Monday, August 21, 2023

Super Fantastic Wildflowers



NOTE:  These pix are going to look a little glum because it was an overcast day when I took them, and so the colors are not as saturated as I'd like.  And what I like is the standard of all things, like Vitruvian Man, only not naked and not Italian.

This pan of kidneys thanks you.  

__________________________________________________________________________________




It doesn't get much more wild and weedy than Dandelions, and this is as fine a stand of dandelions as you'll find. In the rear, blurry, is a stalk of alumroot in bloom.



Now the name of this is debatable.  Some call it Tansy, and some call it Tall Comfrey.  Me, I'm too lazy to look it up.  All I know is that it smells weirdly like the inside of an unused purse. In the right place this comes up six feet tall, and as long as it isn't on my property, it looks pretty and ferny, I think.




Wild Hardneck Garlic against a moody sky. These are its setts, and they're ready to shatter and 
-yes yes fine that's the old Rancho in the background, but this is Garlic Gone Wild. It is FERAL GARLIC. Nobody can tame it. 
Not even with a whip and a chair. 

     


The gloriously abundant Wild Blackberry, with fruit and the palest of pink blossoms. This stand was about ten feet high.   Apparently we have Luther Burbank to thank for introducing the Himalayan Blackberry strain to the U.S.  After battling these things all my life, I say Go Get Stuffed, Burbank.




You know what is amazing is the sheer health of this plant.  Not a blemish, not a chewed leaf, nothing.  Of course this is why blackberry is taking over.  It'll get you before you get it.


This plant has hybridized with the native strain, Rubus Ursinis, which has a fruit that is tiny and ovate. Thus, you get a berry that is wider than is long on the 'Himalaya' form, writ large.  Here's the native strain:


Note the shape of the ripe fruit! 
This is a tiny, tiny little plant that you find winding across the forest floor, with roots that go down to China.  The vines are silver-white and act as a tripwire, scouring the ankles with hundreds of tiny, brittle needles tipped with fomic acid.  The berries are the size of a button, but they taste like concentrated honey and blackberry jam, and so you risk your ankles to get them because they are that delicious.

Enough of that.





  What is beautiful that you didn't think was beautiful?
CORN.    



   
More corn, with some wild amaranth-type stuff around the bottom there.



OK fine here. Have some conventionally pretty flowers.

Beautiful fireweed, mixed with wild grasses in plume. (Also blackberry, alders, cottonwood and Elder.)


A fog of fireweed!  The same thing as willow herb, or at least in the same family of plants.  The grey slugs have gotten that sprig down bottom left there.





Very difficult to see, but you'll seldom see rarer - the little yellow blossoms here are known as Jewelweed, or Noli Mi Tangere. 

 Noli is extremely rare to find here, particularly at sea level, as Noli prefers cold gravel bars in and along high elevation rivers and streams.   I gasped when I found this stand growing in a crook of the Sumas River.  Hanging ass-up over a bridge guardrail was as close as I could get, or else risk sinking into the mud, never to be found again.  Upper right you can see a couple of jutting pale pink blossoms of wild buckwheat, or Bistort, and along the bottom the leaves of morning glory run out into the water. The silk-fine water grasses are just exquisite.


This is a much better picture of the PNW strain that I stole off the Web. You can just make out these orange highlights on the blossoms in my picture.  It's a big, fleshy blossom, very like a Scotch Broom or a snapdragon when seen head-on. Bumble bees lose their little minds over this stuff! 


 




A lovely clump of Morning Glory not afraid of the day, growing though salt pine, a young maple, wild currant and an old apple tree. As long as it's not growing in my yard, it's pretty. 
___________________________________________________________________________________



SUPER SECRET SPECIAL CONTENT!!!!


Now in my last 'out and about' post, I talked about wooden sidewalks.  Here's an intact set.




This is what a lot of the little townships out here look like still... false-fronted buildings, and particularly the wooden sidewalks.  This place still had hitching rails, that were used! back when I first moved here and all these little bends in the road were isolated.  Nowadays, thanks to sprawl, you really have to hunt to find this kind of Wild West stuff. 

Of course there's a taco wagon.  There' always a taco wagon.
________________________________________



Now you are edified. Go forth and spread your knowledge throughout the land.

11 comments:

  1. Well, that was a lovely wander through your corner of country.Wild West, indeed! (I'm of the same opinion of Morning Glory)
    I hope you've remembered to send some pics over to our Trekky chum?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will, but it's hard to decide which ones. And I'm still taking it in the shorts for 'deluging' him the last time I entered! Hmph. I think I'll enter the dandelions as my rebuttal statement. One can NEVER have too many garden pictures!!

      Delete
    2. Well, I am now. I might not have been then. But maybe I was?!

      Delete
  2. Well...it's good to know that should I ever visit, there will be a place to tie up horse and the buggy.

    Beautiful wildflowers...you've made my night sweet cheeks. I have already clipped vases of pretty weeds for outdoor vases and they looks just as prudy as real flowers you ask me. The blackberry brought up some good memories of my grandmother with us neighborhood kids out behind her house picking and eating them right from the bush or tree as it were.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was the lilac bandit this last spring - they grow wild around here and they're the old fashioned type that smell so gorgeous. Hard to leave some for the bees!

      Delete
  3. I love fireweed, it's so pretty and promiscuous. And I DESPISE Himalayan blackberries, I fought them from the day we bought our house until I sold it 22 years later; I still have the scars to prove it. It hasn't crossed with anything here and so the berries are full of seeds and almost no flavor. What could that old fruit Burbank have been thinking?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just another late Victorian profiteer trying to make a buck waaay before anyone thought of environmental impact, le sigh.

      Delete
  4. I seem to be more familiar we invasive plants than I am with desired plants - which may hint at what my garden is like!
    Those wooden sidewalks are wonderful - but, I agree with Maddie, they need some horses!
    Sx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. people still tie up their horses around the front - but I couldn't find parking on that side of the building!

      Delete
  5. Horrid kidneys, but Super Fantastic Wildflowers, indeed! The fireweed looks almost exactly like the rosebay willowherb we have here. Do you get elephant hawkmoth caterpillars eating it? I saw one once years and years ago - an enormus thing almost the size of an elephant's trunk! - on some willowherb near here, but despite looking, have not seen another since.

    ReplyDelete