Dogwood | New Hampshire Garden Solutions

Posts Tagged ‘Dogwood’

Summer Flowers Come A Little Early

Posted in Flowers, Insects, Lichens, Nature, Orchids, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Bird's Eye Speedwell, Bunch Berries, Canon SX40 HS, Colombine, Dogwood, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly, Germander Speedwell, Golden Ragwort, Hancock New Hampshire, Keene, Late Spring Plants, Lesser Stitchwort, Lupine, Morrow's Honeysuckle, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New Oak Leaves, NH, NH State Wiildflower, Olympus TG-6, Pine Pollen Cones, Pink Lady's Slipper, Poets Daffodil, Possible Lancet Clubtail Dragonfly, Purple Tradescantia, Rag Lichen, Rhodora, Rhodora Blossoms, Robin's Plantain, Spring Follwers, Spring Plants, Swanzey New Hampshire, Tatarian Honeysuckle, Tradescantia, White Tradescantia on June 3, 2023| 20 Comments »

Pink lady’s slipper orchids, our state wildflower, are blooming a little early this year. They usually bloom when ox-eye daisies and lupines bloom but this year they were a bit earlier than both. And there are fewer of them. Where I often find a dozen in bloom this year I’m finding only two or three. This photo shows five or six plants with only one blooming, and that seems to be the way it has been going in this area. I have a feeling the lack is connected to the past two summers of drought; so dry there was hardly a mushroom to be seen. That’s important, because these orchids depend on a soil borne Rhizoctonia fungus. This year so far we’ve seen what I would call average rainfall, so maybe that will mean more blooms next summer.

When plants are weakened by drought they are less likely to bloom prolifically but life is a circle and the woods will surely be full of them again in the future. The blossoms on pink lady’s slippers are especially beautiful with their darker, vein like insect guide lines that will guide the insect, hopefully a bumblebee, right to the slit seen here at the top of the pouch. Once inside the bee finds there is only one way out, which is through the top of the blossom. While squeezing through the hole in the top it has to brush against the sticky stigma and it leaves behind any pollen it might have collected from other flowers. It will also have picked up pollen from this flower, ready for transport to another. It all seems complicated but orchids are the most highly evolved of all plants and their method works; I see quite a few seed pods in late summer.

Shy little bunchberries seem to be blooming well this year. They are associated with wood and grow on stumps, logs, and even live trees. Even when they appear to be growing on the ground there is usually an old log or something made of wood beaneath them. Why this is isn’t known but it is thought that they must receive nutrients from the wood they grow on. Bunchberry is in the dogwood family and is also called creeping dogwood or bunchberry dogwood. White bracts surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. If all goes well the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries.

When you see dogwoods flowering you know it’s time to look for bunchberries, because being in the same family, they almost always bloom at the same time. Once again on this tree there are large white bracts surrounding the much smaller flowers in the center, just as we saw on the bunchberry.

Some dogwoods were hit hard by the freeze we had on May 18th, as these blossoms show. The leaves don’t seem to have been bothered though, so the trees should do okay. In certain areas many trees like catalpla and black locust had all their leaves and flower buds killed or damaged by the freeze so we’ll have to wait and see how they recover. I should be seeing catalpa trees blossoming all over right now and I haven’t seen even one.

Golden ragwort is in the aster family and is considered our earliest blooming aster. It doesn’t mind growing in wet soil and tolerates shade so it always seems like a beacon with its bright yellow flowers shining in the dappled shade I find it in. It isn’t a common plant so I’m usually surprised by it as I was this time when I found it in a place I’ve walked by hudreds of times. It seems to be a plant that “gets around.” You’ll see it in a spot for a year or even three and then it will disappear, only to be found in a different spot.

Tatarian honeysuckle is one of the prettiest of the invasive honeysuckles, in my opinion. It is originally from Siberia and other parts of eastern Asia and in the fall its pretty pink flowers become bright red berries. Of course, birds eat the berries and the plant spreads quickly.

Morrow’s Honeysuckle is another invasive honeysuckle. It has sweetly fragrant, pretty white flowers that turn yellow with age. Unfortunately, it spreads by its berries like Tatarian honeysuckle and it can form dense thickets and outcompete native shrubs. It seems more aggressive than Tatarian honeysuckle and I see it far more often.

It’s a shame to have so many invasive plants and I would never make light of it, but the truth is once the genie is out of the bottle from what I’ve seen, it is nearly impossible to put it back in. Invasive honeysuckles have been around since I was just a small boy and I know that the only way to truly be rid of them is to dig them up and pull all the seedlings. But I can attest to the fact that digging up a honeysuckle is very hard work, and who will do it?

Does that mean we shouldn’t fight invasives? No, what I’m saying is, maybe Instead of setting out to “rid the world of the scourge” we should just be at peace with whatever we can accomplish. A lot of littles can add up to a lot. People seem ready to get together and “do the big thing” and then when they see more invasives growing where they’ve done so much hard work they get discouraged and give up. This is not the way to win. Everyone doing what they can when they can is the way to win.

An eastern swallowtail butterfly appeared to prefer the white Morrow’s honeysuckle but there were no tatarian honeysuckles in the area, so that probably isn’t a fair assesment. I doubt it has any real preference.

I hadn’t seen any dragonflies yet this spring so I went to Hancock one day, back to the nature camp I once worked for, just to take a walk and see what I could see. There is a pond there and there used to be so many dragonflies I had them land on me and even fly alongside the tractor when I mowed the meadow. They did that because they knew the tractor was going to scare up insects for them to eat. That’s when I discovered that dragonflies are not only smart but they must have at least a hint of a memory.

I spent some time at the pond hoping to see dragonflies, but didn’t see any. That’s because they were all here on this dirt road, apparently. Google lens says this one is a lancet clubtail, which likes to rest on gravel roads, so that fit. Two things bother me about that identification though; eye color, and the photo isn’t good enough to see the “tail.” If I understand what I’ve read this dragonfly’s eyes should be blue or gray, not brown. The color might just be caused by the harsh lighting though, because I’ve had trouble finding dragonflies of any kind with brown eyes online.

There were lots of fringed polygala at the camp when I worked there but I didn’t see many this time so I went to another spot and found these. These plants are in the milkwort family and aren’t really common but if they like a spot they can grow into a good size colony. I could explain how they’re pollinated but it’s quite a convoluted process so I’ll just ask that you trust me; they are pollinated. And it all starts when a heavy enough insect lands on that little fringe.

When I was looking for winged polygayla flowers I found a rag lichen. Despite a recent rain it was quite dry and, as is often the case with lichens, most of its color had changed as it dried. It wasn’t its color that I was interested in though; it was its amazing net like texture. This is the first time I had seen this lichen so I spent quite a lot of time getting photos of it. If you click on the photo you’ll be better able to see what I mean about its texture.

I thought I’d show one more shot of new spring oak leaves. They’re probably the last I’ll see this year. This shot shows how they finally turn green while still wearing their velvet coats. Once green and photosynthesizing they’ll lose their velvet and shine.

The male flowers of pine trees are called pollen cones because that’s what they produce. Pine trees are wind pollinated and great clouds of pollen can make it look like the trees are burning and releasing yellow green smoke each spring. Pine pollen is a strong antioxidant and it has been used medicinally around the world for thousands of years. Its health benefits were first written of in China nearly 5000 years ago and they were said to be numerous. You can still buy it today.

I love to see Robin’s plantain, which is one of the fleabanes, bloom in spring because it reveals all the flower lovers among us who, rather than mow it down, leave it to bloom. It is a common “weed” that comes up in lawns everywhere but it’s beautiful, so you’ll see large islands of unmowed grass with pink flowers poking up out of them on otherwise manicured lawns. For a week or so the weeds win and it always makes me smile. If only people could understand that it is these “weeds” that are normal, not their lawns. There was a time when grass was the weed, and it was dug up so the weeds, mostly used for food or medicine, would have more room to grow. The world must have been even more beautiful then.

Germander speedwell is another beautiful weed that is one of the larger flowered “lawn” speedwells. It is also called bird’s eye or cat’s eye speedwell and is considered invasive but I always find it growing in the unmown grass at the edge of the woods, so I don’t know why it would be a bother. It can make rather large colonies so maybe if it got into the garden it could be a pest, but after a lifetiime in gardens I’ve never seen it in one, so I say just enjoy its quiet beauty and let it be. I would welcome it in my own yard.

Lesser stitchwort is blooming among the tall grasses. This plant is originally from Europe and is also called common or grass leaved stitchwort. It likes disturbed soil and does well on roadsides, old fields, and meadows. The common name stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch. The stellaria part of its scientific name means star, and these beautiful little stars twinkle all summer long, just about everywhere I go. They and so many other weeds call me out of the shade of the forests and into the sunny meadows. There is great beauty found in both places but I learned as a boy that a meadow was much easier to walk through. When I wanted sweet and soft rather than rough and tumble I chose a sunny summer meadow.

Tradescantia, also called spiderwort, has come into bloom. I took this photo because I thought I had found a pale blue one which I’d never seen, but my color finding software tells me it’s purple and I’ve seen plenty of those. I keep forgetting that I have a color blind helper app on my phone. It works well in the field but only if you remember to use it. The same could be said for the color blind glasses I have; they’re great, but you have to remember them.

I was a little disappointed when I saw this white tradescantia blossom because last year it had blue streaks in its petals along with the blue in the center. It was a beautiful thing and it still is, but I do miss the blue in its petals. I looked at several different plants and all the flowers looked just like this one. If you’d like to see what I saw last year just Google “Tradescantia Osprey.” Apparently they can revert back to the solid white.

If you could somehow look back into the past to Ancient Greece at about 371 BC, you’d probably see this beautiful daffodil there. It’s called the poet’s daffodil and is such an ancient plant that many believe it is the flower that the legend of Narcissus is based on. It is one of the first cultivated daffodils and is hard to mistake for any other, with its red edged, yellow corona and pure white petals. It has naturalized throughout this area and can sometimes be found in unmown fields. Its fragrance can be compared to that of the paper white narcissus; so intoxicating that being in a room with 2 or 3 flowers in a vase can give some people headaches or make them sick. It blooms a bit later, just as most other daffodils are giving in. is also called the pheasant eye daffodil, for obvious reasons.

Lupines have just started blooming. I found this one at the local college. Anyone who has spent any time in a garden knows that lupines are in the pea / bean family. It’s a huge family of plants and you see its representatives just about everywhere.

Five swans came together on the back of a columbine blossom.

One of my favorite spring shrubs is the rhodora. It is a small, native rhododendron that loves swampy places. It’s native to the northeastern U.S. and Canada and its flowers appear before the leaves for a short time in late spring. By mid-June they will have all vanished. On May 17, 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and that is exactly what this beautiful little plant does.

There’s nothing else quite like this flower blooming on pond shorelines in spring, so it’s close to impossible to confuse it with any other shrub. It often grows so close to the water that the best way to see it is by boat or kayak.

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden. ~Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Late May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Orchids, Wildflowers, tagged Bird's Eye Speedwell, Blue Eyed Grass, Bunchberry, Canon SX40 HS, Dogwood, Fringed Polygala, Gaywings, Germander Speedwell, Keene, Keene New Hampshire, Lilly of the Valley, Marsh Stitchwort, Native Columbine, Native Early Azalea, Native Plants, Nature, Nature Study, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus TG-6, Painted Trillium, Pink Lady's Slipper, Robin's Plantain, Spring Flowers, Spring Hiking, Spring in New Hampshire, Spring Plants, Spring Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Sweet Woodruff, Westmoreland NH, White Lilac, Wooly Azalea on June 1, 2022| 17 Comments »

Here we are at the time of year when it’s almost time to leave the forest to seek the flowers that need sunlight rather than shade but first there are a few flowers still blooming in the woods, like the beautiful wild azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) seen in the photo above. They are also called early azaleas, though others in the family such as rhodora do bloom first. In my last post I spoke about finding the kind of beauty that makes me go silent and still, and this beautiful native shrub always does that to me.

This shot shows how hairy the buds are. Those hairs persist even after the flowers open and they are what give this plant another name: wooly azalea. It is those hairs that emit the wonderful fragrance that these flowers have. It is a fragrance that is said to induce creative imagination.

I’ve been waiting a few years now for pretty little bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) to have a good year and finally, here it is. If they look familiar that’s because they are in the dogwood family. Like a dogwood blossom its large white bracts surround its smaller flowers. Even the 2 larger and 4 smaller leaves look like a dogwood. In fact, an old name for the plant is creeping dogwood. They like moist, shady woods.

If pollinated each tiny flower will become a bright red, single seeded drupe, and the plant will then have the bunch of “berries” that give it its common name. It is rare in my experience to find a plant full of fruit, but I keep looking. The plant’s berries are loaded with pectin and Native Americans used them both medicinally and as food.

Here bunchberry plants are growing through the V made by two oak branches, as they do here almost every year. Bunchberry is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that they must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

I found a dogwood tree blooming at the local college so I took a photo of one of the flowers. It looks remarkably like a larger version of a bunchberry blossom, so it’s easy to see why they are in the same family.

Pretty little blue eyed grass blossoms (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), hardly bigger than an aspirin, have appeared. The plants are in the iris family and if I had gotten a better shot of the leaves it would be obvious. They are the same bluish gray color as those of bearded irises. It is just a roadside “weed” to many, but I look forward to seeing it each year.

Blue eyed grass flowers taught me this year that they come out very dark, like the blossom on the left and then fade rather quickly to look like that blossom on the left. I’ve never noticed this before.

What look like tiny purple airplanes are now carpeting forest floors. Though this little plant in the milkwort family’s common name is fringed polygala (Polygala paucifolia) another name is “gaywings,” so that tells me that I’m not the only one who sees the resemblance to planes. They’re small and at a glance can pass for a violet so you have to keep your eyes on the ground to find them.

They’re very pretty and worth finding. the flowers are made up of five sepals and two petals. Two of the petals form a tube and two of the sepals form the “wings.” The little fringe like structure at the end of the tube is part of the third petal which is mostly hidden. When an insect lands on the fringed part, the third petal drops down to create an opening so the insect can enter the tube. It’s an amazing process that I keep hoping I’ll see happen but so far, not yet.

As I always do, I immediately thought of my mother when I saw these white lilacs. She planted one just before she died and though I never knew her she lives on in the flowers she chose to plant in the yard. I know, by what she chose, that she loved both color and fragrance. When I sat on the porch as a boy and smelled the lilacs or the cabbage roses, or in the fall when I admired the beautiful scarlet leaves of the Virginia creeper she planted, she was there. And she still is. One of the greatest gifts you can give a child in my opinion, is a love of flowers. It doesn’t take much; my mother did it without even being there. Whatever flowers you grow they will learn to love them, and later on in life when they see a flower they grew up with, they’ll think of you.

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) is a low growing summer wildflower with small, 4 petaled white flowers that seems to prefer the shade at the edges of forests. It makes an excellent old-fashioned groundcover but it likes plenty of water; it won’t spread if it gets too dry. The odoratum part of the scientific name comes from the pleasant, very strong fragrance of its dried leaves. They are often used in potpourris because the fragrance lasts for years. It is also called sweet scented bedstraw and is a native of Europe.

The long wiry stems of what I believe is marsh stitchwort (Stellaria palustris) keep the flowers up above the tall grass so insects can find them. The flowers are said to be smaller than those of greater stitchwort but larger than those of lesser stitchwort, but such things don’t excite me anymore so I don’t pay much attention. I just enjoy seeing their cheery faces alongside the path I’m on, even if they aren’t native. They are a native of Europe and are also called chickweed, but there are over 50 different chickweeds. The Stellaria part of the scientific name means “star like,” and the common name stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch.

Lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) had just started blooming when I found a large colony of them on one of my walks. This is one of the first plants I have stored in my memory. I can remember as a boy picking them along with violets and dandelions to bring to my grandmother. To this day I still like the colors white, yellow and purple together.

I found a painted trillium (Trillium undulatum) that had just come up. It hadn’t reached full size yet but it had the beginnings of the reddish “V” at the base of each petal. Someone thought it looked as if they had been painted on, and that’s where the common name comes from. This one also displayed where the undulatum part of the scientific name came from with its wavy, undulating petal edges. They will straighten out a bit as the plant grows. They like boggy, acidic soil and are much harder to find than other varieties, though I never did find nodding trilliums this year.

I had never seen bird’s eye speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys) anywhere but in Hancock where I used to work until I went grocery shopping and looked in an old pasture where a barn used to stand before the store was built. There were hundreds of them growing there, so if my memory still works in the future I’ll be able to see them whenever I want. Most speedwell flowers are borderline microscopic but these are huge in comparison. I’d guess they must be as big as an aspirin. Another name for the plant is germander speedwell.

Robin’s plantain (Erigeron pulchellus) is a flower that always makes me smile, and not just because it is so pretty. No, I smile because it is a flower that reveals a lot about people at this time of year. You can go by a house that has not a flower or flowering shrub or tree anywhere on its property, but then in spring a big island of robin’s plantain will have been left uncut in the mowed lawn. This plant is in the fleabane family and is the earliest fleabane to bloom, with big 1-inch blossoms. They can be white to pink to lavender and are made up of ray florets surrounding yellow disk florets in the center. It’s a pretty, very noticeable “weed.”

I went to a spot I had never been to off in the woods near Willard Pond in Hancock and found hundreds of pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule), more than I’ve ever seen together anywhere else. They’re one of our most beautiful native orchids and I was happy to see so many growing together. I wondered how many other large colonies there were off in the wilderness that nobody has ever seen. I hope there are many.

That flower in the previous photo was quite dark pink but here was one that was lighter. Lady’s slippers, as do all orchids, have both male and female reproductive structures fused into a single structure. Many different insects pollinate orchids but in lady’s slippers bees do the job. They enter the flower through the center slit in the pouch, which can be seen here. Once inside they discover that they’re trapped and can’t get out the way they came in.

Guide hairs inside the flower, which can just be seen in this shot, point the way to the top of the pouch or slipper, and once the bee reaches the top it finds two holes big enough to fit through. Just above each hole the flower has positioned a pollen packet so once the bee crawls through the hole it is dusted with pollen. The flower’s stigma is also located above the exit holes and if the bee carries pollen from another lady’s slipper it will be deposited on the sticky stigma as it escapes the pouch, and fertilization will have been successful. Is it any wonder that orchids are considered the most highly evolved of all flowering plants?

Pollination had been very successful in this spot. I saw many lady’s slipper seedpods. These seed pods contain between 10,000 and 20,00 tiny, dust like seeds. According to the U.S. Forest Service “The seeds require threads of a fungus in the Rhizoctonia genus to break them open and attach them to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients to the pink lady’s slipper seed. When the lady’s slipper plant is older and producing most of its own nutrients, the fungus will extract nutrients from the orchid roots. This mutually beneficial relationship between the orchid and the fungus is known as “symbiosis” and is typical of almost all orchid species.” This is why it is waste of time to collect orchids or orchid seed from the wild and expect them to grow in your yard.

Since I skipped doing a flower post one week, I’m behind in keeping up with showing you what is blooming and has bloomed here. I went back out to the ledges in Westmoreland as I said I would though, and found the columbines in beautiful, full bloom. This would have been about 2 weeks ago, I think. I was happy to find more plants blooming than I ever have before, and I hope some of you were also able to see them.

There is no other flower that I know of that is quite like them. When a breeze blows through where they grow, they all dance at the ends of their long wiry stems and you can imagine them making themselves more visible to the insect by doing so.

I always like to show this photo of a columbine blossom from a few years ago because it helps to illustrate how various names came to be attached to this flower. The Aquilegia part of the scientific name comes from the Latin Aquila, which means “eagle” and refers to the spurred petals that Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus thought resembled an eagle’s talons. Others have thought they resembled pigeons around a dish, and the name Columbine comes from the Latin Columbinus, which means “pertaining to doves or pigeons.” Throughout history columbines have been associated with birds, but I didn’t see eagles or doves when I saw this photo. I immediately thought of five beautiful white swans with outstretched wings. However you choose to look at a columbine blossom it is a beautiful thing, and growing them adds interest to any garden.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~Rumi

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Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Ashuelot River, Black Locust, Blue Eyed Grass, Blue False Indigo, Blue Flag Iris, Blue Tradescantia, Bowman's Root, Bristly Locust, Bunchberry, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Dogwood, Fawn's Breath, Fragrant White Water Lily, Goat's Beard, Keene, Maiden Pinks, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Ox Eye Daisy, Purple Tradescantia, Red Sandspurry, Star of Bethlehem, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Wild Lupines on June 15, 2019| 34 Comments »

More and more flowers are appearing each day now and the roadsides are beginning to bloom, as these ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) show. This is just a small piece of what was miles of daisies along this road.

Ox eye daisies will always say June to me. I was married in June and because we couldn’t afford flowers from the florist we picked hundreds of Ox eye daisies. They wilted quickly and looked much better in the meadow than in a vase, so I don’t think I’ve ever picked one since. This is a much loved flower so it is easy to forget that it was originally introduced from Europe as an ornamental in the 1800s. It quickly escaped cultivation and has now spread to each of the lower 48 states and most of Canada. Since cattle won’t eat it, it can spread at will through pastures and that means that it is not well loved by ranchers. A vigorous daisy can produce 26,000 seeds per plant and tests have shown that 82% of the buried seeds remained viable after six years underground. I always like to see their spiraled centers.

Blue flag irises (Iris versicolor) are another flower that says June to me. The name “flag” comes from the Middle English flagge, which means rush or reed and which I assume applies to the plant’s cattail like leaves. In this instance they were growing right in the water of a pond, so they don’t mind wet roots.

Though Native Americans used blue flag irises medicinally its roots are considered dangerously toxic and people who dig cattail roots to eat have to be very careful that there are no irises growing among them, because the two plants often grow side by side. Natives showed early settlers how to use small amounts of the dried root safely as a cathartic and diuretic, but unless one is absolutely sure of what they’re doing its best to just admire this one. It’s an easy thing to admire.

Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) is also called creeping dogwood and bunchberry dogwood. Just like the dogwood tree flower the large (relatively) white bracts of bunchberry surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. Later on the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries, which give it its common name. Even the plant’s leaves show the same veining as the dogwood tree. Native Americans used the berries as food and made a tea from the ground root to treat colic in infants. The Cree tribe called the berry “kawiskowimin,” meaning “itchy chin berry” because rubbing the berries against your skin can cause a reaction that will make you itch. Bunchberry is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that it must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

Dogwood (Cornus) blossoms have 4 large white bracts surrounding the actual small greenish flowers in the center, just like bunchberries. They have just come into bloom.

Every time I look closely at blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) I wonder why they didn’t call it yellow eyed grass, but that’s not all that’s wrong with the name because the plant isn’t a grass at all; it’s in the iris family. Its light blue green leaves do resemble grass leaves though. The beautiful little flowers are often not much bigger than a common aspirin but their color and clumping habit makes them fairly easy to find. I think they must be sun lovers because they’re a little late this year. Some plants liked the cool damp weather, but this wasn’t one of them.

I find goat’s beard (Tragopogon pratensis) growing in a meadow in full sun and that single spot is the only place I find them. Goat’s beard flowers close up shop at around noon and for this reason some call it “Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon,” but I saw these still blooming at around 1 PM. A kind of bubble gum can be made from the plant’s milky latex sap and its spring buds are said to be good in salads. Another name for goat’s bead is meadow salsify. It is native to Europe but doesn’t seem to be at all invasive here. In fact I often have trouble finding it.

Maiden pinks (Dianthus deltoids) have just started blooming and I found the one in the above photo at the edge of a meadow. It might look like its cousin the Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria,) but that flower doesn’t have the jagged red ring around its center like this one does and it blooms later, usually in July. Maiden pinks are originally from Europe and have escaped cultivation but aren’t terribly invasive. They seem to prefer the edges of open lawns and meadows. Their colors can vary from almost white to deep magenta. I have volunteers growing in my lawn and I mow around them. They’re too beautiful to just cut down.

Red sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) never looks red to me; it always looks purple. But whatever the color it always looks beautiful to me. When I can see it anyway. Red sandspurry was originally introduced from Europe in the 1800s but it could hardly be called invasive. It is such a tiny plant that it would take many hundreds of them just to fill your shoe.

This photo of a red sandspurry blossom over a penny that I took two years ago will give you an idea of just how tiny they are. Each one could easily hide behind a pea with room to spare. For those who don’t know, a penny is .75 inches [19.05 mm] across. I’m guessing you could fit 8-10 blossoms on one.

Our locust trees are blooming. The one shown here is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains.

Locusts are in the same family as peas and beans and the flowers show the connection. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well .They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

Bristly locust (Robinia hispida) is more shrub than tree, but 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. 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 bristly locust 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.

In 2015 the highway department replaced a bridge over the Ashuelot River and widened the road leading to and from it. They put what I thought was grass seed down on the roadsides once the bridge was finished, but it was wildflower / grass seed mix containing lupines (Lupinus.) For a couple of years they were growing all along the sides of the road but this year I counted only three small clumps. That could be because they are an aphid magnet and I saw many in this colony covered with the sucking insects. I’ve always loved lupines and I’m always happy to see them come into bloom, but it doesn’t seem like they’ll survive much longer in this spot.

Bowman’s root (Gillenia trifoliata) is a native wildflower but it only grows in two New England Sates as far as I can tell; Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which seems odd but explains why I’ve never seen one in the wild. This example grows in a local park. The dried and powdered root of this plant was used by Native Americans as a laxative, so another common name is American ipecac. Nobody seems to know the origin of the name bowman’s root or whether it refers to the bow of a boat or the bow part of the bow and arrow. The white flower petals of bowman’s root are asymmetrical and always look like they were glued on by a chubby fingered toddler. But they are beautiful nonetheless, and dance at the end of long stems. And they do dance in the slightest movement of air. Some say that all it takes is the gentle breath of a fawn to set them dancing, and because of that another of their common names is fawn’s breath. I can’t think of a more beautiful name for a flower.

Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is in full bloom now and is a plant held in high regard for its hard to find clear blue color. This is another tough native plant that bees love. People love it too, and it is now sold in nurseries. The black seed pods full of loose, rattling, seeds that follow the flowers were once used as rattles by children. Not surprisingly, other common names include rattle weed and rattle bush. Native Americans made a blue dye from this native plant that was a substitute for true indigo.

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 Main 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 wished they’d have thrown them just a little farther. We had blue flowers in the yard for a while though, and today every time I see this plant I think of my father. I know I tell this story every year at this time and longtime readers are probably bored with it but there aren’t many flower memories I can associate with my father, so I like to remember him through this one. It’s a beautiful flower that I wish he’d looked at a little more closely.

Plant breeders have been working on tradescantia; I find this purple flowered one in a local park. Interesting but I like the blue that I grew up with best. Bees, especially bumblebees, seem to like this one best though. Why that is, I don’t know.

Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), though beautiful, can overrun a garden. These flowers grow from a bulb and are native to southern Europe and Africa. The bulbs contain toxic alkaloids and have killed livestock, so they are now listed as an invasive species.

To just sit with a fragrant white waterlily (Nymphaea odorata) admiring its beauty for a while is enough for me sometimes, depending on the day. They’ve just started blooming and they dot the surface of ponds and slow flowing rivers throughout the region. They are such beautiful things with that golden flame burning in the center of each one. And fragrant too; they are said to smell like ripe cantaloupe. I was surprised to see that the new camera actually caught some of the submerged stems and even a round flower bud. I guess I’ll have to take back some of the bad thoughts I’ve had about it because I’ve never gotten a photo of these features before.

Live this life in wonder, in wonder of the beauty, the magic, the true magnificence that surrounds you It is all so beautiful, so wonderful. Let yourself wonder. ~Avina Celeste

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Late May / Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Eyed Grass, Blue Flag Iris, Bridal Wreath Spirea, Bunchberry, Canon SX40 HS, Cow Vetch, Dogwood, Golden Clover, Keene, Lesser Stitchwort, Lupine, Maiden Pink, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Perennial Bachelor's Button, Purple Dead Nettle, Purple Spiderwort, Spiderwort, Spring, Spring Plants, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Sweet Woodruff, Wild Geranium, Yellow Hawkweed on June 6, 2018| 36 Comments »

If I’m seeing our beautiful native blue flag irises it must be June. And this year I’m seeing them everywhere, so it must be a great year for them. The name flag is from the Middle English flagge, which means rush or reed, and which I assume applies to the cattail like leaves of an iris.

Though Native Americans used blue flag irises medicinally its roots are considered dangerously toxic and people who dig cattail roots to eat have to be very careful that there are no irises growing among them, because the two plants often grow side by side. Natives showed early settlers how to use small amounts of the dried root safely as a cathartic and diuretic, but unless one is absolutely sure of what they’re doing its best to just admire this one. It’s an easy thing to admire.

Our meadows and roadsides are just coming into bloom and the maiden pink (Dianthus deltoids) in the above photo was found at the edge of a meadow. It might look like its cousin the Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria,) but that flower doesn’t have the jagged red ring around its center like this one does and it blooms later, usually in July. Maiden pinks are originally from Europe and have escaped cultivation but aren’t terribly invasive. They seem to prefer the edges of open lawns and meadows. Their colors can vary from almost white to deep magenta. I have volunteers growing in my lawn and I mow around them. They’re too beautiful to just cut down.

In 2015 the highway department replaced a bridge over the Ashuelot River and widened the road leading to and from it. They put what I thought was grass seed down on the roadsides once the bridge was finished, but it was wildflower / grass seed mix containing lupines (Lupinus.) For a couple of years they were growing all along the sides of the road but this year there are just a few. That could be because they are an aphid magnet and I saw many in this colony covered with the sucking insects. I’ve always loved lupines and I’m always happy to see them come into bloom. I hope they survive in this spot.

The lupines come in light and dark shades in this spot, but they also come in pink, white, red, and even yellow.

Lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea) blooms among the tall grasses. This plant is originally from Europe and is also called common or grass leaved stitchwort. It like disturbed soil and does well on roadsides, old fields, and meadows. The Stellaria, part of its scientific name means star like, and the common name Stitchwort refers to the plant being used in herbal remedies to cure the pain in the side that we call a stitch.

I find purple dead nettle (Lamium maculatum) growing in a local park. It’s a beautiful little plant that makes a great choice for shady areas. It is also an excellent source of pollen for bees. Dead nettles are native to Europe and Asia, but though they do spread some they don’t seem to be invasive here. The name dead nettle comes from their not being able sting like a true nettle, which they aren’t related to. I’m guessing the “nettle” part of the name refers to the leaves, which would look a bit like nettle leaves if it weren’t for their variegation, which consists of a cream colored stripe down the center of each leaf.

Wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum) have just started blooming. Other common names include alum root, old maid’s nightcap and shameface. In Europe it is called cranesbill because the seed pod resembles a crane’s bill. The Native American Mesquakie tribe brewed a root tea for toothache from wild geranium, but I’m not sure if it’s toxic. Much Native knowledge was lost and we can’t always use plants as they did. Somehow they knew how to remove, weaken or withstand the toxicity of many plants that we now find too toxic for our use.

I’ve told this story many times but I’ll tell it once more for the more recent readers: 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 wished they’d have thrown them just a little farther. We had blue flowers in the yard for a while though, and today every time I see this plant I think of my father. I’m sure everyone has plants that come with memories attached, and this is just one of mine.

Though my color finding software sees some purple in the previous tradescantia photo I think it was just the play of light on its petals. This one is the real purple one. I don’t know its name but it grows in a local park. It’s pretty but my favorite is the blue one.

I don’t think I could imagine more beautiful colors and shapes in a flower than those found on the perennial bachelor’s button (Centaurea). They make excellent low maintenance, almost indestructible additions to the perennial garden. I found this one growing in a local park.

Dogwood (Cornus) blossoms have 4 large white bracts surrounding the actual small greenish flowers in the center. They have just come into bloom.

Bunchberry is also called creeping dogwood and bunchberry dogwood. Can you see the resemblance to the dogwood blossom we just saw? Just like that dogwood the large (relatively) white bracts of bunchberry surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. Later on the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries which give it its common name. Even the plant’s leaves show the same veining as the dogwood tree. Native Americans used the berries as food and made a tea from the ground root to treat colic in infants. The Cree tribe called the berry “kawiskowimin,” meaning “itchy chin berry” because rubbing the berries against your skin can cause a reaction that will make you itch.

Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that it must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) has leaves that grow in a whorl, which you can see in this photo. This is a low growing summer wildflower with 4 petaled white flowers that seems to prefer the shade at the edges of forests. It makes an excellent old fashioned groundcover which, if given plenty of water, will spread quickly. The odoratum part of the scientific name comes from the pleasant, very strong fragrance of its dried leaves. The dried leaves are often used in potpourris because the fragrance lasts for years. It is also called sweet scented bedstraw and is a native of Europe.

Each strap shaped, yellow “petal” on a yellow hawkweed flower head (Hieracium caespitosum) is actually a single, complete flower. The buds, stem, and leaves of the plant are all very hairy and the rosette of oval leaves at the base of the stem often turn deep purple in winter. The Ancient Greeks believed that hawks drank the sap of this plant to keep their eyesight sharp and so they named it hierax, which means hawk.

Golden clover (Trifolium campestre) is an imported clover originally from Europe and Asia. It is also known as large trefoil and large hop clover. The plant was imported through Philadelphia in 1800 to be used as a pasture crop and now appears in most states on the east and west coasts and much of Canada, but it is not generally considered aggressively invasive. Each pretty yellow flower head is packed with golden yellow pea-like flowers. I see the plant growing along roadsides and in sandy waste areas.

I know that I just showed blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) in my last flower post but I saw this quite large clump of them the other day and couldn’t resist a photo of it. It’s a very beautiful little flower.

When I was gardening professionally every yard seemed to have at least one bridal wreath spirea (Spiraea prunifolia) growing in it but now I hardly see them. The 6-8 foot shrubs are loaded with beautiful flowers right now but I suppose they’re considered old fashioned because you never see them at newer houses.

In Greek the word spirea means wreath, but the plant comes from China and Korea. Scottish plant explorer Robert Fortune originally found it in a garden in China in the 1800s but it grows naturally on rocky hillsides, where its long branches full of white flowers spill down like floral waterfalls.

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 it’s nice to see it sprinkled here and there among the tall grasses.

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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More Mid May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Eyed Grass, Canon SX40 HS, Dogwood, Keene, Leafy Spurge, Lily of the Valley, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Nodding Trillium, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Painted Trillium, Purple Dead Nettle, Purple Lilac, Rhodora, Sessile Leaved Bellwort, Spring, Spring Plants, Starflower, White Baneberry, White Lilac, Witch Alder on May 24, 2017| 33 Comments »

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 usually appear just when the irises start to bloom and I often have to search for them because they aren’t common. Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) 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.

The rhodora flower looks like an azalea blossom but 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.

Starflowers (Trientalis borealis) are supposed to be a plant based on sevens; seven leaves, seven petals, seven sepals and seven stamens, but I’ve seen eight petals like the flower on the right in this photo, and I’ve seen many with six petals. 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.

I have to wonder how many starflowers the person who said that it is a plant based on sevens actually looked at, because like many I’ve seen this one has nine petals and nine stamens. I’m thinking that the 7 rule should be disregarded because I’ve found by looking at many plants that 7 flower parts seem as random as any other number.

I believe this is purple dead nettle (Lamium maculatum) “Purple Dragon.” Whatever its name it was a beautiful little plant that makes a great choice for shady areas. It is also an excellent source of pollen for bees. Dead nettles are native to Europe and Asia, but though they do spread some they don’t seem to be invasive here. The name dead nettle comes from their not being able sting like a true nettle, which they aren’t related to. I’m guessing the “nettle” part of the name refers to the leaves, which would look a bit like nettle leaves if it weren’t for their variegation, which consists of a cream colored stripe down the center of each leaf. That middle flower looks like it has a chicken popping up out of it.

Dogwood bracts have gone from green to white, but the tiny florets at their center haven’t opened yet. I think this tree is the Japanese Kousa dogwoods (Cornus kousa) and not one of our native trees.

Nodding trillium (Trillium cernuum) is a little later than the purple trillium and just ahead of the painted trillium. They’re shy little things with flowers that hide beneath the leaves like the mayapple, and this makes them very hard to see. Even though I knew some plants in this group were blossoming I couldn’t see the flowers at all from above. Nodding trillium is the northernmost trillium in North America, reaching far into northern Canada and Newfoundland.

When the buds form they are above the leaves but as they grow the flower stem (petiole) lengthens and bends, so when the flower finally opens it is facing the ground. My favorite thing about the nodding trillium blossom is its six big purple stamens.

Painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum) are the third trillium I look for each spring. Usually as the purple trilliums fade and nodding trilliums have moved from center stage along comes the painted trillium, which is the most beautiful among them in my opinion. This year though, for some reason both nodding and painted trilliums are blooming at the same time. Unlike its two cousins painted trillium’s flowers don’t point down towards the ground but face straight out, 90 degrees to the stem. With 2 inch wide flowers it’s not a big and showy plant, but it is loved. Painted trilliums grow in the cool moist forests north to Ontario and south to northern Georgia. They also travel west to Michigan and east to Nova Scotia.

Each bright white petal of the painted trillium has a reddish “V” at its base that looks painted on, and that’s where the common name comes from. They like boggy, acidic soil and are much harder to find than other varieties. Many states have laws that make it illegal to pick or disturb trilliums but deer love to eat them and they pay no heed to our laws, so we don’t see entire hillsides covered with them. In fact I consider myself very lucky if I find a group of more than three.

I didn’t see it until I looked at the photos I had taken but the painted trillium in the previous photo has a single petal pointed straight down, but in this example it points straight up. Note that the three smaller green sepals behind the petals also changed position. Which is the usual way? I’ve never paid enough attention to be able to answer that question but when you’re this beautiful I don’t suppose it really matters.

A flower that comes with plenty of memories for me is the lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis.) My grandmother’s name was Lily and I used to bring her wilting bouquets of them when I was a young boy. She would always smell them before putting them in a jelly jar full of water, all the while exclaiming how beautiful they were. The plant is extremely toxic but, though she didn’t tell me it was poisonous I never once thought of eating it or putting any part of the plant in my mouth. I do remember smelling their wondrous fragrance as I picked them though, and all those memories came back as I knelt to photograph this example. Amazing how memories can be so strongly attached to a fragrance.

Speaking of fragrance, our lilacs are finally blooming. In my April 26th post I showed lilac buds and said lilac blossoms would probably be in my next flower post. So much for prophesying; that was a full month ago and it has taken that long for them to open thanks to the cold and rainy first half of May. Though I like white lilacs I think the favorite by far is the common purple lilac (Syringa vulgaris.) It’s also the New Hampshire state flower, which is odd because it isn’t a native. Lilacs were first imported from England to the garden of then New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth in 1750 and chosen as the state flower in 1919 because they were said to “symbolize that hardy character of the men and women of the Granite State.” Rejected were apple blossoms, purple aster, wood lily, Mayflower, goldenrod, wild pasture rose, evening primrose and buttercup. The pink lady’s slipper is our state native wild flower.

My mother died when I was very young so I never really knew 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.

Every time I look closely at blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) I wonder why they didn’t call it yellow eyed grass, but that’s not all that’s wrong with the name because the plant isn’t a grass at all; it’s in the iris family. Its light blue green leaves do resemble grass leaves though. The beautiful little flowers are often not much bigger than a common aspirin but their color and clumping habit makes them fairly easy to find.

The leaves are on the trees and that means that the spring ephemeral flowers won’t get the sunlight they need, and we’ve already had to say goodbye to spring beauties, purple trillium, and trout lilies. Now it’s time to say goodbye to the sessile leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia.) The plants usually grow in large colonies and seeing the bell shaped flowers on thousands of plants all moving as one in the breeze is quite a sight. Sessile leaved bellwort is in the lily of the valley family and is also called wild oats. Each 6-8 inch tall plant has a single dangling blossom that is about half an inch to sometimes one inch long.

Though I had the new spring shoots of the plant in the last post the club shaped flower heads of white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) have already appeared, so it’s a very fast grower. This plant is very easy to confuse with red baneberry (Actaea rubra) but that plant’s flower head is spherical rather than elongated.

The flower head of white baneberry is always taller than it is wide and if pollinated the flowers will become white berries with a single black dot on one end. That’s where the common name doll’s eyes comes from. The berries are very toxic and can be appealing to children but luckily they are very bitter so the chances that anyone would eat one are fairly slim.

Another plant with the same type of flower head is the witch alder (Fothergilla major.) The difference is that witch alder is a native shrub related to witch hazel, and is much bigger than baneberry. Though native to the southeast it does well here in the northeast, but it is almost always seen in gardens rather than in the wild. The fragrant flower heads are bottlebrush shaped and made up of many flowers that have no petals. What little color they have comes from the stamens, which have tiny yellow anthers at the ends of long white filaments. They do very well in gardens but aren’t well known. I’m seeing more of them now than in the past though.

Leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula) is in the euphorbia family, which contains over 2000 species of plants including poinsettia, cassava, and many popular house plants. It’s a plant native to Europe, thought to have been mistakenly imported when its seed was mixed in with other crop seed. It was first seen in Massachusetts in 1827, and from there it spread as far as North Dakota within about 80 years. It can completely overtake large areas of land and choke out native plants, and for that reason it is classified as an invasive species by the United States Department of Agriculture. I find it growing along roadsides and gravelly waste areas but I haven’t seen extremely large colonies of it. All parts of the plant contain a toxic milky white sap which may cause a rash when the sap on the skin is exposed to sunlight. In fact the sap is considered carcinogenic if handled enough. Medicinally the sap is used externally on warts, or internally as a purgative, but large doses can kill. Foraging on the plant has proven deadly to livestock.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. ~Marcus Aurelius

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More Fall Colors

Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, tagged Ashuelot River, Beaver Brook, Blueberry, Burning Bush, Canon SX40 HS, Dogwood, Fall Foliage, Hancock New Hampshire, Mallards, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, red maples, Rye Pond, Starflower, Stoddard New Hampshire, Surry Mountain, Surry New Hampshire on October 26, 2016| 51 Comments »

The fall colors continue to astound even those of us who’ve lived in this corner of the state for years. As this photo taken slightly north of Keene on the Ashuelot River shows, most of the trees have turned now, and by the time this is posted many will have lost their leaves entirely. It’s a brief but colorful few weeks when nature pulls out all the stops, and I hope readers aren’t getting tired of seeing fall in New Hampshire just yet.

After I climbed Pitcher Mountain in my last post I stopped at nearby Rye Pond in Stoddard. The beaver lodge was still surrounded by water but the pond was very low. The open channels through the grasses told me that beavers had been here recently but I wonder if they’ve moved on.

I didn’t see any signs of beavers in Beaver Brook but there were plenty of colors reflected in the water. Unfortunately there wasn’t much water left to reflect more. Normally all but a handful of the largest stones would be covered by water in this spot.

Many of the leaves that had fallen into Beaver Brook had pooled behind a fallen log.

I like how our water becomes dark, almost black in the fall. I never know if it’s caused by a trick of the light or some other reason, but it only seems to happen in the fall. It makes the colors of the fallen leaves stand out beautifully, as if it were planned that way.

The blueberry bushes have been extremely colorful this year, wearing everything from yellow to plum purple, like this example. I just read in the Washington Post that “Studies have suggested that the earliest photosynthetic organisms were plum-colored, because they relied on photosynthetic chemicals that absorbed different wavelengths of light.”

Keene sits in a kind of bowl surrounded by hills so views like this one are common in the fall. You might think that because views like this are so common we take them for granted but no, you can often see people who have lived here all their lives standing right alongside the tourists, amazed by the colors.

This was the view across a swamp in Hancock; the first time I had seen it. You have to watch out for cars pulling off the road suddenly at this time of year when they come upon colorful views like this one. That’s exactly what I did when I saw it, but at least I checked my rear view mirror first.

Starflowers (Trientalis borealis) have lost nearly all of their color. This one reminded me of a poinsettia. You can just see the plant’s tiny white seedpod there on the lower left of center. The seedpods look like tiny soccer balls and often stay attached to the stem even after the plant has lost its leaves.

This was the view along the Ashuelot River in Keene late one afternoon. The setting sun always lights the trees on fire here and it’s one of my favorite fall walks.

This view of the Ashuelot in Swanzey was also colorful. That’s the thing about this time of year; it doesn’t matter what town you’re in or where you look, because the colors are everywhere.

The sun coming through this maple in my yard caught my eye one day. It’s a beautiful tree, especially at this time of year.

It wasn’t so much the ducks but their colors along with the beautiful colors that pooled around them that had me stunned and staring on a walk along the Ashuelot River one afternoon. The water was on fire and I became lost in the burning beauty of it all for a while. There are times when I wonder how I ever came to be lucky enough to be born in a paradise such as this one. Whatever the reason, I’m very grateful to be here.

I like the cloudy day brilliance but also the softness of the colors in this photo of the forest at Howe reservoir in Dublin. It’s a great place to get photos of reflections and, if you stand in the right spot, photos of the area’s highest peak, Mount Monadnock.

The burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey are still turning to their pinkish magenta color. They will keep turning until they become the faintest pastel pink just before their leaves fall. I like to get photos of them at that stage but it’s tricky; I’ve seen the entire swath of what must be hundreds of bushes all lose their leaves overnight. I’ll have to start checking on them every day soon.

The native dogwoods are also very colorful this year. I think this one is a gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa) but the birds have eaten all its berries so it was hard to be sure. It might be a silky dogwood (Cornus amomum.) We’re lucky to have so many different dogwoods.

Surry Mountain in Surry looks to have more evergreens than deciduous trees on it but it could be that the beeches and maples hadn’t turned yet when I took this photo. To the right, out of sight in this shot, is Surry Dam, built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1941 to help keep the Ashuelot River from flooding Keene. The reservoir created by the dam is called Surry Mountain Lake but it is actually the Ashuelot River, about 5 times wider than it would have ever gotten naturally.

This is a close up of Surry Mountain showing quite a few evergreens, which I’m guessing are mostly white pines (Pinus strobus.)

The oaks are turning quickly now along with the beeches, and they will be the last hurrah of autumn as they are each year. I’ve got to get to the beech / oak forest at Willard Pond in Hancock very soon. Last year it was glorious there.

Sunrise comes later each morning and on the misty morning when this photo was taken both cameras I carried struggled with the low light and produced fuzzy photos of this yellow leaved tree, but I thought this one looked like something Monet would have painted so I decided to include it.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Late May / Early June Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Bead Lily, Blue Flag Iris, Bunch Berry, Canon SX40 HS, Dogwood, Early Azalea, Keene, Lupine, Native Plants, Native Wildflowers, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Old Fashioned Iris, Ox Eye Daisy, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Pink Lady's Slipper, Red Clover, Roseshell Azalea, Sarsaparilla, Spring on June 4, 2016| 48 Comments »

We’ve had August heat in May and that has coaxed many of our wildflowers into bloom, and some earlier than usual. Our humble little native blue toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) has just come into bloom. 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.

Our native blue flag irises (Iris versicolor) have appeared, so it must be June. Actually, they were early this year and bloomed the last week of May. The name flag is from the Middle English flagge, which means rush or reed and which I assume applies to the cattail like leaves. Though Native Americans used this plant medicinally its roots are considered dangerously toxic and people who dig cattail roots to eat have to be very careful that there are no irises growing among them. Natives showed early settlers how to use small amounts of dried root safely as a cathartic and diuretic.

Here’s an that iris has been in my family longer than I have. Before I was born my mother planted a few in the yard so I’ve known it quite literally my entire life, and now it grows in my own yard. Its name is Loreley, and it’s an old fashioned variety introduced in 1909. It’s one of the toughest irises I know of; truly a “plant it and forget it” perennial. It was bred in Germany, and the name Loreley (Lorelei) refers to the sirens who would perch on cliffs along the Rhine and entice sailors to their doom with their enchanting song, much like the sirens who lured Ulysses and his crew in the Odyssey.

Is it any wonder that Loreley is still grown 107 years after her introduction?

Bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) grow right up into the V made by the two trunks of this oak tree near my house but the heat made them bloom early this year and I missed seeing all but two or three. Bunchberry is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that it must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

Bunchberry is also called creeping dogwood and bunchberry dogwood. The large (relatively) white bracts surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. Later on the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries which give it its common name. Native Americans used the berries as food and made a tea from the ground root to treat colic in infants. The Cree tribe called the berry “kawiskowimin,” meaning “itchy chin berry” because rubbing the berries against your skin can cause a reaction that will make you itch.

Here’s a dogwood blossom to compare to the bunchberry we saw previously. It has the same 4 larger white bracts with small greenish flowers in the center. Though you can’t see them in this photo even the leaves show the same veining.

Our native azaleas continue to bloom. The beautiful example in this photo grows in a shaded part of the forest and is called early azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum,) even though the Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) is earlier. It’s also called roseshell azalea and I usually find them by their fragrance, which is a bit spicy and a bit sweet.

The flowers of the early azalea aren’t as showy as some other azaleas but I wish you could smell their heavenly scent. Another common name, wooly azalea, comes from the many hairs on the outside of the flowers. It is these hairs that emit the fragrance, which is said to induce creative imagination.

Last year the highway department replaced a bridge over the Ashuelot River and widened the road leading to and from it. They put what I thought was grass seed down on the roadsides once the bridge was finished, but this year there are cornflower blue lupines (Lupinus) growing all along the sides of the road. Were there lupine seeds mixed into the grass seed or have the lupines been there all along? These are questions I can’t answer but it doesn’t matter; I’m happy to see them no matter how they got there.

To me the ox eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) says that June has come but this year the warmth of May has brought them on a little early. This is a much loved flower so it is easy to forget that it was originally introduced from Europe as an ornamental in the 1800s. It quickly escaped cultivation and has now spread to each of the lower 48 states and most of Canada. Since cattle won’t eat it, it can spread at will through pastures and that means that it is not well loved by ranchers. A vigorous daisy can produce 26,000 seeds per plant and tests have shown that 82% of the buried seeds remained viable after six years underground. I like its spiraled center.

The round white flower heads of wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) hide beneath its leaves and quite often you can’t see them from above. Compared to the ping pong ball size flower heads the leaves are huge and act like an umbrella, which might keep rain from washing away their pollen.

Each sarsaparilla flower is very small but as a group they’re easy to see. Dark purple berries will replace the flowers if pollination is successful, and it’s usually very successful. This is one of the most common wildflowers I know of and I see them virtually everywhere I go, including in my own yard. Every now and then you’ll find a plant with flowers but no leaves over them. I don’t know if these leafless plants are a natural hybrid or how the plant benefits from having fewer leaves. Fewer leaves mean less photosynthesizing and that means less food for the plant.

Seeing the light of creation shining from a red clover blossom (Trifolium pretense) is something you don’t ever forget, and I look forward to seeing them every spring. But light isn’t all that flowers radiate; scientists have found that they also generate weak electrical fields which insects like bumblebees can sense through the hairs on their bodies. The electric field bends their tiny hairs and that generates nerve signals which the bees use to tell the difference between flowers.

It’s easy to see that blue bead lilies (Clintonia borealis) are in the lily family; they look just like small Canada lilies. I like seeing both the flowers and the blue berries that follow them. It’s been described as porcelain blue but it’s hard to put a name to it. I call it electric blue and I really can’t think of another blue to compare it to, but it’s beautiful.

At a glance it might be easy to confuse the large oval leaves of blue bead lilies with those of lady’s slippers, but they don’t have the pleats that lady’s slippers have, and of course once the flowers appear there is no doubt. The two plants often grow side by side and bloom at the same time. It can take more than 12 years for blue bead lily plants to produce flowers from seed.

Pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) have come into bloom quickly and I think I’m seeing more of them than I ever have. I’m so glad that this native orchid is making a comeback after being collected nearly into oblivion by people who didn’t know any better. The plant interacts with a Rhizoctonia fungus in the soil and this fungus must be present for it to reproduce. If plants are dug up and placed in private gardens they will eventually die out if the fungus isn’t present so please, look at them, take a couple of photos, and let them be.

For those who haven’t seen one, a pink lady’s slipper blossom is essentially a pouch called a labellum, which is a modified petal. The pouch has a slit down the middle which can be seen in this photo. Veins on the pouch attract bumblebees, which enter the flower through the slit and then find that to get out they have to leave by one of two openings at the top of the pouch (not seen here) that have pollen masses above them. When they leave they are dusted with pollen and will hopefully carry it to another flower. It takes pink lady’s slippers five years or more from seed to bloom, but they can live for twenty years or more.

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 May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Bead Lily, Blue Eyed Grass, Bog Laurel, Bunchberry, Canon SX40 HS, Common Wintercress, Dogwood, Dwarf Crested Iris, Early Spring Plants, Keene, Lady's Slipper, Mayapple, Native Orchids, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Ox Eye Daisy, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Rhodora, Spring on May 30, 2015| 45 Comments »

I’m starting off this post with water because there seems to be less and less of it to see each day as the drought goes on. Actually this is a “seep” which usually runs all year long and which hasn’t dried up yet. A seep is a place where water slowly oozes out of the ground and that describes this place perfectly. I thought the yellow of the common wintercress was beautiful against the blue of the water.

Common wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris) is also called yellow rocket and is in the mustard family. It is a biennial plant, meaning it forms leaves during its first year and flowers and then dies after its second year. The first year basal leaves are hardly noticeable but when it blooms you can’t help but see the bright yellow, foot tall plants. It is a native of Europe and Asia and, as the all too familiar story goes, it almost immediately escaped cultivation here and is now found on disturbed ground mostly is waste areas, so it is not that invasive.

I think I would have named blue eyed grass yellow eyed grass, but that’s just me. No matter what it’s called, blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) has always been one of my favorite wildflowers. It’s in the iris family and isn’t a grass at all, but might have come by the name because of the way its light green leaves resemble grass leaves. The flowers are often not much bigger than a common aspirin but their color and clumping habit makes them fairly easy to find. Native Americans had several medicinal uses for this plant.

Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) always looks like it has chubby cheeks to me but I can’t explain exactly why. It also always reminds me of dogwood and that’s because it is in the dogwood (cornus) family. It is also called creeping dogwood and bunchberry dogwood. The large (relatively) white bracts surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. Later on the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries. Native Americans used the berries as food and made a tea from the ground root to treat colic in infants. The Cree tribe called the berry “kawiskowimin,” meaning “itchy chin berry” because rubbing the berries against your skin can cause a reaction that will make you itch.

Bunchberry plants grow right up into the V made by the two trunks of this oak tree near my house. Bunchberry is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that it must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

Here’s a dogwood blossom to compare to the bunchberry we saw previously. It has the same 4 larger white bracts with small greenish flowers in the center. Even the leaves show the same veining.

I’m not positive what this irises name is but I found it growing along a path in the woods. I think it might be a dwarf crested Iris (Iris cristada) that has escaped from someone’s garden. It stood only about 6 inches tall. It was very pretty and also unexpected.

On May 17, 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote “The splendid Rhodora now sets the swamps on fire with its masses of rich color,” and that is exactly what this beautiful little plant does. I was kneeling when I took this photo, so though these shrubs look quite tall they really top out at no more than 2 feet. There are actually 2 shrubs in this photo; one is the rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) and the other is bog laurel (Kalmia polifolia). Both normally grow in standing water and seem to be doing exceptionally well this year in spite of the drought that has left them with dry feet.

Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense,) 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. Rhododendron canadense was first described and pictured by Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau in the ‘Botanic Garden’ in Paris in March 1756, where it had been brought from Canada. It was a big hit and was introduced to England in 1791. This beautiful little shrub will take all the cold it can get but it has a hard time in hot, dry weather.

Bog laurel is another very beautiful native shrub but it is on the rare side and I don’t see it that often. The small, dime size flowers are bright pink and very beautiful. Like many laurels bog laurel is poisonous enough to kill and no part of the plant should ever be eaten. Legend has it that when a Native American wanted to end his life, this was the plant that was chosen to do the deed. It likes to grow along the edges of cool acidic bogs and often grows in shallow standing water. That makes it harder to get close to and in this case, that might be a good thing.

Mayapple flowers (Podophyllum peltatum) are hard to get a decent photo of because they nod toward the ground under the plant’s leaves. I’ve read that once a mayapple produces flowers and fruit it reduces its chances of doing so in following years. Native Americans boiled the root and used the water to cure stomach aches but this is another native plant that is toxic and should not be eaten. Two anti-cancer treatment drugs, etoposide and teniposide, are made from the Mayapple plant.

At a glance it might be easy to confuse the large oval leaves of blue bead lilies (Clintonia borealis) with those of lady’s slippers, but once the flowers appear there is no doubt. I saw a lot of plants with leaves but no flowers in this spot. It takes more than 12 years for new plants to produce flowers, so they must all be younger than that. Their cheery yellow flowers really light up the shaded forest floor and I’m always happy to find them.

A close look at the flower shows why blue bead lily is in the lily family; each one looks like a miniature garden lily. The flowers give way to a single electric blue berry, which is toxic. One Native American legend says that, when a grass snake eats a poisonous toad, it slithers in rapid circles around a shoot of blue-bead lily to transfer the poison to the plant. Blue bead lily seeds take 2 years or more to germinate and then another 10 to bloom, so growing this plant from seed would take great patience.

Our native pink lady slipper orchids (Cypripedium acaule) seem to be thriving this year in spite of the dryness, and that surprises me. For centuries this plant has also been known as the moccasin flower, possibly because the Native American Ojibway tribe called it ma-ki-sin-waa-big-waan. Another name is whippoorwill shoes, because an old native legend says that when whippoorwills go courting at night, they wear lady’s slippers as moccasins. This pouch or “moccasin” has a purpose; once a bee gets inside the pouch it has to force its way out and the plant deposits a nice load of pollen on its head when it does. The problem with this strategy is the bees aren’t apt to fall for having to force their way out of the pouch twice because it uses up their energy, so a lot of pollen is wasted. One study in Pennsylvania showed that of 3,300 lady’s slippers only 23 were pollinated.

Though the flowers of the lady’s slippers in the previous photo were light colored these were quite dark. Normally that wouldn’t be unusual except that the two groups were growing side by side. Things like that interest me and I always wonder what causes the differences that I see.

This photo is for all of you who have never seen a lady’s slipper blossom up close. They’re very beautiful things and people will gladly drive and / or walk miles to see them at this time of year. That makes me feel very grateful to have a few volunteers growing right here in my own yard.

For 99 percent of the time we’ve been on Earth we were hunters and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine. ~Janine M. Benyus

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Late May Flowers

Posted in Nature, Wildflowers, tagged Blue Bead Lily, Blue Eyed Grass, Canon SX40 HS, Dogwood, Early Azalea, Governor Benning Wentworth, Keene, Kerria Japonica, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Perennial Bachelor's Button, Pink Lady's Slipper, plants, Purple Lilac, Robin's Plantain, Roseshell Azalea, Spring, Starflower, state flower, White Baneberry on May 31, 2014| 37 Comments »

Most states have a native as their state flower but in New Hampshire non-native purple lilacs (Syringa vulgaris) are the chosen state flower. They were first imported from England to the garden of then Governor Benning Wentworth in 1750 and chosen as the state flower in 1919, because they were said to “symbolize that hardy character of the men and women of the Granite State.” Rejected were apple blossoms, purple aster, wood lily, Mayflower, goldenrod, wild pasture rose, evening primrose and buttercup. The pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule) was finally chosen as the state’s wild flower in 1991.

Honeysuckles and autumn olives blossom at the same time as lilacs here in this part of New Hampshire, so the air is filled with their mingled fragrances right now. I remembered how as a child I would pick single lilac blossoms and suck the sweet nectar from them, so I tried to get a photo of a single flower.

If you saw the leaves before the flowers appeared you might think that you had found lady’s slippers, but a closer look shows that the leaves of blue bead lily (Clintonia borealis) are really very different. I stumbled onto this large colony of plants last year by accident when I was out scouting for new plants. It’s a very healthy, thriving colony and, since it takes more than 12 years for new plants to produce flowers, is one that has been in this spot for a while.

A close look at the flower shows why blue bead lily is in the lily family. Each one looks like a miniature garden lily. The flowers give way to a single, electric blue berry, which is toxic. One Native American legend says that, when a grass snake eats a poisonous toad, it slithers in rapid circles around a shoot of blue-bead lily to transfer the poison to the plant. Blue bead lily seeds take 2 years or more to germinate, so growing this plant from seed would be a very slow process.

Starflowers (Trientalis borealis) bloom among the blue bead lilies and that’s where I saw my first four flowered one of this season. Now I’ll try to find one with five, if there is such a thing. Since books say that a plant will have no more than two blossoms I have nothing but faith to go on.

Our native state wildflower pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) have just turned pink from their off whitish / yellowish stage. I’m lucky enough to have a few plants growing in my woods so I don’t have to go too far to study or admire these beautiful orchids. Note that the leaves look very different than the smooth blue bead lily leaves seen earlier.

Native blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) with its small blue flowers is an old favorite of mine. Although it is a perennial each plant doesn’t live much more than a couple of years, but if it likes the spot it’s in it will re-seed itself year after year. In spite of its common name it is in the iris family and isn’t a grass at all. Its flowers close at night and at even the hint of a cloudy day, so getting a photo of an open one was a challenge this year.

Robin’s plantain (Erigeron pulchellus) is the earliest of the fleabanes to bloom in this area. Its inch and a half diameter flowers are larger than many fleabane blossoms and its foot high stalks are shorter. One way to identify this plant is by its basal rosette of very hairy, oval leaves. The stem and stem leaves (cauline) are also hairy. The flowers can be white to pink to lavender and are made up of ray florets surrounding yellow disk florets in the center. These plants almost always grow in large colonies and often come up in lawns. They’re a good indicator of where the flower lovers among us live because at this time of year you can see many neatly mown lawns with islands of unmown, blossoming fleabanes.

Dogwood bracts have gone from green to white, but the tiny florets at their center haven’t opened yet.

Last fall I found quite a large stand of white baneberry in a forest near a local park and luckily I remembered to revisit it this year when the plants were blooming. The small white flowers form racemes, which in this case seem to be too heavy for the 2-3 foot stems to hold upright.

Each white baneberry flower will become a white berry with a black stigma scar on one end. In size, color, and shape these berries look like porcelain doll’s eyes, and that’s how this plant got its common name of doll’s eyes. The entire plant is very toxic but the berries are the most toxic part. Eating them can cause cardiac arrest and death, but fortunately their extremely bitter taste keeps all but birds from eating them.

Kerria japonica is blooming in my yard. This six foot shrub is called Japanese rose because it is in the rose family. In its natural form the plant has single, fragrant, 5 petal flowers like that in the photo. There is also a cultivar called Pleniflora with double flowers and one called Albaflora, which is pale yellow. This is a good shrub for people who want a low maintenance garden because it needs very little care. It thrives in shade and if it gets a little scraggly it can be cut right back to the ground, and it has no real insect or disease problems. You can’t ask for more than that from any shrub.

Coming upon an eight foot tall azalea covered with blossoms is enough to take one’s breath away, so beautiful and rare is the sight. I found this native shrub in the forest last year but I was too late to see all but one wilting blossom. I made a point of visiting it early this year so I could watch it and, after visiting it probably a half dozen times, I finally saw its first blossom open just as its leaves began to appear. Now it has too many to count and is just too beautiful for words.

All the signs plus the intense fragrance lead me to believe that this is the roseshell or early azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum), but azaleas can be hard to identify. Whichever one it is, its most outstanding feature is its pleasant fragrance. Books describe it as “clove like” but it seems a little sweeter than that to me. It’s hard to describe a fragrance but it’s not hard to imagine that this must be what heaven smells like.

The serenity produced by the contemplation and philosophy of nature is the only remedy for prejudice, superstition, and inordinate self-importance, teaching us that we are all a part of Nature herself, strengthening the bond of sympathy which should exist between ourselves and our brother man. ~Luther Burbank

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From the Garden

Posted in General gardening, Nature, tagged Azalea, Columbine, Daylily, Dogwood, False Indigo, Gardening, Horse Chestnut, Iris, Lilac, Nature, New Hampshire, Pasque Flower, Salvia, Star of Bethlehem, Wisteria, Witch Alder on May 23, 2012| 18 Comments »

I thought I’d get out of the forest and back into the garden again for this post. Flowers are beautiful no matter where they grow, so you’ll find a little of everything from everywhere here.

Pheasant Eye Daffodil-also called Narcissus poeticus. This is supposed to have been one of the first daffodils cultivated in ancient times, and this is the latest and most fragrant one to flower here. I’ve seen more and more of these in fields and along roadsides so they are naturalizing. The yellow center cup with a red fringe and the late blooming period are good ways to identify this flower. Azaleas are blooming heavily this year, with bushes so full of flowers that you would think they would topple over under the sheer weight of it all. This deep pink one is in my yard and is a dwarf evergreen azalea. All azaleas are in the genus Rhododendron, and evergreen azaleas are in the subgenus Tsutsusi.This is a deciduous azalea that is much larger than the previous one shown and very fragrant. It grows in a local park. Deciduous azaleas are in the subgenus Pentanthera. I’m eagerly anticipating the native azaleas that will bloom soon. This deep purple Beaded Iris (Iris germanica) was in the same park and looked almost black. I don’t know the name of the cultivar. I’m sorry about the harsh lighting in some of these photos, but with a full time job and home renovations on-going, I just don’t have the luxury of waiting for an overcast day to take pictures.I thought this white bearded iris (Iris germanica) was especially beautiful. Too much shade will cause weak blooming in bearded irises and these that I found in a park were being shaded by trees and shrubs. If they were moved to a sunnier spot they would do better. This is a Siberian iris (Iris sibirica) that blooms before all other irises in my gardens. This native to northern Asia and Europe is such a tough plant that I usually use an axe to divide it into smaller plants. Partial shade doesn’t bother this iris. In fact, nothing bothers this iris. This yellow daylily (Hemerocallis) is very early, blooming just after the Siberian irises bloom. This plant was given to me many years ago by a friend who has since passed on and I have divided it many times for family and friends. Two things make this plant special: the early bloom time and the heavenly fragrance that smells of citrus and spices. I have a feeling this is a Lemon daylily (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus) which is a very old species brought to America in colonial days and originally from China and Europe. The Greek Hemerocallis means “beautiful for a day,” and that’s how long each flower lasts. It’s a shame that many of today’s daylilies, bred for larger and more colorful flowers, have lost their ancient fragrance. Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is a beautiful plant in the pea family. This is a native plant that is sold in nurseries because it is so popular. Its flowers resemble those of the lupine, which is also in the pea family. Native Americans used this plant to make blue dye. True indigo (Indigofera) comes from the tropics.The pink flowers on this horse chestnut tree were really beautiful. I found it in a park so I don’t know what cultivar it is, but I’d like to have it in my yard. Believe it or not this is a columbine-a double flowered variety. Interesting, but I think I like the ordinary, single flowered columbines more.

Ornamental perennial salvia is blooming already. The culinary form of salvia is the herb known as sage. I’m wondering what fall will be like this year. Everything is blooming so early; I wonder if there will be anything left to bloom in September. Dogwood used to be a tree that you saw only occasionally, but now you see them everywhere-even at fast food restaurants. That doesn’t mean they are any less beautiful though. The sepals on this one were beyond white-I think the whitest I’ve seen on a plant. In a post I did recently called Under Cultivation I showed a photo of this flower and said I thought it might be a button bush, but I couldn’t be sure. Now I’m sure; it’s a native shrub related to witch hazel and is called Witch alder (Fothergilla major.) I’ve never seen this before this year, but I like it because it is so unusual. Witch alder (Fothergilla major.)

Seed head of the pasque flower (Anemone patens,) which is almost as beautiful as the flower itself. One is just coming into bloom in the upper part of the photo. I saw a flash of color in the corner of my eye as I was driving and what I discovered, after I backed up and jumped out, was a wisteria vine trying hard to make it all the way to the top of a cherry tree. The problem is I don’t know if it is a Chinese or Japanese wisteria. It’s doubtful that it is the American species because that one isn’t supposed to be hardy in New Hampshire. Whatever it is, it’s beautiful, and I want to go back later and try to identify it. Wisteria can grow under siding and shingles and actually tear them off, so they should never be planted near a house. Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), though beautiful, can overrun a garden. These flowers grow from a bulb and are native to southern Europe and Africa. The bulbs contain toxic alkaloids and have killed livestock, so they are now listed as an invasive species.

The common purple Lilac (Syringa vulgaris) is the state flower of New Hampshire so I guess I’d better include it here. Their scent, along with the honeysuckle and autumn olive, makes doing anything outside so much more enjoyable. Lilacs were first imported into New Hampshire from England in 1750 and grown at the Portsmouth home of Governor Benning Wentworth. The original plants are still blooming today in that garden and are believed to be the oldest lilacs in America.

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed. ~Walt Whitman

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing what is blooming here in New Hampshire, and this day I hope you’ll forgive my forgetfulness! Thank you for stopping by.

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New Hampshire Garden Solutions

Exploring Nature in New Hampshire

Posts Tagged ‘Dogwood’

Summer Flowers Come A Little Early

Late May Flowers

Early June Flowers

More and more flowers are appearing each day now and the roadsides are beginning to bloom, as these ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) show. This is just a small piece of what was miles of daisies along this road.

Dogwood (Cornus) blossoms have 4 large white bracts surrounding the actual small greenish flowers in the center, just like bunchberries. They have just come into bloom.

Our locust trees are blooming. The one shown here is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains.

Plant breeders have been working on tradescantia; I find this purple flowered one in a local park. Interesting but I like the blue that I grew up with best. Bees, especially bumblebees, seem to like this one best though. Why that is, I don’t know.

Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), though beautiful, can overrun a garden. These flowers grow from a bulb and are native to southern Europe and Africa. The bulbs contain toxic alkaloids and have killed livestock, so they are now listed as an invasive species.

Live this life in wonder, in wonder of the beauty, the magic, the true magnificence that surrounds you It is all so beautiful, so wonderful. Let yourself wonder. ~Avina Celeste

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