| As from the house your mother sees You playing round the garden trees, So you may see, if you will look Through the windows of this book, Another child, far, far away, And in another garden, play. - Robert Louis Stevenson |
Click on any of the thumbnails to see the full size photo. File sizes for each full size photo are listed at the end of the description or beneath each thumbnail.
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| First come the Dogwood, then a few weeks with just wildflowers here and there, and then, if the weather is just right, the Mountain Laurel will put on a show that can make you forget you ever saw a Dogwood. This year´s display wasn´t as good as some because we haven´t had nearly enough rain, but for over two weeks in June, the last five miles near where I work looked like this. " | ||
 | I kept seeing this tiny, low-growing yellow flower and passing it by thinking that it was just a buttercup that had fallen over (one of the hazards of being blind as a bat). On closer inspection (read: getting down on my hands and knees and putting on my glasses with the coke bottle lenses) I could tell that it wasn´t a buttercup. Once I took a picture and could see it larger than life on my monitor, I found that it´s a Cinquefoil, most likely Canadian Dwarf Cinquefoil (Potentilla canadensis) but it could also be Common Cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex). I really must start paying more attention to the leaves and the way plants grow so I can do a better job of identifying them. (49 K) | |
 | Hawkweeds are European transplants. The Hawkweed name comes from a folk belief that Hawks ate the flowers to see better. New England farmers considered them pests and nicknamed the Orange Hawkweed Devil´s Paintbrush. The Yellow Hawkweed is also called King Devil. Nuisance status aside, I still think they´re pretty. Of course, they aren´t ruining my crops so I can afford to have a more generous attitude. |  |
| Yellow Hawkweed (24 K) Heiracium pratense "King Devil" | Orange Hawkweed (55 K) Heiracium aurantiacum "Devil´s Paintbrush" |
 | They might not be much from a distance, but Elderberry blossoms are just plain beautiful up close! I was having a terrible time taking pictures of white flowers, but the secret seems to be to shoot them from an angle, out of full sun, with the flash turned off. One sliver of late afternoon sunlight was just enough to give a bit of brilliance without causing a total washout. |  |
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| These next few wildflowers were all growing in one little corner of a park-and-ride area near a stop sign about ten miles from where I work. Since I got this digital camera, I never go anywhere without it and I´m always on the lookout for any bit of color and this little spot had several. Needless to say, I was late for work this day.
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| I don´t know why I thought this wild climbing rose was some sort of berry bramble all these years. It´s even more common on roadsides and in farm fields than the Daisy, but after numerous childhood run-ins with briar patches, I tend to avoid such plants. Still, the flowers were awfully pretty so I took their picture anyway. If it wasn´t for my Field Guide, I would never have known that it was actually a fragrant wild rose called Multiflora (Rosa multiflora)
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 | In just three weeks, the Birdsfoot Treefoil have gone from an occasional bloom here and there to an entire hoard of their smiley little blossoms. Now I see them everywhere, but this is still one of the biggest patches of them that I´ve found. |  |
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 | These Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron annuus) aren´t quite as pretty as their much larger cousins, the Oxeye Daisy, unless you look at them up close like this. Then they have every bit as much charm. But they still won´t rid your home of fleas as was originally thought. (38 K)
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| 69 K | 30 K | 50 K |
| This has got to be one of the oddest looking plants that I´ve ever seen. Even after reading the description in the field guide, I´m still not sure which part is the flower. I do know that it´s not one that grew near my childhood haunts. I´m sure I would have remembered this one. Yet, I found it a mere ten miles from where I grew up. It´s common name is Cypress Spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias) and it´s a relative of the Christmas Poinsettia. Fortunately for me, I´ve mostly been content to just take pictures of my finds, as this is another poisonous one and its milky sap can cause dermatitis.
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 | These tiny little tubular flowers are a member of the Pea Family. Their Latin name is Vicia cracca but their common name is Cow Vetch or Blue Vetch. They were awfully hard to get good pictures of because they had their little tendrils wrapped around everything in sight. |  |
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| 62 K | 59 K | 45 K |
| I had filled the DC120´s memory and was saving my 2 MB Picture Card for the ride home at the end of the day, but I took one last look around before returning to my car to continue the ride to work. That´s when I caught a flash of pink near the trees at the back of the parking area. I really didn´t have enough time left to do more exploring, but as I moved a bit closer, I could see there was quite a bit of pink and I just couldn´t resist. Watching carefully for poison ivy and snakes, I pushed aside waist-high weeds and a bit of that thorny Multiflora Rose to get to this wonderful find. Its name is Virginia Rose (Rosa virginiana) and I had stumbled across it when its blossoms were at their prime. I´m going to order some of that t-shirt transfer paper and print this one to wear proudly. | ||
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| The Oxeye Daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum) that grows with such abandon on every roadside shoulder and highway median from early June right through August isn´t an American plant - it´s a European transplant - and I can easily see why the settlers would have brought them with them. Whether it´s a mass of them on the shoulder of the road or a few of them glowing in the late afternoon sun, they always make me wish for the painting skill of Monet or Van Gogh. And how would a young girl ever know if her true love truly loved her without the omnicient Daisy to tell her if "He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me!" | ||
 | Buttercups (Rannunculus bulbosus) are such cute little things. I loved them when I was a kid and I still do, even if they are somewhat poisonous as it says in the field guide. I wonder what they mean by somewhat poisonous - if you eat them, you´ll be somewhat dead. (39 K) | |
 | My Field Guide to Wildflowers calls this Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) but I think it´s anything but common! That cluster of flowers is only about three inches across and each little florette looks like an exquisite miniature orchid. (42 K) | |
 | I guess because the Yarrow that I grow in my flower garden is yellow, I just assumed the wild variety was yellow as well, but it´s obviously not. I not only discovered that this pretty white flower is Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) but I also learned that it´s a member of the Sunflower Family. (57 K) | |
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| I´m discovering that grasses are really incredibly interesting plants. I have no idea what this one is really called, but those that were growing a bit apart from the main masses of them on the shoulder of the road looked like adorable little Christmas trees. | ||
 | I wonder who names these plants. Why do you suppose they would name anything this pretty Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum)? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it´s poisonous. Even so, those pretty little bells, each about one-third of an inch across, were awfully cute. (35 K) | |
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When you grew up as the oldest of (eventually) six children and you lived in a very small three bedroom house in the country where your nearest neighbor with children your own age was nearly half a mile away, you learned to keep yourself amused. When the weather was nice, you got sent outside to play, and since there was little else to do, you went exploring in the woods near home.
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| Perhaps, since I was never permitted to pick my mother´s flowers, I went in search of my own. There were certainly enough of them to find and I tried to learn their names from any who could tell me. Some I still remember, and some, like this one, had me searching through all my gardening books. I´ve pretty much decided it´s a wild variety of Flax (Linum, the plant that linen is made from) but I´m not positive, so feel free to correct me if I´m wrong. (28 K)
Well, I was close. It´s actually very similar to Flax in appearance, but Wild Flax has a yellow center and a very different bud shape. It took buying a copy of National Audobon Society Field Guild to North American Wildflowers. Eastern Edition to find out that this is actually Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum). | ||
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| Since I didn´t know what this flower was, I brought one little sprig of it home with me. It was so neat to watch the little flowers (they´re only about an inch across when fully open) spiral closed each night. Each bloom seemed to last only a day or two, but it took nearly a week before all of the blossoms on just that one stem had opened.
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 | These Dogwood blossoms were actually why I stopped my car on the way home from work that day. They really are so pretty that I had to have a close-up of them. I don´t suppose they qualify as "wildflowers", but they help tell the story so here they are. |  |
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| Anyway, as I looked around cautiously for snakes before crossing to the edge of the woods, I noticed that the shoulder of the road was covered with those little lavender-blue flowers and dozens of these wild strawberry plants. It was a real challenge to get to the Dogwood without stepping on something pretty. | ||
 | As I approached this spot on the shoulder of the road, I thought these little yellow flowers were Yarrow, but on closer inspection (right) it turned out they were clusters of little daisy-shaped blossoms. Thanks to my Guide to Wildflowers, I now know that these are Yellow Hawkweed (Heiracium pratense). |  | ||
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 | I´m not sure why, but these little blossoms make me think of clown faces. I wanted to paint little smiley faces on them. They´re called Birdsfoot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) and they´re a member of the Pea Family which must be why they looked a bit familiar to me. (34 K) | |||
 | I can still remember my excitement as a very little girl when I first discovered that plain old grass had flowers. They´re such a pretty blue that I remember wishing I could have a lawn full of them. It was so nice to rediscover them and I still wish I could have a lawn full of them. |  | ||
| 71 K | 72 K | |||
| It turns out that these aren´t "grass" after all. They´re a member of the Iris Family and their real name is Pointed Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium augustifolium). That´s an awfully big name for such a little flower. I think I´ll just keep calling them grass flowers. | ||||
 | These reeds were growing at the swampy edge of the road as a lovely backdrop for the grass flowers and those two yellow wildflowers. I´m not sure whether they will eventually have cattails or those tall bushy plumes, but they were beautiful in their own right. (53 K) | |||
 | Here´s another wildflower whose name I don´t know. It was growing like a white cloud all along the shoulder of the road near a freshly tilled farmer´s field. It was much too pretty to pass by without getting a picture of it. I´d sure love to have some of it in my garden. (72 K) | |
 | Well, it´s not a daisy, I´m sure of that, but it certainly is pretty. I found it growing behind the guardrail when I stopped near Heron Pond in one of my daily attempts to catch that bird sleeping. The heron flew off, again, but I was rewarded with this little gem. It´s only about four or five inches tall and absolutely adorable. If anyone knows what it is please let me know. It doesn´t match any of the white flowers in the Field Guide. (58 K) | |
 | We all know what this one is.. the scourge of suburban lawns all across America.. even for a wildflower lover like me. But a dandelion gone to seed is still one of the prettiest marvels of nature. Normally, I wouldn´t be able to resist picking it carefully and making a wish before I took a deep breath and blew all the seeds away, but this one was so perfect that I left it just as you see it here. (24 K) | |
 | I´ve sort of made a deal with Mother Nature. I´ll grow the things I like inside my picket fence and she can grow anything she likes outside the fence. Being the take-charge kinda gal she is, she´s taken over the fence. She also insists on seeding my flower beds with her wild weed seeds, but you have to admit she does have a real way with Virginia Creeper. |  |
| 37 K | 52 K |
 | I´m really starting to wonder what the old girl is up to with this weed. It´s almost comical to look at, in an abstract sort of way, and over the past three years she´s done her best to cover every inch of ground outside the fence with this little oddball. I wonder if its name is as cute as it is. | |
| 33 K | ||
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