orange velvety goodness, miterwort seeds, and stealth hostas

New today: the first of the day lilies next to the house.

Oh my heavens. I think I need to cool off.
OK, I lied, that wasn’t a crocus the other day. It was – I believe – a stealth hosta (Hosta sneakiensis). Let’s compare and contrast, shall we?

CROCUS - rounded petals - curvy fluted stamens - no leaves to speak of	STEALTH HOSTA
	- pointy petals - straight anthers (flat yellow things on top of the stamens) - this flower is nestled in a rosette of basal leaves.

The crocus picture is from months ago. The stealth hosta is from three days ago.

Today, our little mystery friend is already shriveled up. And here we enter the land of WTF?!? which enabled me to ID this as a hosta, because…


…it has a companion stalk that I swear is the same plant (I rustled around in there to check) – with a whole set of buds about to open up. You can just make out the shriveled petals with the dangly stamens, nestled in the bed of leaves, in the background, to the right of the unopened buds. You can also see that this plant has had a run-in with the lawnmower in the past, as some of its leaves have been chopped off. I used my logic tools and powers of deduction, and concluded: It’s a stealth hosta, intent on taking over a nice patch of hosta-free lawn. See, not far away, the no-doubt-about-it hostas are flowering.

…and they’ve been known to send little volunteers off into the lawn, which first appear as solitary leaves. Our crocus wannabe flower is probably a hosta volunteer that’s two steps ahead of those solitary leaves. Although the stamens don’t look right (compared to The Google), hosta flowers are six pointy-petaled bells, not unlike our mystery…Hm…I’ll have to wait til all the various flowers – both of the mystery stalk, and the regular hosta, are open, and then compare.
You’ll wait with bated breath, right? I knew you would.
In other news, not all cinquefoil leaves look like well, what I already said they look like.

Here’s another kind, whiling away a summer’s day out by the pole barn. This is rough cinquefoil (Potentilla norvegica). There comes a time when you heave a great sigh and say “lo and behold, could it be? Another five-petaled yellow flower?”
Sometimes I get lucky, and I find a four-petaled yellow flower instead. O Happy Day! To wit: yesterday I claimed I saw some sundrops but I wasn’t sure – today I checked it out some more and instead have concluded it was really evening primrose. They show up on the same page in the flower guide, so it shouldn’t be offended by my mistake.

This is a plant that at eye-height, isn’t done growing up.

The flowers are modest by day, and open up at twilight. I’d go out and prove it to you, but a) it’s raining and b) I’m lazy. Actually, I had an amusing moment today. Check out a picture of one of these specimens, that I took yesterday:

Yeah it’s overexposed and blurry, but it was intended to help me key it out. This plant appears less than a foot tall, right? That’s what I  thought. Guess again.

Here we are today....

It’s easily three or three and a half feet long. It’s just fallen over, but the tip where the flowers are (over on the left) has gamely righted itself. Yes, Your Observant Amateur Naturalist failed to notice this yesterday. DUH.
To assuage my guilt pangs, Mother Nature threw a different four-petaled yellow flower at me today:

Common St. Johnswort. Boatloads of stamens, and little dots at the edges of the petals.
Moving on.

The tall anemone, aka thimbleweed, flowers have abandoned all pretense of having had petals, and now they just look like buzz-cut pineapples on sticks.

Remember agrimony? Brand new to me as of the other day? Check out its seeds.

These might be the things Charlie comes in to the house coated in. I’m not sure.
But speaking of seeds. BOY DO I HAVE A COOL THING TO SHOW YOU. We need to go back in the time travel machine to the beginning of May. Remember miterwort?

One of the earliest spring flowers around here.	It has these incredibly tiny, snowflake-shaped flowers.

Well, I decided to visit the woodland mystery today, and whaddaya know, miterwort is still going strong, and is ready with its seeds.
Are you not in love? I am.
Speaking of love…

Here we have a bumblebee locked in a passionate embrace with a purple-flowered raspberry flower. For which I am grateful, as the result…

… is pretty tasty.
And last, but not least, I missed the flowering of this, but I’m pretty sure this is fairy bells (Disporum laguninosum)

Sweet, eh? Should generate a red berry. Stay tuned.

just another day in paradise

On the cool-down from this morning’s run (4.5 miles at a nice clip) I noticed several flowers I hadn’t seen before, along the side of the road. Without further ado:

This is spotted St. Johnswort. I goofed yesterday – yesterday’s was common St. Johnswort.
Do those dots look familiar? They remind me of bittersweet nightshade:

Next up, we’ve got…

Moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia). This one’s easy to miss, as it’s low to the ground – unlike this next one, which ranged from a foot to five feet tall:

Some close-ups:
This is tall meadow rue (Thalictrum polygamum). I only keyed it out by chance, because I didn’t know how many petals it has – those are all stamens. The petals have fallen off.
Other tall things! Cattails! If you’re like me, when you think of cattails, you think of brown, or possibly fluffy post-explosion. Did you ever notice them when they were still green?

Starting at the base of the … flowerstalk? and traveling up to the tip, we have…

…all green…

…here’s the transition zone…


…and then the top.

It’s times like these when I thank my lucky stars that I don’t have allergies. I mean, this thing is one enormous pollen factory.
I finally figured out this new anemone-like flower that’s blooming several weeks later than the regular anemone. It is, in fact, also an anemone – “tall anemone”, aka thimbleweed. Unlike the regular kind, which has showy white petals, thimbleweed doesn’t seem to have petals at all. The tepals – no, that’s not a typo – which enclose the whole kit and caboodle – open up and boom, we’re at naughty flower bits right away.
To wit:

A. canadensis – Canada anemone	A. virginiana – tall anemone or thimbleweed. You can see it’s still opening up.

Get your thimble on.
But the regular anemone are doing some pretty fabulous things – welcome to the Battle of the Bulge:
Are you still with me? Because it was a big day, and we’re not done yet.
The Timothy grass is suddenly blooming. Not all of it, but certainly this one:

Don’t remember what this used to look like? Go here for the few-feet-away look, or here for a close-up from just a few days ago.
In absolutely wonderful news, I found a jack-in-the-pulpit that had been buried under raspberry, ferns, irises, and god knows what else, and guess what? It got fertilized!

Are you still here? Good for you! Here’s your reward:

Orange hawkweed, as usual. (Hieracium aurantiacum)

baby snapper and a handful of new wildflowers

Why did the baby snapping turtle cross the road? Apparently not to get to the other side, because he kept changing his mind. Last I saw him, he was resolutely headed toward the big bay doors – closed – of the fire substation at the entrance to our private drive. What is it with turtles and garage doors? You can see how tiny he (she?) is, as those are half-inch long spruce needles on its back.
I ventured slightly farther afield today, in search of new species. Oh yeah, baby, lots of new stuff to show you. First up: I’ve been tracking a plant along the shared driveway that I thought might be red baneberry. I also thought at one point it might be ginseng, but to hedge my bets, I’ve tagged it in my files with a question mark. Well, today I am happy to report it is NOT red baneberry.
This is red baneberry:

Not all of them are ripe.

I found what looked like a dogbane – opposite leaves, flowers at the ends in a loose cluster – but I haven’t been able to identify it in Newcomb’s. Anyone out there have an idea of what this might be?

five petals, in a tube. sorry for blurriness. Flowers seem to be stalked.

There was so much false solomon’s seal, it made me contemplate weeping.


One lone brown-eyed susan. I know, I know, it’s black-eyed susan; I just like brown-eyed better. Reminds me of the Van Morrison song.
New Species!!
Probably Bird's Foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) [edited later after perusing another blog and rechecking my guide...]
Yellow false indigo (Baptisia tinctoria)


This stuff is growing wild all over the place at our county dump, for what it’s worth. But I didn’t get a chance to photograph it til today, just around the corner from here.

A cinquefoil (Potentilla recta). It has these awesome pot leaves.

See?
Another indigo – this time, white false indigo (Baptisia leucantha). This stuff is on stalks taller than I am, which isn’t saying much, but still. That’s tall, for a flower, innit?

But wait! There’s more! You also get the slicer dicer attachment at no extra charge!

Or, in this case, hop clover (Trifolium agrarium).
Next up, how’s about some Spotted Common St. Johnswort (Hypericum punctatum perforatum)? [Her Royal Highness the editor (me) realized the next day I was wrong.]


AND, last but not least, Herb Robert.

Really, that’s its name. Geranium robertianum