I snuck in a late spring hike in Cheat River Canyon yesterday, before the dreaded heat dome builds in early next week. Between Brazil's Pantanal going up in flames and the massive heat spikes in North America and elsewhere, I wonder what will be left of this planet's beautiful wild places in twenty to thirty years. For now, I celebrate and cherish every day the glorious diversity of living things that nature has gifted us. This includes the magnificent poke milkweed (Asclepias exaltata), a shade tolerant member of the dogbane family, which feeds and hosts a great many of those living things, such as the extraordinary Himmelman's plume moth (Geina tenuidactylus). Or the comical-looking rock harlequin (Corydalis sempervirens), which clings to the rocky outcrops of the canyon. And the exquisite downy skullcap (Scutellaria incana), a gregarious summer mint that associates with wild bergamot and tall thimbleweed at forest edges. And how about the peculiar dangling flowers of Indian cucumber (Medeola virginiana) or the pale, ghostly stems and bracts of the parasitic Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), just now emerging from the forest floor? In a couple of weeks, the rhododendron bloom will start in the canyon and summer will be in full swing.
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The flower petals looked like white fringe around a yellow button.
Some quick prose based on these flowers that started blooming recently:
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I’ve been merging my gardens for so long all I see are merges….
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Native wildflowers collection pt 2
Continued from part 1
Wild white indigo. These grow seed pods and then break off and tumbleweed around to spread their seeds.
Blazing star. There are several species of this and I think this one is prairie blazing star
Culver's root
Daisy fleabane. This was burned and the ashes were used as a flea remedy.
Joe Pye weed
Elderberry. You can chop up the branches of this, put them in the ground, and as long as there's enough water, they will grow into new bushes.
Wild petunia (left), wild geranium (right), and wild hyacinth (bottom). I like them more than the ornamental cultivars
Showy tick trefoil. These seeds are easy to collect. Walk through the prairie for a while and you'll have a few hundred stuck to your clothes.
Tall bellflower
Heal-all
New England aster or aromatic aster. I don't know how to tell them apart. Usually purple, but sometimes you find a bright pink one.
Evening primrose
Wild onion
American bush clover
Rose mallow (left) and halberd-leafed rose mallow (left). The latter gets smaller flowers and different shaped leaves.
Tall boneflower, which is a name I'm totally using for an undead plant in D&D
Great blue lobelia
Smartweed. These are absolutely tiny.
Spring beauty, a cute little spring ephemeral
Bloodroot. These are cool, they have giant rhizomes and bright red sap.
Wild violet. These are usually purple, but sometimes you find a yellow one
Trout lily.
Virginia bluebell
Trillium. You don't get as many of these around here as we'd like because the deer go absolutely wild for them
Woodland phlox
Wild hawthorn
Continued in part 3
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Fleabane (Erigeron sp.)
A large group of fleabane daisies growing in my back garden.
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