Mississippi wildflowers

Home again from our trip through Mississippi, visiting with family and friends there. We make this trip at this time every year and it is always a pleasure to see these folks again.

One of the pleasures of driving through the countryside in north Mississippi at this time of year is that so many of the roadside wildflowers are at their peak.

This meadow is typical - native grasses interspersed with Queen Anne's lace, coreopsis, tickseed, and black-eyed Susans.

Queen Anne's lace is the dominant wildflower in the mix at this time. The smaller white flowers you see in the background here are one of the fleabanes.

Here's a close-up of the fleabane - pretty and dainty little flowers.

Stands of black-eyed Susan are common.

Uncommon but always striking is the native butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa. It likes the soil in this part of the world and grows readily here, but you never see large stands of it as you do of other wildflowers. It's always just one or two or three plants standing out as bright accents among the other wildflowers and grasses. Driving along, one sees these accents every mile or so. Their gaudy color makes them hard to miss.

Not actually a wildflower but a plant that you see everywhere in the wild here is the old tawny day lily. It escaped captivity many, many years ago and has made itself quite at home in Nature.

And, of course, there is that ubiquitous wildflower, the dandelion, growing here in a cemetery.

The countryside there was especially beautiful this year. They have had plenty of rain this spring and Nature has responded with a burst of blooms. I couldn't help but notice that vegetable gardens, too, looked especially healthy and productive. Mississippi plants have had a good year so far and it was a pleasure to view them.

Wordless (Wildflower) Wesdnesday: Wildflowers of Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge

(Visit Gail at Clay and Limestone for more wildflower goodness this Wednesday.)

Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast by Carol Gracie: A review

This could easily serve as a coffee table book with its more than 500 wonderful close-up photographs of beautiful spring wildflowers, but it is much more than that. It provides an in-depth look at the spring-blooming wildflowers of the Northeast, from old favorites to lesser-known species, with essays that include the life histories, lore, and cultural uses of many of the species. 

The author talks about the philosophy behind the naming of wildflowers and the reasons that the taxonomy of the plants often changes over time. She also discusses the pollination of flowers and the dispersal of seeds, as well as some of the enemies of the plants such as herbivores, plant pathogens, and insect pests.

Some of the more interesting parts of the book, for me, were those that deal with the uses of the plants by Native Americans and with related species from other parts of the world. I'm always fascinated to see that very similar species of plants (and animals, for that matter) with like characteristics that solve problems in like ways evolve in similar environments around the planet.

Many of these plants, of course, have medicinal uses that were very important in the past and, in some cases, are still used in homeopathic practices. Author Carol Gracie gives space to discussing those uses and also references to wildflowers in art, literature, and history. There is quite simply a wealth of information here; everything you ever wanted to know about wildflowers but maybe didn't know how or who to ask.

The organization of the material of the book is to divide the subject flowers into families so that we see, for example, the members of the orchid family, or the barberry family, or the violet family, etc., shown together where they can be easily compared. Moreover, Gracie writes in a very accessible, easy-to-read style that makes her book useful for all levels of readers, even those, like myself, who consider themselves pretty ignorant on the subject. This is a book that deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone who wants to know more about these wonderful plants.

(A free copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher for the purpose of this review.)

Pretty little wildflowers

A small 8' x 4' raised bed in my veggie garden is designated as my wildflower bed. The seeds to start the bed came from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and so I think of it as my Lady Bird bed.

The first flowers to bloom in the bed each spring are the bluebonnets, which I've shown you before, but hard on the heels of the bluebonnets come several other less well-known wildflowers, some of them not always easy to identify.

This week, this pretty little thing has been capturing my attention. I had no idea what it was and, even after checking through my field guides, I wasn't able to find anything that looked exactly like it. Finally, in my Wildflowers of Texas guide, I found something called 'Blue Gilia' (Gilia rigidula) which looked like my flower in form and in the leaves, but the color was different.

I went online looking for other pictures of gilias and the closest thing I could find to my plant was something called 'Bird's-eye Gilia.' However, that plant is a native of California and I couldn't understand why it would be in a packet of Texas wildflower seed. There may be another native Texan that looks similar but I haven't found it yet. The one thing that I am pretty sure of is that it is a gilia, which is a member of the Phlox Family  (Polemoniaceae). According to the information in the guide book, these plants bloom sporadically from March to October, so I look forward to seeing its lovely face throughout the season.

This is another wildflower that is presently in bloom in the bed and I've been even less successful in identifying it. Do you recognize it? Whatever its name, it is another pretty little wildflower that is brightening up my garden and my outlook these days.

Wordless Wednesday: Wildflowers by the sea

Silent Sunday: Wildflowers of Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge

Silent Sunday: Wildflowers and wild grasses by the sea