Roadside Flowers

This will be a collection of a few plants I've seen flowering along the roadsides in the past few days.

I walked to pay the summer taxes today. The humidity was a killer, but I got some exercise.

Here's a bull thistle Cirsium vulgare. They have big spines all down the stems as well as on the leaves.

Remember a few days ago I talked about a couple kinds of Silene? I got pictures of another of the common ones. This is Evening Lychnis, Silene latifolia, or White Campions. It used to be in a genus called Lychnis but I guess they have all been moved to Silene. It's confusing in more ways than one. It's really hard to tell this one from Night-flowering Catchfly.

Neither one is a very handsome plant. They are leggy and sticky to touch with sprawling white flowers.

The veining is slightly different on the swollen calyx, and the Evening Lychnis has 5 styles while the other has 3. You have to pull a flower apart to check. I did, so I'm pretty sure this is Evening Lychnis/ White Campion.

I learned something new on this one. These are the flowerheads I found. I couldn't figure out what it was.

But these clusters of calyxes looked familiar.

Yup- same kind of growth pattern. This is after the blooms have faded. This is common soapwort.

It grows all over the place here. Saponaria officianalis, also called Bouncing Bet. The flowers are usualy single like these, rather than with doubled petals. Truth be told, I don't like either one very much. But I guess the double one is a sort of vintage garden plant.

Here's one I am not happy to find near home. This is False Cervil, Anthriscus sylvestris, which is becoming horribly invasive. It's easily confused with Poison Hemlock if you don't look closely.

But here's the coup for the day. In the other direction from where I found it a few years ago, here is another patch of the Bigbract Verbena, Verbena brateata,.

But wait. It gets even better! A little farther, I found a couple of small patches that weren't growing right out of the edge of the pavement. Using a flat beer can as an improv shovel, I managed to bring one of those home with me. It's now in the rock garden in the spot where I planted some seeds that may or may not be the same plant- if they are even viable. Hope it "takes" because I love the texture. One reason some plants get labeled as weeds is because they spread so easily and grow without much of anything special. So, I think it has a good chance!

We got a wonderful 0.7 inch of rain this morning. But now, I'd be happy if it stops for a day because I have to do a lot of outside things tomorrow to be ready to leave. Today, I concentrated on the indoor stuff- collecting items to take, paying bills, cleaning the kitchen. It's still quite wet outside, but hopefully the grass (weeds) will be dry enough to mow tomorrow.

Miles hiked in 2025: 327.6

See A New Silene See Bigbract Verbena or Not?