Posts Tagged ‘wildflowers’
wildflowers in the ditches
The season certainly flies by! This week I am noticing the flowers in the ditches. Daisies, bedstraw, vipers bugloss, sweet clover, yarrow and so on. Today I am curious about a white flower occurring in soft low mounds along the highway. Bladderwort campion or maidenstears.
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Bladderwort campion, Silene vulgaris, is a kind of faerie-tale flower, because of its bladders, small enough to be used by the faerie-folk to transport their drink. The alternate name ‘maidenstears,’ is also fanciful. The flowers are white, sticking above the top of a red-veined bladder. Reminds me of newly-bought vegetables poking above a grocery store paper bag.
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The bladder is made of fused sepals. The flower has five petals, each deeply divided into two lobes. Bladderwort campion is common, found in ditches, meadows and other waste places.
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Scanning the ditches for new plants is a habit I developed in my early days as a botanist. Even now I keep a list, in my head, of the plants I see as we drive along any road. A pleasant pass time for summer!
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All my best,
Jane
roses by the road
A few years ago, we trimmed out the bushes all along our cabin road, to prevent our truck from getting scratched. During the trimming, my husband saved a small prickly rose bush near to the road edge. Each spring we watch for the pale pink of its blooms. Each fall, we count the red rose hips as we drive by. This year, the bush has grown as tall as me! Today, it was covered with pale pink roses and smelled so sweet!
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This is the swamp rose (Rosa palustris), a common wild rose in New Brunswick. You can recognize it by its pale pink flowers, its hooked spines, and its narrow stipules (winged sheaths at the bases of leaf stalks). In fall, it will have small round red rosehips.
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All my best,
Jane
Do you love picking berries, herbs, other plants from the garden? I think you’d like my book of poetry ‘within easy reach’ (Chapel street Editions, 2016). It is illustrated with my drawings and contains notes on various example of the edible ‘wild.’ Order it here.
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where we step
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my brother and I explore
the old home place, overgrown
and unused, the house fallen
into the cellar, a sock
tossed into the dresser drawer
but, barefoot not an option
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even shod, we are careful
of our feet – nails, glass, bricks
from the chimney, unease creeps
beneath the grass – we watch for
the water well, covered but
with rotted boards
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hard not to love where we step –
the mint enfolds our ankles,
rose and rosemary, our minds
chives lace our sneakers, fold
flowers from purple papers
lavender leans on the walls
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silver, graceful and wise,
the sage surveys our ruin,
thyme is bruised,
everywhere we step
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Stay safe.
All my best!
Jane
wild gardens
As I look for ornamental plants that have escaped to other places in the landscape, I often find plants so lovely, it is hard to believe they have not been cultivated at one time.
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One of these is chicory (Cichorium intybus), a lovely blue flower. We found chicory growing on the Dugan Road west of Woodstock.
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Also known as blue sailors and, in French, chicoreé, chicory is a tall plant, seen along roadsides and in other waste places. Sometimes chicory is brought in loads of gravel (used for road maintenance) to locations where it is not usually found.
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Chicory has basal leaves resembling those of the dandelion. When broken, the stem exudes a white milky fluid.
The bright blue flowers of chicory occur along the length of the almost leafless and somewhat zig-zag stem. Each flower is formed of a central involucre of tiny blue flowers and a disc of larger ray flowers. The rays are square-cut and fringed. The flowers follow the sun, closing by noon, or on overcast days.
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At least one gardener I know has successfully transplanted chicory to his garden. I think I will keep a list of garden-worthy wildflowers during my treks this summer and perhaps write a poem to capture my virtual wildflower garden.
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This work was made possible by a Creations Grant from artsnb!
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All my best.
Jane
abandoned gardens: wildflowers take over
Finding abandoned house-sites where the house has been burned, rotted or torn down is not difficult. Sometime bits of the house are still visible. Sometimes the house-site is the only un-mowed part of a hayfield. Sometimes there are shrubs or flowers, remnants of the plants that once grew there.
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After a few years of abandonment, wildflowers and other plants that colonize disturbed or waste areas gradually take over. In our travels we have seen bedstraw (Galium spp.), spreading dogbane (Apocynum andossemifelium) and other invasives.
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On our drive to the area west of Woodstock, we saw lots of rough bedstraw, with its leaves in sixes (Galium asprellum), sprawling over abandoned areas. It forms a tangle across low pastures and ditches. The tangle looks springy and comfortable, the perfect mattress stuffing, but feels rough and sticky when rubbed backwards from stem to flowers, due to the plant’s rasping, hooked prickles.
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On Wednesday, we took a drive to the area north of Stanley to Centreville, a community settled in 1890 and then abandoned. We revisited a property we saw in 2018, to try and identify a plant I had seen there. Spreading dogbane (Apocynum androssemifolium) has taken over the front of the property and is gradually spreading into the field.
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Not a very pretty name for a fragrant, nodding flower, pink and bell-like, with tiny red veins inside each flower.
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Although my project is about garden escapes, I think I need to mention the wild species that move the other way, from wild areas to areas that have been abandoned! It’s all about competition and so often, the wild species, adapted to living in our soils and climate. are the successful ones!
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This work is supported by a Creation Grant from artsnb (the New Brunswick Arts Board)!
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All my best.
Stay safe.
Wash your hands.
Jane
wildflowers – Bladder campion
One of my favorite roadside flowers is the Bladder campion, Silene vulgaris (Moench) Garcke. The flowers are white, with five deeply lobed petals. The flowers protrude from an inflated, papery calyx, greenish, purple-veined and bladder-like. This time of year, the flowers are almost past.
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I love the scientific generic name Silene, derived from the name of a Greek woodland deity. Another common name for Bladder campion is maidenstears.
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The leaves of Bladder campion are edible, used raw in a salad or cooked in a stew.
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
wildflowers – Canada lily
A drive this time of year through Grand Lake Meadows, along the old Trans-Canada Highway, will show you one of our prettiest wild flowers — Lilium canadense L., the Canada lily.
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The flowers are a glimpse of orange in vast fields of greenery. The flowers are down-ward pointing, reminding me of a chandelier of light. They bloom from June through August in the moist wetlands of this part of central New Brunswick.
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As the meadow winds flip the flowers upward, you can catch a glimpse of the dark red anthers and the spotted interior of the petals.
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
review of ‘within easy reach’
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My book of poetry within easy reach (Chapel Street Editions, 2016) has been reviewed by James Deahl (Canadian Stories 20 (116): 66-67, August/September 2017).
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
a touch of Monet
Last week, on a drive to Plaster Rock, we passed a pond along the Saint John River filled with water lilies (Nymphaea sp.).
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Lovely. Calming. And reminiscent, in the way they lay on expanses of open water, of Monet’s water lilies at Giverny.
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When I think of water lilies, I also remember Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Silence – “And the water lilies sighed unto one another….”
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So to add to these greats, I have my own snippet from my poem ‘Bear Creek Meadow by Canoe’ (published in Canadian Stories 14 (82 ), Dec 2011 ):
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dignity quiets our paddles
hushed voices heed
the diminishing echo
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pliant as stems of pickerel weed
we honour the whisper
of wild rice
the edgewise touching
of nymphaea and nuphar
amphibian eyes
in the harbour-notch of lily pads
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we are threaded by dragonflies
drawn by water striders
gathered in a cloak of water shield
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
Wildflowers: Blue-eyed grass
One of my favorite wildflowers in the fields around our cabin is Blue-eyed grass – Sisyrinchium montanum Greene.
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June, 2017
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Blue-eyed grass is not a grass at all, but a member of the iris family. It inhabits moist, open ground, fields and meadows, and blooms in late spring and summer. The plant is low and slender, with a deep blue flower and a bright yellow center, borne at the top of a straight, usually unbranched, stem. The stem is two-edged, flattened on the margins. The flowers are borne in the axil of a sharp, upheld bract called a spathe. In French, the plant is called Bermudienne. Montanum means ‘of the mountains’.
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June, 2017
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Blue-eyed Grass
Sisyrinchium montanum Greene
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I walk in grass
but it isn’t grass-
Sisyrinchium
it winks at me
with azure eyes
and I blink brown at them
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Blue-eyed Grass
stands straight and still
staunch Bermudienne
simple maid
with a watchful eye
and a sword above her head
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June, 2016
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
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