Comments on: Wildflowers in the Garden

By: kerri

kerri — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:47:25 +0000

I think Poke Cherry is also called Pokeweed here. I had trouble identifying the various berries. Do you know a good source for that? I think we also have choke cherry. It’s been a while since I did that research.
So you’re saying my ‘meadowsweet’ is misnamed? I do appreciate corrections because I’m just relying on pics I find on wildflower websites, and sometimes they’re not the best. I have a few wildflower ID books, but still don’t always get the names right.
My e-mail is embedded in my name in the comment so you can reply that way if you like. It’s hard to put all the questions I sometimes have in a comment!
We had glorious sunshine and 50 something temps today. A small taste of spring!

kerri,
I sent you an E-mail. Choke Cherries and Berries are both small shrub like trees and common names get easily mixed up. Meadowsweet is a small shrub – looks like your photo was a vine (wild cucumber)

By: kerri

kerri — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:14:03 +0000

Wildflower hunting is a passion of mine too. Did you notice those harebells with the yellow lilies in my spring garden pic? Yep, there’s a huge bank of them not far from here and I ‘rescued’ a few of them. They seem to like it here. Aren’t those Marsh Marigolds gorgeous? We have a wonderful expanse of them on the edge of our woods. I’m doing a series of wildflower posts, but it’s slow going. I found some other beauties in those same woods last spring. One of the best things though was hearing the woodpeckers in the trees.

kerri,
We’re lucky – we can walk out the backdoor to go hunting. I curse the Basswood trees here since thet are so messy but the woodpeckers love them. We have all kinds of tap tap tapping going on all summer. Plants in the shade garden look lijke they just came out of a woodshop – covered in sawdust.

By: Annie in Austin

Annie in Austin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:18:47 +0000

Hi Wiseacre, I arrived here via your comment at Kerri’s geography post.
It looks like the tractor path construction was beneficial to your garden, at least! I knew Bloodroot, Jewel Weed and goldenrod from Illinois but the Grass of Parnassas is a new one to me, too.

One of my Illinois gardens had a generations-old bottle dump in one corner and each winter’s freeze and thaw cycles brought a harvest of glass to the surface, Although the ground doesn’t freeze in Austin, alternating flood and drought cycles sometimes bring rocks to the surface.

Your wife may not like it, but your lawn would be approved by the garden writer Allen Lacy!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

Annie,
You didn’t hear the worst. I nearly force fed my daughter’s boyfriend “weed and feed’ when he treated the lawn with it one spring. It really wrecked havoc on the wildflowers. Then “mr. Helper” went and used Round-Up on a bed of Red Poppys thinking they were weeds. I was always afraid to leave home when he was around.