Posts Tagged ‘lupins’
abandoned gardens: how they escape
“… some plants will
persist, some will languish
and die, some will escape into forest,
or edges of hayfields,
roads and ditches.”
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Escape artists. How do those plants we see in ditches and fields get there?
Some move by seed. Some by vegetative reproduction (by horizontal roots or by rooting of a part of the plant).
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A good example of ‘escape by seed’ is the lupin. The lupin sets its seed in pods. When they dry, the seeds are launched as projectiles and so can travel quite far in a single generation.
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A good example of ‘escape by vegetative reproduction’ is the orange day-lily. It only rarely sets seed. It moves along ditches or into other locations by rhizomes (horizontal roots).
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” … its names describe
where orange finds a home:
ditch lily, railroad lily
roadside lily, wash-house lily
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outhouse lily.”
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In New Brunswick, you don’t have to drive far to see an orange day-lily or a lupin.
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This work was made possible by a Creations Grant from artsnb!
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All my best.
Staying home,
wearing a mask when I escape.
Jane
lupins lean
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Yesterday our drive in western New Brunswick was dominated by two things: the wind and the roadside wildflowers.
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Buttercups, bunchberry, bluets and lupins fill the ditches with bloom. The lupins (Lupinus sp.) dominate – mostly purple and blue, but occasionally white, pink or even yellow. The wind was blowing so hard, you could use the flower heads and leaves to measure wind direction!
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
nichepoetryandprose 