Early June Wildflowers

Here are a few more of the flowers I’ve seen recently.

Last year I saw two native blue flag iris (Iris versicolor ) on the far side of a local pond. This year they are on all sides of the pond, so they spread fast. If you happen to be a forager and like making flour from cattail roots you want to be sure that you don’t get any iris roots mixed in, because they are very toxic.

These bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) like growing on the side of this oak tree. These plants are often seen growing on or near rotting logs, so a lot of their nutrients must come from there. If bunchberry flowers remind you of dogwood blossoms, that’s because both dogwoods and bunchberry are in the same family. (Cornaceae) Just like with dogwoods blossoms the white parts of the bunchberry blossom are bracts, not petals.

 

The actual bunchberry flowers are the small bits in the center of the white bracts. The flowers will become “bunches” of bright red berries later on. The berries are loaded with pectin and Native Americans used them both medicinally and as food. The Cree tribe called bunchberry “itchy chin berry” because they can make you itch when rubbed against the skin.

Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) grows in all but two of the lower 48 states in the country. People in Oregon and Washington won’t get to see and smell its beautiful blooms but the rest of us will. This tree gets its common name from the sweet pulp found on the inside of its long, ripe seed pods. This tree has some very sharp thorns and is also called thorny locust.

 Last summer I found a shrub that looked like an azalea, so this year I went back and found that, sure enough, the shrub was our native pink azalea (Rhododendron periclymenoides .) In my experience this shrub is very rare-I’ve only seen two of them in my lifetime, and this is one of those. I’ve since discovered that it is listed as endangered in New Hampshire .The flowers had mostly all gone by before I re-visited it, so next year I’ll have to visit it a little earlier. It’s a beautiful thing rarely seen, so it is well worth the effort.

Other plants that I found last year were some columbines (Aquilegia) growing along a roadside. It was well past their bloom time so I made a note to revisit them this spring. Unfortunately a road crew had come along and scraped up all but two plants. I visited those that were left several times this spring until they finally bloomed.  Again unfortunately, instead of being our native red flowered Aquilegia they were a pinkish / purple garden escapee. I’ve included their photo here only because it took 7 months and a good dose of patience to get it.

Native blue lupines (Lupinus Perennis) are blooming along the Ashuelot River in Swanzey, New Hampshire, along with yellow bird’s foot trefoil. The town has decided that this area will be a park, so the lupines and many other wildflowers that grow here will most likely be destroyed. How ironic that blue lupines are listed as a threatened species in New Hampshire.

 

 Maiden pinks (Dianthus deltoids) get their common name from the way the petals look like they were edged with pinking shears. This European native has escaped gardens and can be found in lawns and meadows in many states in the U.S. Oddly enough, it is listed as a nationally scarce species in England. I think we could send them boatloads, just from the stock we have here in New Hampshire. A very similar plant is the Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria) but its flowers have much narrower petals.

 

There are several species of Blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium) that grow from coast to coast in the U.S. Though its common name says that it is a grass the plant is actually in the iris family. The flowers have 3 petals and 3 sepals and all are the same color blue. Blue eyed grass is an old favorite of mine.

 

Ox eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) bloomed early this year. If ever there was a flower that said it was June this is it, but I found a few blooming in May. This is another European native that escaped gardens and is now found in meadows in every state in the U.S. including Alaska and Hawaii. A vigorous plant can produce up to 26,000 seeds. In tests 82% of those seeds remain viable even after being buried for 6 years, so don’t look for this one on the endangered list any time soon.

 

Heal all (Prunella vulgaris) has just started blooming this week here. Its tiny purple flowers are always a welcome sight. Nobody seems to agree on where this plant originated because it is recorded in the histories of several countries before the history of travel was recorded. Maybe everyone should agree that it is a plant known since ancient times and leave it at that. It was once thought to be a holy herb sent by God to cure man’s ills. The name heal all comes from the way that It has been used medicinally on nearly every continent on earth to cure virtually any ailment one can name.

 

Yellow hawkweed (Hieracium caespitosum) flowers can rise to a height of up to 3 feet on wiry, leafless stems. The leaves are in a cluster at the base of the long stem and this makes photographing the plants in their entirety very tricky, unless you are an expert in depth of field. I’m not, so you get to see the flowers and not the leaves. This plant hails from Europe and is considered a noxious weed in many states. The common name of hawk weed came about because Pliny the elder wrote that hawks ate the plants to improve their vision. I wonder if Pliny himself had vision problems.

 

Orange hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) doesn’t get quite as tall as yellow, but getting the entire plant in one photo is still a challenge. This plant is another that was introduced from Europe and is now considered a noxious weed. I like it for its color because orange isn’t seen that often in nature. One common name of orange hawkweed is Devil’s paintbrush. When I was a boy everyone called it Indian paintbrush even though true Indian paintbrush (Castilleja) is an entirely different plant.

None can have a healthy love for flowers unless he loves the wild ones. ~Forbes Watson

Thanks for stopping in.

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