Even though I am a day late for Wildflower Wednesday, I wanted to show off my native columbine, Aquilegia canadensis. I bought this last spring from Polly French in Shelburne Falls. She has been propagating wildflowers for many years to fund her conservation efforts, but this year she realized it was time to put the propagation beds to bed. Because of her there are many, mostly spring blooming native plants in gardens throughout our hill towns. I had…
I remember chicory as a common flower of vacant lots and streetside hellstrips of my urban childhood. It seems odd to me that I see it so rarely now that I live in the country where my town has lots of dirt roads, and where even the paved roads are edged by sandy soil and woodlands or fields. I've always loved the blue flowers of chicory, and I did know that the roots were sometimes dried and ground and…
Right now the roadsides in our area are blooming with the late purple aster, Aster patens. I think I have identified this aster properly, although as you can see the color of the blossoms is NOT deep blue violet. The crooked stem aster, Aster prenanthoides, has the more accurate 'pale violet' flowers, but not the crooked stem or teeth on the leaves. Can anyone give me a better ID? Thank you Gail at Clay and Limestone for hosting…
This blog is named for the common weed, dandelion or Taraxacum officinale. In the spring my lawn is covered with dandelions. I have learned not to use the lawn clippings from that season as mulch because I put dandelions in my perennial beds. Sometimes I don't even put those clippings with lots of dandelions gone to see in the compost. I am not sure my compost pile gets hot enough to kill those seeds. Now my lawn is…