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.  

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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. 

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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.

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