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Saturday, April 23, 2011

I Can't Wait Any Longer!


I've decided to share wildflower pictures from another year. I need the color! (I had to find one of them to use with my newspaper column, and it took me two hours to do that, leaving me little time for other options.) All of these plants like Great Lakes sandy soil, and are usually May bloomers.

First: here are the flowers that go with those leaves from yesterday, the birdsfoot violet, Viola pedata.

birdsfoot violet

Here's another beauty, the purple chokeberry, Aronia prunifolia. Some botanists think it's a hybrid of the red and black chokecherries.

purple chokeberry

Here's the one I needed to find: The hairy puccoon, Lithospermum caroliniense. "Puccoon" is a Powhatan word that indicates the plant was used to make a dye. Supposedly the roots will make a red dye. It's tricky to tell this one from the hoary puccoon, but I've stuck my neck out and IDed it as hairy.

hairy puccoon

Happy Easter! Don't forget to enter the contest and Praise the Lord!



13 comments:

John said...

Happy Easter SharkBytes :-) It only 16°C here this morning but we have a lovely clear blue sky. I'm sure it'll warm up later.

There's not much colour here yet unless you count the dandelions!

Ann said...

Happy Easter to you also.
Love your little splash of color today

jeanlivingsimple said...

The Chokeberry flowers are really pretty. The Hairy Puccoon looks nice enough to grown in a flower bed.
Happy Easter!

vanilla said...

Thank you for a little color to brighten the day. But it is Easter. Jesus brightens our lives!

Emma Springfield said...

My mother used to make the best chokecherry jelly... mmmmm.

Rick (Ratty) said...

Flowers are a wonderful sight right now. Pretty soon we'll have more than we can hope for. This gets the anticipation going. Happy Easter.

Sharkbytes said...

John- 16 C? That's pretty warm- like 60F. I think we might have finally gotten higher than that today, but it's supposed to cool right down for the week.

Ann- Thanks- it helped to just think about good flowers

Jean- I think the chokeberry is stunning. Very classy.

Vanilla- you got that right!

Emma- I haven't tried that

rainfield- thank you!

Ratty- my anticipation is working well... hoping for some fulfillment soon!

RNSANE said...

Praise the Lord, indeed, Joan, for giving us friendship and these beautiful flowers. I am so partial to yellows but they are all lovely.

Duxbury Ramblers said...

I love the flowers they are all wonderful.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful flowers! Everything seems to bloom so late this year..

Ferd said...

Beautiful flowers and pics!
Pretty soon you will see them again for real!
:-)

Sharkbytes said...

Carmen- the puccoon is almost exactly the Crayola color from our childhood called "yellow-orange." Do you remember that one?

Carol- I can count on you to really appreciate them.

Icy- It sure is. But if we really get the rain this week things should start to pop.

Ferd- I really think it has to start happening soon!

RNSANE said...

Joan, I don't remember that color but I always wanted the biggest box of crayolas with the most colors!!!