry Flower, Summer Flowers, Summer Wildflowers, Swamp Dewberry, Swanzey New Hampshire, Sweet William, Tall Meadow Rue, Thimbleweed, Treacle Mustard, White Avens on June 30, 2021| 22 Comments »

It’s peony time here in New Hampshire and this one caught my eye. It grows in a local park and I thought it was beautiful.

Tall thimbleweed’s (Anemone virginiana) white flower petals aren’t petals at all; they’re sepals and they don’t last very long. Almost every time I see them they have either turned green or are in the process of doing so, so seeing them in white is always a treat. There are usually plenty of yellowish stamens surrounding a center head full of pistils though. The seed head continues growing after the sepals have fallen off and it becomes thimble shaped, which is where the common name comes from. These flowers are close to the diameter of a quarter; about an inch. There is another plant called thimble berry but that is the purple flowering raspberry, like the one we’ll see a little later in this post.

Privet (Ligustrum vulgare) is in the same family (Oleaceae) as lilacs and that should come as no surprise when you look closely at the small flower heads. Privet is a quick growing shrub commonly planted in rows and used as hedging because they respond so well to shearing. Originally from Europe and Asia it is considered invasive in some areas. It has been used by mankind as a privacy screen for a very long time; Pliny the Elder knew it well. Its flexible twigs were once used for binding and the name Ligustrum comes from the Latin ligare, which means “to tie.”

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) is one of our longest blooming wildflowers, starting in May and often going right up until a heavy frost. Since blue is my favorite color I’m always happy to see it. Its common name comes from its leaves, which look like flax leaves, and when a heavy enough insect lands on the protruding lip of the flower a (toad’s) “mouth” will open so the insect can get at the nectar which is found in the long, curved nectar spur at the rear of each blossom.

Motherwort’s (Leonurus cardiaca) tiny flowers grow in a whorl around the stem in the leaf axils. This plant, originally from Asia, is considered an invasive weed but I don’t see it that often and I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than 2 or 3 plants growing together. At a glance it might resemble one of the nettle family but the square stems show it to be in the mint family.It was brought to this country because of its long history of medicinal use in Europe and Asia. The ancient Greeks and Romans used motherwort medicinally and it is still used today to decrease nervous irritability and quiet the nervous system. There is supposed to be no better herb for strengthening and gladdening the heart, and it is sold in powdered and liquid form. Note the second part of its scientific name: cardiaca.

The tiny flowers of motherwort are very hairy and look like a microscopic orchid. They’re also very hard to get a good shot of because of both their size and color. It usually takes me many tries to get a shot like this and it did this year.

I’ve shown partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) here many times over the years but this time I was quick enough to catch its pretty pink buds. Partridgeberry flowers always appear in pairs because they share a single ovary. If they’re pollinated they’ll produce a single red berry which will have two dimples on it, showing where each flower was. Partridgeberry is one of the lowest growing evergreen plants on the forest floor, hardly growing more than 3 or 4 inches high. Plants have a vining habit but do not climb. Instead they form dense mats by spreading their trailing stems out to about a foot from the crown.

The 4 petaled, pinkish, fringed, fragrant, half inch long partridgeberry flowers appear in June and July. The berries remain on the plant for long periods unless eaten, and can often still be found the following spring. Other names for this plant include twinberry and two-eyed berry. I like the leaves as well, which always look as if they were hammered out of a sheet of metal.

Purple flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus) is in the rose family and the 2 inch wide flowers might look like a rose at a glance. It has no thorns like roses or raspberries, however. The fruit looks like a large raspberry but is on the tart, dry side and it gives the plant the name of thimble berry. It has large, light gathering, maple shaped leaves and is quite shade tolerant. Flowering raspberry landed me a job once when an elderly gentleman said “If you can tell me what the plants in this hedge are, I’ll hire you.” I said “Flowering raspberry,” and he said “You’re hired.” He was one of the nicest people I’ve ever known and I worked for him for many years after that hedge side meeting.

I was shocked when I stopped along a road to see lupines and found sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) growing with them, presumably seeded there by the highway department along with the lupines. Sweet William is an old fashioned garden favorite which I’ve always loved, especially for its spicy sweet fragrance. It is a biennial plant native to southern Europe and parts of Asia, and though it is said to be naturalized in this country I’ve never seen it outside of a garden until now. Nobody seems to know how it got its common name but with flowers that pretty I doubt anyone really cares.

Black elderberries (Sambucus nigra) have just started blooming along streams and on the edges of swamps. The bushes can get quite big with large white, flat flowerheads.

Each flower in a black elderberry will become a small purple berry (drupe) so dark it is almost black. A drupe is a fleshy fruit with a single seed like a peach or cherry. Native Americans dried the fruit for winter use and soaked the berry stems in water to make a black dye for basketry.

If you take the time to stop and really look at an elderberry you find that the large, flat flower heads are made up of hundreds of tiny, beautiful flowers. Each flower is only 1/4 inch across, and has 5 white petals or lobes, 5 yellow tipped stamens and 3 very small styles that fall off early after blooming.

The best thing about humble little pineapple weed (Matricaria discoidea) is how it will immediately put a huge grin on a child’s face when it is crushed and put under their nose. They just can’t believe what they’re smelling. Some think this flower looks and smells like chamomile with all the petals missing, and I’ve heard it makes a good tea. It is a native plant that was used extensively by Native Americans. Next time you see one why not give it a sniff? It’s like taking the fast train right back to childhood.

Knapweeds can be tricky to identify but I think this is brown knapweed (Centaurea jacea,) which is considered highly invasive in parts of the country. Even so it is used by the highway department to stabilize embankments as this plant was doing. I’ve always liked its unusual flowers.

The irises have been truly remarkable this year. On and on they went, blooming like I’ve never seen, but I’m afraid it’s time to say goodbye for this year. It was a pleasure.

We have at least two types of dewberry growing here, northern or common dewberry (Rubus flagellaris) and swamp or bristly dewberry (Rubus hispidus) Each grow a black berry which is similar to a small black raspberry. I see bristly dewberry like that in the photo almost everywhere I go, along trails and in forest clearings. Both plants are woody vines that can grow to 15 feet under optimum conditions, and both are prickly. Swamp dewberry as its name implies, likes slightly wetter places.

White avens (Geum canadense) has started blooming a little early this year. Each flowers is about a half inch across with 5 white petals and many anthers. The anthers start out white and then turn brown and you usually find both on each flower. Each flower becomes a seed head with hooked seeds that will stick to hair or clothing. It’s a pretty little thing that is easy to miss, mostly because it resembles other flowers.

Moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia ) is a low growing, vining plant. It is also called wandering Jenny, creeping Jenny, running Jenny, wandering sailor, wandering tailor, creeping Charlie, creeping Joan, herb two pence, and two penny grass. This plant was imported from Europe for use as a groundcover in gardens but has escaped and is now often found in wet areas. The common name moneywort comes from the round leaves resembling coins. (?) Moneywort is quite noticeable because its yellow flowers are quite large for such a ground hugging plant. One story about moneywort says that when snakes get bruised or wounded they turn to moneywort for healing. This gave the plant yet another common name: Serpentaria.

Snowberry flowers (Symphoricarpos albus) ended up in my too hard basket a couple of years ago after I had tried hundreds of times to get a decent photo of them. I admitted defeat and told myself I’d probably never try again, but then the other day I saw a fine shot of one on Mr. Tootlepedal’s blog and I knew it could be done, so I had to try again. Finally, after several years and many blown photos, here it is.

Here’s a closer look. This flower is so very small I’m really not sure how to describe it but it could easily hide behind a new spring pea. I was very surprised to see how hairy they were. Native snowberry is a rather old fashioned shrub in the honeysuckle family which has been grown in gardens for a very long time, probably for its shade tolerance. Each flower, if pollinated, will become a half inch diameter white berry which usually appear in clusters. The toxic berries persist through winter, as the common name implies. By the way, if you aren’t reading Mr. Tootlepedal’s blog you’re missing a real treat. He can be found over in the “Favorite Links” section on the right.

This is the first time treacle mustard (Erysimum cheiranthoides) has appeared on this blog because I’ve never seen it before now. It is a winter annual plant that was about a foot tall in this example but I’ve read that it can reach 2 feet. The pretty, bright yellow flowers are small at only 1/4 inch across, and their 4 petals point directly toward the mustard family. The long, slender seedpods also speak of the mustards.

Treacle mustard’s leaves are long and narrow, with widely spaced teeth along their margins. According to Wikipedia the plant is also called “wormseed mustard” from the way the seeds of the plant were once added to treacle to treat intestinal worms in children. Treacle is a syrup made from the liquid that remains after sugar is refined, or from molasses. It sounds like a spoonful of sugar helped the medicine go down.

Since it’s so close to the fourth of July I thought I’d end with some floral fireworks called tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens.) The plant always blooms for the 4th and the orange tipped flowers always remind me of “bombs bursting in air.” Flowers on both male and female plants lack petals and have only anthers (male) or pistils (female). These are male flowers in this photo. Every year when independence day comes around I know it’s time to watch for these beautiful little things.

The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind. ~Rumi

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Early September Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Toadflax, Boneset, Canon SX40 HS, Chicory Blossom, Eastern Forked Blue Curls, Hydrangea blossoms, Keene, Lady's Thumb, Native Plants, Nature, New England Aster, New Hampshire, NH, Nodding Bur Marigold, Nodding Smartweed, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Panicled Hawkweed, Pink Turtlehead, Purple Loosestrife, Sedum, Soapwort, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Unknown Viburnum on September 9, 2020| 15 Comments »

Our beautiful New England asters are now opening over a wider area and though I’m not seeing them everywhere I go yet I usually see them each day at least. They make summer’s end a little more palatable.

Nodding smartweed (Polygonum lapathifolium) gets its common name from its drooping flower heads and the very sharp, peppery taste of the stems, which makes the tongue smart. It doesn’t seem to bother ducks, geese, and all of the other animals that eat it, though. The plant is also called curly top smartweed; obviously because of the way the long flower spikes droop. It is originally from Europe.

Each nodding smartweed flower spike is made up of many pink to white, very small flowers.

Nodding smartweed flowers never seem to fully open, but I got lucky on this day and found one. Each flower has 5 sepals and no petals. There are also six stamens, two partially fused carpels and two styles. The tiny flowers are packed into a long raceme and can be white, red, pink, or a combination of all three. In my experience it is rare to find one as open as this one was.

Only one smartweed is called lady’s thumb (Persicaria maculosa,) but even nodding smartweed has the “thumbprint.” The dark spot that appears on each leaf is said in legend to have been left by a lady with a dirty thumb (apparently.) It has been there ever since.

It’s time to say goodbye to chicory (Cichorium intybus) I think, because out of ten or twelve plants this is the only one still blooming.

Chicory one of my favorite summer flowers because of its large, easy to see flowers and beautiful blue color. I can’t think of another flower, either wild or cultivated, quite like it.

Nodding bur marigold plants (Bidens cernua) grow in the wet mud at the water’s edge at rivers and ponds. As they age the flowers of the nodding bur marigold nod towards the ground and that’s how the plant comes by its common name. The flowers look something like a miniature sunflower and are supposed to be good for honey production. I like their deeply pleated petals. The plants grow to about knee high, often in standing water, and that can make them tricky to get a good photo of.

Panicled hawkweed (Hieracium paniculatum) has wiry stems that curve in all directions and end in a small, yellow, daisy-like flower. I often find this plant growing along old forgotten dirt roads in the woods. These native plants are sometimes confused with rough hawkweed (Hieracium scabrum) but that plant has prickly flower buds and hairy leaves.

Each strap shaped “petal” on a panicled hawkweed flower head is actually a ray flower. Some have teeth on the end as this one did but others may not.

Seed heads are also what you would expect to see on a hawkweed. Panicled hawkweed is one of our latest blooming hawkweeds.

For the first time I saw a blue toadflax blossom (Nuttallanthus canadensis) with its “mouth” open. It’s hard to see but it’s there under that upper lobe. The name toadflax comes from its flax like leaves, and its toad like mouth. Whatever you call it it’s a pretty little plant that blooms for most of the summer. The side view shows its long nectar spur.

I have pink turtleheads (Chelone lyonii) in my yard but these examples in a local park bloom weeks earlier than mine. Unlike my plants, these plants often look terrible; all black and crisp leaves. My plants haven’t even showed color on the buds yet, but I hope they do better than these. I don’t know the origin of this plant and have never known if it was a native or a cultivar but it does very well in my yard and asks for nothing. Pink turtleheads are native to the southeastern U.S. and don’t seem to mind dryness in spite of naturally growing near water.

I always like to see if I can get a shot looking into the throat of the turtle. It’s very hairy in there but it doesn’t bother bumblebees. They can often be found swarming over these plants.

At a local pond white boneset and purple loosestrife dominated the scene. If history is any indication it won’t be long before purple loosestrife takes over the whole area.

I’m seeing fewer soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) flowers these days and I think its run has just about ended for this year. Someday I’m going to chop up the roots and flowering stems and see if I can get soapy water out of them. I’ve read that it gets soapy enough to be able to be used to wash clothes.

No, it isn’t May but this flower head I saw on a viburnum shrub in a local park reminded me of May. It is an almost exact duplicate of our native hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) flowers that bloom in that month, though it was about half the size. Like hobblebush flowers the large sterile flowers around the perimeter are there to attract insects to the smaller fertile flowers found in the center. I haven’t been able to identify the shrub, which was much taller and more upright than a hobblebush, but I was happy to see it.

Hydrangeas have been blooming for a while now. These plants live far back in my memory; my grandmother always grew them and called them snowballs. This old fashioned type is called “Annabelle.”

Sedums are just starting to show color. For those who don’t know, sedums have thick succulent leaves and fleshy stems and can be quite drought tolerant. They are also nectar rich and will attract butterflies.

I think it’s just about time to say goodbye to the beautiful little forked blue curls (Trichostema dichotomum,) because I’m seeing more seedpods than flowers now. This plant is an annual so it will have to grow again from seed next year. These little beauties are usually barely ankle high and like to grow in sandy soil in full sun.

Winters have always seemed long to me because I’ve always been a flower lover. To make winter seem shorter I know that the secret is to stop longing to see flowers again, but how can you not long to see something so beautiful? I haven’t worked that out yet.

What happens to people who have witnessed the miraculous? ~Jim Harrison

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Late May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Toadflax, Blue Tradescantia, Canon SX40 HS, Dame's Rocket, Fringed Polygala, Gaywings, Greater Celandine, Hancock New Hampshire, Heartleaf Foamflower, Japanese Honeysuckle, Keene, Late Spring Plants, Lily of the Valley, Mayapple, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Red Clover, Rhodora, Spring, Starflower, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, White Lilac, Yellow Sorrel on May 27, 2020| 31 Comments »

If you’re tempted to pass by what you think are violets you might want to take a closer look, because our beautiful little fringed polygalas (Polygala paucifolia) have just started blossoming. Their color and the fact that they sometimes grow beside violets has fooled me in the past. The small 3 inch tall by inch and a half wide plants usually bloom in pairs as can be seen in the photo above. Fringed polygalas are in the milkwort family and are also sometimes called flowering wintergreen and / or gaywings. The slightly hairy leaves were once used medicinally by some Native American tribes to heal sores.

Each blossom is made up of five sepals and two petals. The two petals form a tube and two of the sepals form the little wings. The little fringe at the end of the tube is part of the third sepal, which is mostly hidden. When a heavy enough insect lands on the fringe the third sepal, called the keel, drops down to create an entrance to the tube. Once the insect crawls in it finds the flower’s reproductive parts and gets dusted with pollen to carry off to another blossom. Surprisingly this little insect landed on the flower I was taking a photo of it and let me actually see how it works. I think it was a sweat bee.

In this shot the reproductive structures are exposed. That little bump or nub just under the tube formed by the petals makes up the reproductive structures and this is the first time I’ve ever seen them. Though I’ve searched high and low in books and online apparently little is known about how they function. I did read that the seeds are coated with a fatty tissue that ants like, so ants disperse them. I usually find this plant in shady, mossy places and I think it prefers moist ground. Some mistake the flowers for orchids and it’s easy to see why. They’re a beautiful and unusual flower that I always look for in May.

Heartleaf foamflowers (Tiarella cordifolia) have just started blossoming near shaded streams and on damp hillsides. They’re easy to spot because of their hairy, maple-like leaves and foot high flower stalks, and a colony as big as this one is a beautiful sight. Native plants have leaves that are bright green at first and then turn a darker green, sometimes mottled with maroon or brown. Many hybrids have been created and foam flowers are now popular in garden centers and are grown in gardens as much for their striking foliage as the flowers. They are an excellent, maintenance free choice for shady gardens that get only morning sun.

The small, numerous flowers of foamflower have 5 white petals, 5 white sepals, and 10 stamens. It is said that the long stamens are what give foamflowers their frothy appearance, along with their common name. Native Americans used the leaves and roots of foamflower medicinally as a mouthwash for mouth sores. The plant is also called “coolwort” because the leaves were also used on scalds and burns to relieve the pain.

Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) has just come into bloom, right on schedule. This plant was introduced from Europe in the 1600s but it doesn’t seem very invasive; the colonies that I know of hardly seem to spread at all, and that’s possibly because they are biennials. This plant is in the mustard family, Brassicaceae but is sometimes mistaken for phlox, which has 5 petals rather than the 4 petals seen on dame’s rocket. Phlox also has opposite leaves and those on dame’s rocket are alternate. The young leaves of dame’s rocket are rich in vitamin C and oil pressed from its seed is used in perfumes.

Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis.) has just started blooming and something has already chewed a hole through the side of one of them. I can remember bringing my grandmother, whose name was Lilly, wilting bouquets of lily of the valley along with dandelions, violets and anything else I saw when I was just a young boy, so it’s a flower that comes with a lifetime of memories for me. The plant, originally from Europe and Asia, is quite toxic. It is actually in the asparagus, not the lily family.

Starflowers (Trientalis borealis) are another spring flower that have just started blooming. These flowers don’t produce nectar so they are pollinated by pollen eating insects like halictid and andrenid bees. There can be one or several flowers on each plant and I always try to find the one with the most flowers. My record is 4 but I’m always watching out for 5.

Books will tell you that starflowers have 7 petals but as this one shows, they can have as many as 9. They can also have as few as 6.

When you see big umbrella like leaves like these you should look under them, because that’s where the flowers of Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) hide. Mayapple is also called American mandrake, which is legendary among herbalists for the root that supposedly resembles a man. Native Americans boiled the root and used the water to cure stomach aches but this plant is toxic and should not be eaten.

Mayapple flowers are hard to get a decent photo of because they nod toward the ground under the plant’s leaves, but it can be done. I’ve read that once a mayapple produces flowers and fruit it reduces its chances of doing so in following years, but this colony seems to bloom well each year.

One of most beautiful spring flowering shrubs is the rhodora (Rhododendron canadense.) Henry David Thoreau once wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and that’s what this little two foot tall shrub does each spring. The flowers appear just when the irises start to bloom and I often have to search for them because they aren’t common. Rhodora is a small, native rhododendron (actually an azalea) that loves swampy places. It is native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada and both its western and southern limits are reached in Pennsylvania. The flowers appear before the leaves, but only for a short time in spring. By mid-June they will have all vanished.

Because of their habit of growing in or very close to the water it can be hard to get close enough to get a shot of a single flower, but if you’ve ever seen an azalea blossom then you know what they look like. It’s the color of this one that sets it apart from other azaleas, in my opinion. This plant was brought from Canada to Paris in March 1756 and was introduced to England in 1791. It is said to have been a big hit, but it must have been difficult to grow in English gardens since it likes to grow in standing water and needs very cold winters.

My mother died before I was old enough to retain any memory of her but she planted a white lilac before she died, so now the flowers and their scent have become my memory of her. Whenever I see a white lilac she is there too. I know that long time readers are probably tired of hearing all these flower stories but there are new readers coming along all the time who haven’t, so I hope you’ll bear with me. When I see certain flowers I often think more of the connection it has in my memory to a certain person than I do the flower.

White lilacs hold my mother’s memories and tradescantia flowers hold my father’s. When I was just a young boy living with my father I decided that our yard needed a facelift. We had a beautiful cabbage rose hedge and a white lilac, and a Lorelai bearded iris that my mother planted before she died but I wanted more. I used to walk the Boston and Maine railroad tracks to get to my grandmother’s house and I’d see these beautiful blue flowers growing along the tracks, so one day I dug one up and planted it in the yard. My father was quiet until I had planted 3 or 4 of them, and then he finally asked me why I was bringing home those “dammed old weeds.” He also walked the tracks to get to work and back, so he saw the tradescantia (Tradescantia virginiana) plants just as often as I did. Though I thought they were lost and needed to be rescued, he thought somebody threw them away and he wished they’d have thrown them just a little farther, because now they were all ending up in his yard. Today every time I see these flowers I think of him. I hope your flowers come with such pleasant memories.

Common yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta) is often confused with clover but clover has oval leaflets rather than the heart shaped ones. Yellow wood sorrel’s three leaflets close up flat at night and in bright sunshine, and for that reason it is also called sleeping beauty or sleeping molly. The flowers also close at night. The stricta part of the scientific name means “upright” and refers to the way the plant’s seedpods bend upwards from their stalks. This small grouping had the largest flowers I’ve seen; twice the size as they usually bear. I’m not sure what would cause that.

We have several invasive honeysuckle species here in New Hampshire and I’ve given up trying to identify them all. Most or all are banned from being sold but birds love their bright red berries and that makes the shrubs impossible to ever eradicate. Though most of their flowers are white you do see an occasional pink example. They can be very pretty and also very fragrant.

Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus ) takes quite a long time to bloom after the melting snow reveals its cluster of basal leaves in early spring. This commonly seen plant originally comes from Europe and Asia and is considered invasive.

Greater celandine’s yellow / orange colored sap that we used to call mustard when I was a boy has been used medicinally for thousands of years, even though it is considered toxic and can irritate the skin and eyes. It is said that it can also cause liver damage if used incorrectly. We might have called it mustard but as far as I know, nobody ever ate it.

Little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) is one of my favorite spring flowers and it has just started blooming. Toadflax flowers have an upper lip that is divided into 2 rounded lobes, and a lower lip which is divided into 3 lobes that are rounded and spreading. They also have a long spur in back, which can’t be seen well in this photo. Toadflax likes sandy soil and waste areas to grow in. The cheery blue flowers are always a welcome sight.

Red clover (Trifolium pretense) is a plant that quite literally helped me see the light. There was a time when all this plant meant to me was more hard work. I didn’t like having to weed them out of lawns and garden beds but they were so unsightly with their long, weak flower stems and sprawling, weedy habit. And then one evening a single ray of sunshine came through the clouds and fell directly on a red clover plant at the edge of a meadow, and when I knelt in front of it to take its photo for the first time I saw how beautiful it really was. I saw that it had an inner light; what I think of as the light of creation, shining brightly out at me. I’ve loved it ever since, and since that day I don’t think I’ve ever truly thought of another flower, no matter how lowly, as a weed.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty, if only we have the eyes to see them. ~John Ruskin

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Early October Wildflowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Ashuelot River, Blue Toadflax, Bull Thistle, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Dandelion, Fall Blooming Azalea, Fall Mums, Fall Witch Hazel, Garden Mum, Garden Phlox, Goldenrod, Herb Robert, Keene, Late Fall Wildflowers, Native Plants, Nature, New England Asters, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Pink Turtleheads, Purple Coneflower, Rose, Swanzey New Hampshire on October 5, 2019| 27 Comments »

As I write this we haven’t seen any real cold temperatures yet but by the time this is posted they say daytime highs will be in the 50s F., and widespread frosts are likely for several nights running. Of course that will most likely end the growing season for all but the hardiest of plants. if it happens, so we won’t see scenes like this again until next year.

This aster bloomed in a garden…

…and this aster bloomed by a cornfield. This is a New England aster and though the color is the same the garden variety is shorter and more compact and has many more flowers.

I’m always surprised by this yellow azalea I find blooming in a local park. Most azaleas bloom in spring and early summer, not in October, but I guess nobody told this one that.

As they age purple coneflowers lose a lot of their color and their rays become pale and more pastel and paper like. I suspect that these will probably be the last of their kind that I see this year.

I found this goldenrod growing in the wild but its compact habit makes me think it would be a hit in the garden, possibly surrounded by deep purple garden asters. Most goldenrods are quite tall but this one barely reached a foot and a half.

I’ve never seen turtleheads bloom as well as they have this year. This is a pink variety but the white ones have also bloomed well. A problem I’ve seen with the white native plants aside from their flowers is their leaves turning black and crisp. I don’t know what’s causing it.

Can you stand seeing more roadside flowers? I never get tired of seeing them but I probably took too many photos.

They’re very beautiful, and this week might see their end.

I was surprised to see herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) still blooming along the Ashuelot River. I usually see them at the end of June. Robert was a French monk who lived in 1000 AD and cured many people’s diseases using this plant, and that leads to another common name: Saint Robert’s Herb. If you crush its leaves they are said to smell like burning tires, so yet another common name is stinky Bob.

I’ve learned a lot about dandelions by having to pay closer attention to them for this blog, and one of the things I’ve learned is that they don’t like hot weather. In fact in this part of the state they disappear in summer and return only when it cools off in the fall. I’ve seen them bloom as late as January in a warm winter. I saw two or three blooms on this day.

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) is still blooming as it has since June, I think. Easily one of our longest blooming flowers. This plant seems to like sunny, dry, sandy waste areas or roadsides because that’s where I always find it growing. It’s always worth getting down on my hands and knees to admire its tiny but beautiful blue / purple flowers. Toadflax flowers have an upper lip that is divided into 2 rounded lobes, and a lower lip which is divided into 3 lobes that are rounded and spreading. Blue toadflax was introduced in Europe and has naturalized in some areas, including Russia. It is in the snapdragon (Scrophulariaceae) family. Toadflax boiled in milk is said to make an excellent fly poison but I’ve never tried it.

Phlox is still going strong in places. I found this one in a friend’s garden.

Most bull thistles (Cirsium vulgare) look like the one on the left, but the one on the right was just opening. I’m guessing that it will be the last one I see this year. This plant originally hails from Europe. It is thought to have been introduced in the colonial era and has spread throughout the United States, much to the dismay of farmers and cattle ranchers. It is also called spear thistle, with good reason. The first flowers often open in the center of the plant and that can make it tricky to get a photo of. Those spines are very sharp. Bees love these flowers and it is not uncommon to have them flying all around me as I take photos of it.

Here in the Northeastern U.S. we are big on garden chrysanthemums in the fall and I wonder if people in other countries love them as much as we do. Thought of as a late summer / fall plant, many thousands of them are sold each year and you see them everywhere. Though they are native to Asia and northeastern Europe I never hear much about them being grown in other countries.

Though they are sold as “hardy mums” they are not truly hardy and most of them die in winter, but purple and white ones will often make it through until the following year. Chrysanthemums were first cultivated in China as early as the 15th century, where its boiled roots were used to treat headaches and its sprouts and petals were eaten in salads.

When I was young I worked at a nursery where we grew ten thousand mums each year. The number one priority was watering. It didn’t matter what else needed to be done; you didn’t let plants wilt, ever. Standing out in the hot sun watering ten thousand mums was unpleasant, but the plants came first and your needs second, and we all understood that. Many people try to grow their mums in pots without realizing how much water they need, and the plants usually die of thirst. In the ground is the best place for this one.

I’ve seen quite a few roses still blooming, including this one that shined its light out at me.

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is our latest blooming shrub, even blooming as late as January in a warm winter, but I was surprised to see these blossoms in September, which seems early. Some Native American tribes steamed witch hazel twigs over hot stones in their sweat lodges to soothe aching muscles and others made tea from it to treat coughs. As is often the case Natives had a use for virtually every part of the plant and witch hazel is still in use today. It can be found as a lotion in almost any drugstore. Witch hazel blossoms are pollinated by owlet moths, which are active in winter and are called winter moths, but this year the moths may have help from several other insects I’ve seen still flying. The “hama” part of witch hazel’s scientific name means “at the same time” and is used because you can see leaves, flowers, and the prior year’s fruit all at once on the same plant, as this photo shows.

Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom:
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
~ Zenkei Shibayama

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More Mid August Flowers

Posted in Nature, Orchids, Wildflowers, tagged Ashuelot River, Blue Toadflax, Blue Vervain, Canada St. John's Wort, Downy Rattlesnake Plantain Orchid, Field Milkwort, Fragrant White Water Liliy, Groundnut, Hog Peanut, Keene, Narrow Leaved Gentian, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Slender Gerardia, Spotted Jewelweed, Spotted Touch me not, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire on August 24, 2019| 28 Comments »

I was very happy to find a new colony of narrow leaved gentian (Gentiana andrewsii) on my recent trip to Pitcher Mountain. I saw a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye as I drove by and thought it was probably vetch, but I turned around and was surprised by what you see here. These plants are on the rare side in this area so finding more is always a good thing.

These flowers appear identical to those of bottle gentians (Gentiana andrewsii) but the foliage is quite different. Narrow leaf gentians like moist, calcium rich soil and that’s one reason you don’t see them in this area very often. Another reason is that the flowers never open so insects have to force their way in, and it takes a strong insect like a bumblebee to do so. I saw several trying to get into the flowers while I was with them on this day. Its seeds are too small to interest birds and its foliage too bitter to interest herbivores. Put all of that together and it’s a wonder that this plant is seen at all. It’s listed as rare, endangered or vulnerable in many areas.

Pretty groundnut (Apias americana) flowers have just started blooming. They come in pink, purple or reddish brown and always remind me of the helmets worn by Spanish conquistadors. The plant is a vine that will climb just about anything and I usually find it growing in the lower branches of trees and shrubs along the river.

Indeed Spanish explorers most likely would have seen the plant, because its potato like tuberous roots were a very important food source for Native Americans from New England to Florida. It has been found in archeological digs of Native settlements dating back 9,000 years. Native Americans used the roots of the plant in the same ways we use potatoes today, but groundnut “potatoes” contain about three times the protein. Natives taught the early colonials how to use the groundnut and the plant helped save the lives of the Pilgrims during their first few years as settlers. Not surprisingly another name for it is Indian potato.

Native hog peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata ) flowers are small and beautiful, but it’s a plant that comes with a lot of baggage. As the story goes author and forager Samuel Thayer calls them ground beans rather than hog peanut because he claims that the name “hog peanut” was a racial slur against Native Americans. He says that the Europeans came to a point where they refused to eat them because even though the small legumes saved many of their lives they insisted they were only fit for hogs (implying that Native Americans were hogs.) Personally I find this story hard to believe because anyone who has ever raised pigs knows that they root around in the soil looking for just the kinds of legumes that grow on these vines, and it isn’t hard to imagine colonials, who raised pigs, saying “look, the hogs have found some nuts.” I call it hog peanut here not to slander anyone but because nine out of ten people will use a plant’s common name when they look for it in field guides, and field guides call the plant hog peanut. If Samuel Thayer can get them to change that, then I’ll be happy to call it a ground bean.

Like a true peanut, after pollination some of its flowers bury themselves in the soil and form a small, edible, bean like seeds that give the plant its common name. Mice collect these seeds and store them in large caches that Native Americans used to search for. They can be eaten raw or cooked. The plant also forms inch long, pea-like, above ground pods that contain three or four inedible seeds. Hog peanut is a strong, wiry vine that can cover large areas of forest floor and choke out other plants. It is also good at tripping up hikers.

I found a forest of downy rattlesnake plantain orchids (Goodyera pubescens) all in bloom.

The tiny flowers look like miniature versions of our native pink lady’s slipper orchid flowers. Each one is so small it could easily hide behind a pea with room to spare. This photo shows where the “downy” part of the common name comes from. Everything about the flower stalk is hairy.

I like the downy rattlesnake plantain orchid’s mottled silvery foliage as much as its blossoms. The flowers grow on a relatively long stalk and though I’ve tried hundreds of times I’ve been able to show the flower stalk and basal leaves together clearly in a photo only once. This orchid grows in the woods usually in deep shade, but I find that most plants get at least an hour or two of sunshine no matter where they grow.

Slender gerardia (Agalinis tenuifoliais) is also called false foxglove. There might be a faint resemblance but I think it would be hard to confuse the two, especially after a good look at the slender, sword shaped leaves. The blossoms are very hairy and have a long curved protruding pistil and especially from the side look nothing like foxglove to me.

Slender gerardia is a shy little plant that grows in full sun. It has the unusual habit of dropping all of its opened flowers each afternoon. It opens fresh buds at the start of each day which means that its flowers don’t even last for a full day, so insects (and photographers) have to be quick. The plants that I find are always 6-8 inches tall but I’ve read that they can reach 2 feet.

I’m seeing more slender gerardia flowers this year than I ever have before. You can see in this shot how the blossoms seem to float in the air because the leaves and stems are so small.

I know of only one place to find field milkwort (Polygala sanguinea) and it is always worth the walk to see them. The flowers are very beautiful and unusual enough to make you want to sit beside them for a while and study them, and that’s just what I usually do.

On field milkwort flowers what look like petals arranged on a central stem are actually individual flowers packed into a raceme no bigger than the end of an average index finger. Each tiny overlapping flower has two large sepals, three small sepals, and three small petals that form a narrow tube. Several different kinds of bees help pollinate this plant but on this day they were covered in bumblebees. Its flowers can be white, purple, pink, or green and I’ve noticed that the color can vary considerably from plant to plant.

I thought I’d show you a field milkwort flower head on a penny so you could get a better idea of their size. You can also see the small sword shaped leaves in this photo, and how the flower heads sit at the very top of the stem. Both field milkwort and the slender gerardia we saw previously grow in gravel in full sun.

Native Canada St. John’s wort (Hypericum canadense) has deep red seed pods but its flowers come in the more traditional yellow. Though some very reputable websites will tell you that this plant likes wet soil I always find it in dry gravel. It has grown in full sunshine for months now without harm and I think most of the watering it has had has come from morning dew, so it’s a very tough little plant. I wonder if they might have it confused with dwarf St. John’s wort (Hypericum mutilum) which likes the wet soil of pond edges, or if I have it confused with yet another variety of St. John’s wort that I don’t know about. Canada St. John’s wort is also called lessor Canada St. John’s wort, so I assume that there must be a greater Canada St. John’s wort. These blossoms are tiny; less than the diameter of a pencil eraser.

It’s almost time to say goodbye to blue vervain (Verbena hastata) and you can tell that because the remaining blossoms are at the tops of the stems. This is another plant that loves water and it grows near ponds and rivers, and even wet roadside ditches. The bitter roots of this plant were used by native Americans to relieve gastric irritation, as an expectorant, and to induce sweating. The seeds were roasted and ground into flour by some tribes, and others dried the flowers and used them as snuff to treat nosebleeds. Natives introduced the plant to the Europeans and they used it in much the same ways.

I just love the color of blue vervain.

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) must be one of the longest blooming wildflowers we have here. It usually starts blooming in May and I’m still seeing it in quite large numbers. I love the shade of blue that it wears.

I think I’ve seen more jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) this year than I ever have. This plant typically blossoms right up until a frost but as day length shortens the plants will produce smaller, closed flowers with no petals and no nectar. They self-pollinate and their sole purpose is to produce plenty of seeds. Jewelweed gets its name not from its orange flowers but from the way raindrops sparkle like jewels on its wax coated leaves.

Jewelweed blossoms dangle at the ends of long filaments and sway in the slightest breath of a breeze, so it’s always tricky getting a shot of one. I like to do it for the practice, but it can make you crazy.

I’ve probably shown too many fragrant white waterlily photos already this year but this one was covered by what I thought might be tiny black water lily aphids (Rhopalosiphum nymphaea.) These insects feed by draining sap from the lily’s leaves, thereby weakening the plant so I wasn’t happy to see them. But when I got home and saw the photo I had taken I saw that even covered with insects, fragrant white waterlilies are very beautiful. It’s one of my favorite aquatic plants.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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Late June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Bird's Foot Trefoil, Blue Toadflax, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Clematis, Crown Vetch, Foxglove, Fringe Tree, Goat's Beard, Heal All, Keene, Mallow Flower, Mountain Laurel, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Peached Leaved Bluebell, Pineapple Weed, Smooth Arrowwood Viburnum, Sulfur Cinquefoil, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tree Lilac, Wild Radish on June 29, 2019| 26 Comments »

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) is not a native plant so I’m always surprised to see it growing along the edge of forests. I don’t see it in the wild often but it seems to escape gardens and find places that suit its temperament and there it stays, sometimes forming small colonies. I’ve also seen one or two older, large colonies which were very beautiful.

I like to try to get a bee’s eye view of foxglove blossoms. They apparently start life with yellow spots which turn to white as they age. The lower lip protrudes a bit to give bees a landing pad, and from there they follow the spots, which are nectar guides, up to the top of the blossom where they find the nectar. While the bee is busy with the nectar the anthers above it rub on its back and deposit the flower’s pollen, which will then be taken to another blossom. If successfully pollinated a foxglove plant can produce from one to two million very small seeds.

I find mallow plants (Malvaceae) growing in strange places like on roadsides as this one was but I think most are escapees from someone’s garden. The flowers on this example look a lot like those of vervain mallow (Malva alcea), which is a European import. Like all plants in the mallow family its flowers were large and beautiful. I like its wrinkled petals, which look like they were cut from crepe paper. Other well-known plants in this family include hibiscus, hollyhocks, and rose of Sharon.

Crown vetch (Securigera varia) has just come into bloom and I’m happy to see it because I think it’s a beautiful flower even if it is invasive. It’s one of those that often seem to glow with their own inner light and I enjoy just looking at it for a time. Crown vetch has seed pods look that like axe heads and English botanist John Gerard called the plant axewort and axeseed in 1633. It is thought that its seeds somehow ended up in other imported plant material because the plant was found in New York in 1869. By 1872 it had become naturalized in New York and now it is in every state in the country except Alaska.

June is when our native mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) blooms and you can see certain roads that are lined with the glossy leaved, white flowering shrubs. They seem fussy about where they grow but when they find a spot that they like they can form dense thickets that are nearly impossible to get through. In this spot they grow to about 10 feet tall.

The pentagonal flowers of mountain laurel are very unusual because each has ten pockets in which the male anthers rest under tension. When a heavy enough insect lands on a blossom the anthers spring from their pockets and dust it with pollen. You can see some relaxed anthers in this photo. Once the anthers are released from their pockets they don’t return to them.

What once may have been five petals are now fused into a single, cup shaped blossom. A side view of a single mountain laurel blossom shows the unusual pockets that the anthers rest in. Another old name for mountain laurel is spoon wood, because Native Americans used the tough wood to make spoons and other small utensils.

This plant goes by many common names but I’ve always called it peach leaved bluebells (Campanula persicifolia) which comes from its leaves resembling those of the peach tree. It is very easy to grow; literally a “plant it and forget it” perennial. I planted one in my garden years ago and not only is it still growing, but many seedlings from it are also growing all over the yard. I usually give several away each summer to family and friends. It’s a good choice for someone just starting a garden.

Fringe trees (Chionanthus virginicus) might look like an exotic import from China or Japan but they’re native to the east coast of the U.S. It’s a beautiful and fragrant tree that you rarely see anywhere, and I wonder why it’s so under used. It is said to be tougher than dogwood, more dependable than saucer magnolia, longer-lived than cherry, and smells better than Bradford pears. So why don’t more of us use it? Fringe trees are one of the last to show new leaves in spring and they can look dead until the leaves and flowers appear, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Goat’s beard (Aruncus dioicus) reminds me of fireworks. This one grows in my garden and also reminds me of the friend who gave it to me several years ago. Hers grew to towering heights but this one usually stays at about three feet. I think it gets a little too much shade, and dry shade at that.

We have a couple of Japanese tree lilacs (Syringa reticulata) where I work and they’re so fragrant you can smell them throughout the grounds. But don’t expect the familiar vulgaris lilac scent from this one because it is very different and hard to describe. I’ve looked it up and most people have a negative opinion of the scent but I find it simply different and not something I’m used to. It’s a kind of heavy scent on a hot summer day. Tree lilacs do indeed look like single trunk trees and grow to about 20-25 feet tall, so this one needs some space.

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) must be one of the longest blooming wildflowers we have here but this year it’s about a month late. It usually starts blooming in May but it has just started now. It should bloom well into September now that it has gotten started. I love the shade of blue that it wears. According to John Gerard’s 1597 Herbal, toadflax flowers “be yellow, having a mouth unto a frog’s mouth.” He was of course writing of yellow toadflax (Linaria vulgaris,) but I don’t see a frog’s mouth in either yellow or blue toadflax.

Blue toadflax is common enough but I’ve never seen a white toadflax. I’m not sure how to describe it; it was the same size and shape, and had the same growth habit as a blue toadflax, so I guess you’d say it was a white version of a blue toadflax. I found a couple of photos of similar flowers online but no explanation or description was given so I can’t really tell you much about it.

Wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) has pale yellow flowers similar in color to those of the sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta) but they can also be white or pink. This plant is considered a noxious weed because it gets into forage and grain crops. I always find it growing at the edges of corn fields at this time of year, not because it likes growing with corn but because it likes to grow in disturbed soil. Wild radish is in the mustard family and is sometimes confused with wild mustard (Brassica kaber,) but that plant doesn’t have hairy stems like wild radish. Everyone seems to agree that this is a non-native plant but nobody seems to know exactly where it came from or how it got here.

Many years ago, so long ago I can’t even remember its name, I planted a clematis. It did fantastic for many years and then insects attacked it two or three years in a row and it disappeared. Until now that is; it’s back and is loaded with blossoms. Maybe it should be called the resurrection plant.

There are over 200 viburnum varieties and some of our native ones are just coming into bloom like the arrow wood viburnum shown here. Smooth arrow wood (Viburnum dentatum) has yellowish white, mounded flower clusters and is blooming along stream banks and drainage ditches right now. Native dogwoods are also beginning to bloom, but they have four petals and the viburnums have five. Dogwood flower clusters also tend to be much flatter on top and seem to hover just above the branch. Smooth arrow wood viburnum has a much more rounded flowering habit. Later on the flowers will become dark blue drupes that birds love. It is said that this plant’s common name comes from Native Americans using the straight stems for arrow shafts. They also used the shrub medicinally and its fruit for food.

Heal all’s (Prunella lanceolata) tiny hooded flowers always remind me of orchids. The plant is also called self-heal and has been used since ancient times. It is said to cure virtually every disease known, and that’s how it got its common name. Some botanists believe that there are two varieties of the species; Prunella vulgaris from Europe, and Prunella lanceolata from North America. Native Americans drank a tea made from the plant before a hunt because they believed that it helped their eyesight.

One of the things I like most about native pineapple weed (Matricaria discoidea) is the way a child’s face will light up and break into a smile when they crush it and smell it. Usually when I tell them that it smells like pineapple they don’t believe it, so it’s a surprise. The conical flower heads are easiest to describe by saying they’re like daisies without petals, or ray florets. The flowers are edible and can be used in salads, and the leaves are also scented and have been used to make tea. The plant was used by Native Americans in a tonic to relieve gastrointestinal upset and fevers. The Flathead tribe used the dried, powdered plants to preserve meats and berries. It is said to make a nice pineapple flavored tea.

Puffy little bird’s foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) has just come into bloom and soon yellow ribbons of it will grow on our roadsides. The plant is in the pea family and grows about a foot tall, and is a common sight along roadsides and waste areas. It gets its common name from its clusters of brown, 1 inch long seed pods, which someone thought looked like a bird’s foot. The plant has 3 leaflets much like clover and was introduced from Europe as livestock feed, but has escaped and is now considered invasive in many areas. It can form large mats that choke out natives. Those are maiden pinks in the background.

Rough and unloved by many, sulfur cinquefoils is just a roadside weed; a denizen of waste places and abandoned pastures. It’s not a tall plant; it hardly lifts its head up above the surrounding grasses, so you have to look for it. And I do look for it because I love its buttery yellow petals that no other flower that I know of except wild radish seems to have. Though it was originally introduced from Europe and is considered a noxious weed in some areas because it out competes grasses, I’d grow it in a garden because I think it’s very pretty.

Flowers have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music. They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its vigor. ~Henry Ward Beecher.

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Exploring Nature in New Hampshire

Posts Tagged ‘Blue Toadflax’

Our beautiful New England asters are now opening over a wider area and though I’m not seeing them everywhere I go yet I usually see them each day at least. They make summer’s end a little more palatable.

Each nodding smartweed flower spike is made up of many pink to white, very small flowers.

Only one smartweed is called lady’s thumb (Persicaria maculosa,) but even nodding smartweed has the “thumbprint.” The dark spot that appears on each leaf is said in legend to have been left by a lady with a dirty thumb (apparently.) It has been there ever since.

It’s time to say goodbye to chicory (Cichorium intybus) I think, because out of ten or twelve plants this is the only one still blooming.

Chicory one of my favorite summer flowers because of its large, easy to see flowers and beautiful blue color. I can’t think of another flower, either wild or cultivated, quite like it.

Each strap shaped “petal” on a panicled hawkweed flower head is actually a ray flower. Some have teeth on the end as this one did but others may not.

Seed heads are also what you would expect to see on a hawkweed. Panicled hawkweed is one of our latest blooming hawkweeds.

I always like to see if I can get a shot looking into the throat of the turtle. It’s very hairy in there but it doesn’t bother bumblebees. They can often be found swarming over these plants.

At a local pond white boneset and purple loosestrife dominated the scene. If history is any indication it won’t be long before purple loosestrife takes over the whole area.

Hydrangeas have been blooming for a while now. These plants live far back in my memory; my grandmother always grew them and called them snowballs. This old fashioned type is called “Annabelle.”

Sedums are just starting to show color. For those who don’t know, sedums have thick succulent leaves and fleshy stems and can be quite drought tolerant. They are also nectar rich and will attract butterflies.

Winters have always seemed long to me because I’ve always been a flower lover. To make winter seem shorter I know that the secret is to stop longing to see flowers again, but how can you not long to see something so beautiful? I haven’t worked that out yet.

What happens to people who have witnessed the miraculous? ~Jim Harrison

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Books will tell you that starflowers have 7 petals but as this one shows, they can have as many as 9. They can also have as few as 6.

Mayapple flowers are hard to get a decent photo of because they nod toward the ground under the plant’s leaves, but it can be done. I’ve read that once a mayapple produces flowers and fruit it reduces its chances of doing so in following years, but this colony seems to bloom well each year.

Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus ) takes quite a long time to bloom after the melting snow reveals its cluster of basal leaves in early spring. This commonly seen plant originally comes from Europe and Asia and is considered invasive.

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty, if only we have the eyes to see them. ~John Ruskin

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This aster bloomed in a garden…

…and this aster bloomed by a cornfield. This is a New England aster and though the color is the same the garden variety is shorter and more compact and has many more flowers.

I’m always surprised by this yellow azalea I find blooming in a local park. Most azaleas bloom in spring and early summer, not in October, but I guess nobody told this one that.

As they age purple coneflowers lose a lot of their color and their rays become pale and more pastel and paper like. I suspect that these will probably be the last of their kind that I see this year.

I found this goldenrod growing in the wild but its compact habit makes me think it would be a hit in the garden, possibly surrounded by deep purple garden asters. Most goldenrods are quite tall but this one barely reached a foot and a half.

I’ve never seen turtleheads bloom as well as they have this year. This is a pink variety but the white ones have also bloomed well. A problem I’ve seen with the white native plants aside from their flowers is their leaves turning black and crisp. I don’t know what’s causing it.

Can you stand seeing more roadside flowers? I never get tired of seeing them but I probably took too many photos.

They’re very beautiful, and this week might see their end.

Phlox is still going strong in places. I found this one in a friend’s garden.

I’ve seen quite a few roses still blooming, including this one that shined its light out at me.

Silently a flower blooms, In silence it falls away; Yet here now, at this moment, at this place, The world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming. This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom: The glory of eternal life is fully shining here. ~ Zenkei Shibayama

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I found a forest of downy rattlesnake plantain orchids (Goodyera pubescens) all in bloom.

The tiny flowers look like miniature versions of our native pink lady’s slipper orchid flowers. Each one is so small it could easily hide behind a pea with room to spare. This photo shows where the “downy” part of the common name comes from. Everything about the flower stalk is hairy.

I’m seeing more slender gerardia flowers this year than I ever have before. You can see in this shot how the blossoms seem to float in the air because the leaves and stems are so small.

I know of only one place to find field milkwort (Polygala sanguinea) and it is always worth the walk to see them. The flowers are very beautiful and unusual enough to make you want to sit beside them for a while and study them, and that’s just what I usually do.

I just love the color of blue vervain.

Pretty little blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) must be one of the longest blooming wildflowers we have here. It usually starts blooming in May and I’m still seeing it in quite large numbers. I love the shade of blue that it wears.

Jewelweed blossoms dangle at the ends of long filaments and sway in the slightest breath of a breeze, so it’s always tricky getting a shot of one. I like to do it for the practice, but it can make you crazy.

That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom:
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
~ Zenkei Shibayama