Oh, what a week we have had!! Busy. .BUSY!!
But. .
We did carve out a little time to
STOP. .
and smell the roses!
We have been enjoying our weekly cruise through the pasture to check things out.
Last weekend Grant, Devin, Cami and I packed on the four wheeler and took another wildflower tour!
Mostly the photos are for my own record to take note of what really blooms here!!
After my last post on wildflowers. .
my Kansas garden blogger friend, Gaia, shared with me the best website!!
It seemed to be a little more helpful to me than the book I have been using. The flowers have multiple photos from different angles and seem to better show off the details. Additionally, one can search for them by name, by color, and by bloom time. It was just what I needed to ID some of blooms I had found!
I didn't even know that this type of flower came in white!! I ordered a purple one last spring from HCG that is blooming this year. .This flower found in my pasture is a White Prairie Clover.
I never was able to catch these blooms with nice flowers. .I think them to be Slender Greenthread, based on a photo that I found with dried up heads like these! There seemed to be a lot of them around!
This Palm leaf scurfpea was fascinating to me. .it has a great big bushy type foliage with tiny little two-toned purple flowers! Very dainty.
Grant and Devin both took their cameras along too. .nothing like trying to get fair-quality photos at the last minute. .but that's how we have seemed to roll this year!!
I thought these plants were really pretty. Woolly verbena or hoary vervain. I had the hardest time trying to ID this one, because it was found under different names in the sources that I used! Woolly verbena is very drought-resistant, with roots that can descend to 12 feet. Now THAT is a root system!!
The milkweed is blooming too. .I think that I may have some of this in my organized garden. .A patient had given me some seed to a common milkweed. The leaf structure is very similar. .but mine hasn't bloomed in the 3 seasons that it has been growing. Maybe soon!!
The Toothed evening primrose is still in bloom. It is very low to the ground. .in fact many of the wildflowers here aren't as tall as the guides say they might be. .I guess a lack of water!
This plant is still blooming. .I saw one a couple weeks ago. .but my driver was getting restless and deaf, and didn't heed my request to stop.
Found another one and I think it is a narrow leaf verbena. The brome grass has matured and is a golden color. Devin has mowed a lot of it down in hopes to get some light and moisture to the grass underlying. We had a little over an inch of rain last week, and cooler temps in the 80's to low 90's. That helps everything so much too!
We have been consumed with 4-H stuff this week and next week will find several of us at camp. .
1 camper. .
1 counselor. .
and 1 camp nurse!!
Jeremy and Grant are at the race track this weekend. .
and the rest of us have some fun things planned here!
Wishing everyone a great weekend!
Psalm 103:15-18
Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows , and we are gone-as though we had never been here. But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. His salvation extends to the children's children of those who are faithful to his covenant, of those who obey his commandments!
Great wildflowers, Melanie!
ReplyDeleteWe were WAY up in the mountains near Lander, WY yesterday and came across wild Gazanias bloooming their little heads off. And , I laughed, because I thought of High Country gardens---what is it about that company-lol!
Anyways, hope you find many more blooms. I was sure wishing I had had a bucket and shovel along to "borrow" a few blooms.
So much fun to see the wildflowers you have blooming! I'd love to get some seeds from some of them, if you ever get both the chance to collect some and enough to share.
ReplyDeleteI think your milkweed may be showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa. For some reason it's not on the Kansas wildflowers website, but this is a link to it on the USDA site and there are many more images if you google it: http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=assp
The white flower at the end looks superficially like a gaura to me, because of the stamens sticking out of the blooms, but the only one on the Kansas wildflowers site that it resembles - maybe - is the velvety gaura, Gaura mollis. When I looked on the USDA plant profile website, there is a gaura known as woolly beeblossom (Gaura villosa) that is in your area and might fit.
It looks like you've got some great wildflowers!
I am learning so much from you and Gaia Gardener. I have some roadside milkweed plants to share soon.
ReplyDeleteThe roots on some of those plants is amazing. No wonder they don't transplant well. Gotta do the seed thing I guess. You are going to have such a good record of the flower this year.
I just posted a photo of our wooly verbena on our garden blog. We had tons of it a couple years ago, and hardly any last year, but it's back and increasing. We love it!
ReplyDeleteLoved seeing the wildflower photos!