Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Friday, September 19, 2008
This 'n' That, Mostly Wildflowers
This started out to be a belated Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post for Tangled Branches South, but really there are only 2 cultivated plants newly blooming since last month's GBBD. I just don't have many perennials planted here yet and the annuals are looking tired. So the two newly blooming plants are a pale pale yellow Chrysanthemum and a purple Aster. I don't know the names of either one. And I had forgotten all about the Aster - the rabbits ate it down to nothing and I never even noticed that it had resprouted until I saw it blooming this morning.
The wildflowers make up for the lack of cultivated flowers. The meadow is gold and white and blue now with Goldenrod (Solidago spp.), Asters (Symphyotrichum spp. if you insist), Blue Mist Flower (Eupatorium coelestinum, now renamed to something I've forgotten), and Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica).
There's an interesting plant blooming in the woods now. I feel fairly sure that it's Aureolaria flava or Smooth Yellow False Foxglove, but ID is somewhat difficult owing to the fact that it's lost all its lower leaves. See the thin stems with yellow blobs at the end? That's it.
The flowers are quite pretty, but they don't last long and also the deer nibble on them.
There are several Aureolaria species in Virginia, but apparently all have some type of relationship with oak trees. All the online references I find call it parasitism, but this is a plant with green leaves so I'm perplexed by that. It is growing under some tall oak trees.
Something else that's been nibbled on is this mushroom.
I'd love to know whether this is edible, but my mushroom identification skills are nonexistant so I won't be trying it unless some expert shows up here, eats it while I watch, and stops by the next day in good health.
We haven't tried any of the homemade Inner Beauty sauce on mushrooms, but we've had it on pork chops and chicken wings. I wrote up my lab notes for Batch One over on my food blog. I didn't use any of these 'Yatsufusa' peppers in the sauce, but they probably would be a nice addition. This the prettiest pepper plant in the garden today.
Labels: in bloom, mushrooms, peppers, wildflowers
5 Comments:
Thanks for the great pics. I wish I could grow peppers like that!
Marc: And I wish I could grow orchids! I bought a Phalaenopsis last year in the dead of winter, but I haven't tried to make it happy over the summer so don't know if it will bloom again this year. There are a couple of wild orchids in the woods here, but the cranefly orchid flower stem was chewed off by some critter and the suspected lady's slipper didn't bloom.
Love the astery wildflowers! The peppers are indeed gorgeous! How's the garden purge coming along? I will be over here in a month asking for support because I feel I must make a similar decision!
Gail
Finally I know what that blue flower is that spread over from my neighbor's garden: blue mist. I really like it a lot, because it spreads so quickly and fills in my huge holes:)
Gail: The asters just started looking good this week. Now they're fluffy white clouds; a week earlier they were tiny white stars.
Once I decided to downsize the northern garden, it was surprisingly easy to do the actual digging. A garden-downsizing support group would be a nice thing ;-)
Bek: I admire blue mist flower for growing and blooming in one of my more difficult areas of the garden. Even there, it spread rapidly. Initially, I planned to move some of the ones I planted in the northern garden to the southern garden, but then I found it was already there as a wildflower.
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