Mid July Flowers
July 15, 2020 by New Hampshire Garden Solutions
July is the time many of our biggest and most beautiful flowers appear in the fields and on forest edges. And sometimes right on roadsides, like this chicory (Cichorium intybus.) It was surrounded by pavement and the only wind it felt was from passing vehicles, but the plants were thriving. I love its beautiful blue color and I very much look forward to seeing it each summer.
Canada lilies (Lilium canadense) are probably our biggest native wildflower and they’ve just come into bloom. These beautiful flowers grew on plants that were about 3-4 feet tall but I’ve seen plants that towered high over my head. The flowers can be yellow, orange or red, or a combination. The plants always remind me of a hanging chandelier.
Canada lilies have purple spotted throats that aren’t always seen because the flowers almost always face downwards. If you’re very gentle though, you can bend a stem back enough to see into a blossom without breaking it. This plant is unusual because it prefers wet places. Most lilies, and in fact most plants that grow from bulbs, do not like soil that stays wet. They prefer sandy, well-drained soil. I often find Canada lilies growing along streams as this one was.
Though eastern purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is a native wildflower I don’t often find it growing outside of gardens. Native American plains tribes used this plant to treat toothaches, coughs, colds, sore throats, and snake bite. Something interesting that I read said that Native Americans got the idea that coneflower could be used medicinally by watching sick and injured elk eat the plants. I’ve always wondered how natives came to know if a plant was poisonous or not and thought that they must have simply used trial and error. Pity the one who had to try an unknown plant for the first time.
One way to tell that you have a creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides) rather than another campanula is by noticing the curious way the blue, bell shaped flowers all grow on one side of the stem, and the way that the stem almost always leans in the direction of the flowers. This plant is originally from Europe and is considered an invasive weed. It can be very hard to eradicate and it can choke out weaker native plants if it is left alone. It isn’t considered invasive here in New Hampshire though, and in fact I usually have to look for quite a while to find it. When I do it is usually growing on forest edges.
Bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) originally hails from Europe. It is thought to have been introduced in the colonial era and has spread throughout the United States, much to the dismay of farmers and cattle ranchers. It is also called spear thistle, with good reason. I wonder if it was imported intentionally or accidentally. I’ve read that many non-native plants came over as seeds stuck in the tails of cows and horses, and this could be one of those.
We shouldn’t forget about grasses when we speak of flowers because they flower too, and sometimes their flowers can be very beautiful. One of my favorite grass flowers is Timothy (Phleum pretense.) The story of how this grass got its name says that it was unintentionally introduced from Europe in 1711 and in 1720 a farmer named Timothy Hanson began to cultivate it. The grass took on his name and has been called Timothy ever since. It is an excellent hay grass.
It is also a grass that it is worth stopping and looking at. Its flowers are sometimes cream colored and sometimes purple as they were on this stalk.
When you’re admiring the flower heads of grasses look down and you might find the pretty little flowers of stitchwort growing up the grass stems.
Lesser stitchwort (Stellaria graminea) flowers are very small but there are enough of them so the plant can’t be missed. They grow at the edges of fields and pastures, and along pathways. The stems of this plant live through the winter so it gets a jump on the season, often blooming in May. It is a native of Europe.
I had to stop beside the road I was driving on because I saw the biggest colony of pale spike lobelia (Lobelia spicata) that I’ve ever seen. The plant gets its common name from its small flowers, which are usually a pale blue to almost white. There is also a purple variant but I’ve never seen it.
As I expected the flowers were a light sky blue. They’re quite small, maybe slightly bigger than a pencil eraser.
Some were darker blue, which I like. This is a fairly common plant but I still usually have to look for it. I love all flowers but the tiny ones that make you crawl in the grass and do some work to see them are often quite exceptional, and always worth the effort.
The nodding, waxy, cup shaped flowers of the shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica) have appeared. This native plant is plentiful in pine woods and grows near trailing arbutus and pipsissewa. The greenish white petals look waxy and sometimes will have greenish veins running through them. These plants were always thought to be closely related to the wintergreens because their leaves stay green all winter, but DNA testing now puts them in the heath (Ericaceae) family. The plant’s crushed leaves were applied to bruises in the form of a paste or salve and the aspirin-like compounds in the leaves would ease pain. Such pastes were called “shin plasters,” and that’s how the plant got its strange common name.
The big J shaped flower styles of shinleaf (Pyrola elliptica) are unmistakable, even on its winter seedpods. Shinleaf is quite common in this area and can form large colonies. Shinleaf leaves form a rosette at the base of the single, 4-5 inch tall flower stalk.
Native Pipsissewa (Chimaphilla corymbosa or Pyrola umbellata) has just started blooming. It likes things on the dry side and I find it in sandy soil that gets dappled sunlight. It is a low growing native evergreen that can be easily missed when there are only one or two plants, but pipsissewa usually forms quite large colonies and that makes them easier to find. The leaves are also very shiny, which also helps. The white or pink flowers are almost always found nodding downwards, as the photo shows.
Pipsissewa has nodding flowers that grow quite close to the ground and this makes getting a good photo difficult. Luckily I was able to bend a flower stalk and get a look at the large center pistil and the 10 odd shaped anthers. It is said that the plant’s common name comes from the Native American word pipsiskeweu which means “it breaks into small pieces.” This refers to their belief that pipsissewa would break up kidney stones.
When I was a boy all I ever saw were pure white bindweed flowers (Calystegia sepium) but then all of the sudden they became pink and white bicolor bindweed flowers. Now it has gotten difficult to find a white example. Bindweeds are perennial and morning glories are annuals and one good way to tell them apart is by their leaves; morning glory (Ipomoea) has heart shaped leaves and bindweed has narrower arrowhead shaped, triangular leaves.
This is closer to the bindweeds I remember as a boy; simple white trumpets. I don’t know when the bi-color pink and white flowers began to appear but I have looked them up and they and the white flowered plants are indeed the same species. But they’re not morning glories, even though that was what we called them when I was a boy. This one reminded me of playing in milkweed scented fields with grass up to my shoulders watching big black and yellow garden spiders weaving their webs. I never see them anymore either.
A few years ago I found a small colony of long leaf speedwell (Veronica longifolia) and each year there have been more flower spikes until this year, I had trouble isolating one for a photo. I’ve never seen it growing in the wild until I found it here. It’s a pretty plant that is native to Europe and China and grows on steppes, grassy mountain slopes, meadows at forest edges and birch forests. Here in the U.S. it is commonly found in gardens but it has obviously escaped. It certainly doesn’t seem to be aggressive or invasive. I love its showy blue flower spikes.
Each tiny long leaf speedwell blossom is purple–blue or occasionally white, about a quarter inch across and 4 lobed with quite a long tube. Each has 2 stamens and a single pistil. Another very similar plant is Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) but culver’s root doesn’t grow naturally in New Hampshire.
Blue vervain (Verbena hastata) is also called swamp vervain because it likes water, and I find it either in wet meadows or along river and pond banks. It is also called simpler’s joy after the herb gatherers of the middle ages. They were called simplers because they gathered medicinal or “simple” herbs for mankind’s benefit and since vervain was one of the 9 sacred herbs, finding it brought great joy. It was thought to cure just about any ailment and Roman soldiers carried the dried plants into battle. Since blue is my favorite color finding it always brings me great joy as well.
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
Thanks for coming by.
Posted in Nature, Wildflowers | Tagged Ashuelot River, Blue Vervain, Bull Thistle, Canada Lily, Canon SX40 HS, Chicory Blossom, Creeping Bellflower, Hedge Bindweed, Keene, Lesser Stitchwort, Long Leaf Speedwell, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Pale Spike Lobelia, Pipsissewa, Purple Coneflower, Shinleaf, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Timothy Grass | 17 Comments
This is such a beautiful post, Allan!
It is strange that you don’t see the pure white bindweed any more. We call Calystegia sepium Hedge Bindweed, and my ID guide says that it is usual to find the white form; the pink with 5 white stripes is much less common. We have Large Bindweed (C. silvatica) which is usually white but sometimes has pink stripes on the outside of the trumpet. Sea Bindweed (C. soldanella) is always pink with 5 white stripes and a yellow centre. Field Bindweed is our only convolvulus (Convolvulus arvensis) and that is either white, pink or striped pink and white! I find all three types within walking distance of my house.
I hope you are keeping well, my friend.
Thank you Clare. I never knew there were so many Bindweeds! As far as I know we only have two here, plus morning glory.
So far I’m still fine, and I hope you and the family are the same.
We are fine, thank you Allen.
I’m glad to hear that!
I enjoyed the tour of native plants, Allen! I wonder if bindwed and morning glories are able to hybridize at all? That might explain some of the colors other than the usual white.
Grasses are beautiful in their own right. My county is known as the “Grass Seed Capital of the World”. Large grass seed farms can generate so much pollen at bloom time that it rolls in large clouds across the roads on windy days. I’ve never seen anything like that back east.
Thank you Lavinia. That’s a good question that I can’t answer. I do know that bindweed is in the morning glory family so I would guess that it might be possible.
I’ve had pollen clouds come out of large shrubs when I was trimming them but I doubt they were as big as yours.
Timothy has such amazing colours! Lovely quotation from Luther Burbank too.
Thank you Ben. Many grasses have a lot of purple in them but I’m not sure why. Maybe to attract insects.
Easy on the eye anyway. 🙂
My favourite today is the Timothy grass. Seeing that much colour on a grass is a treat.
Thank you. Only some of them have that color but I’m not sure why. Many were more cream colored or off white.
Pipsissewa. That’s one of those words I love to say, hear, or read. Like Susquehanna, or serendipitous. Words that roll off the tongue and make me smile. Do you have any words like that?I
Did you know that chicory flowers, when placed in a vase of water, will be totally drained of color in just a couple hours? They will be white!
This spring I had an unplanned patch of blue vervain in my garden . 100s and 100s of seedlings! It’s a vigorous self sower! The problem was that they were in my annual bed (the space I set aside for a different annual each year). Moved a bunch into a large pot and sacrificed the rest! I’m curious to see if I get any blooms. To me, gardening is the best adventure ever!
Good post, Allen, with many charming beauties.
Thank you Ginny. I can’t think of any except pipsissewa, unless maybe it’s Mississippi.
I didn’t know that about chicory. It seems odd!
So that’s where all the vervain is! I don’t think I’ve ever seen seedlings of it because it usually grows in tall grass here. I hope you’ll get some flowers!
Gardening is indeed a great adventure. You can learn so much from the plants themselves!
Ah, creeping bellflower … I’ve been trying to remove it from my mother’s flowerbeds for more than 25 years. What a mistake it was adding that little beauty!
I know what you mean Lee. I spent many many hours trying to rid gardens of it with little luck. Even digging it out isn’t enough.
I loved those pictures of the Canada lilies, such a beautiful shape and colour.
Thank you Susan, I agree. I wish they’d bloom longer.