Two Plant Mysteries Solved

 
Well, this blog post probably won't make much of anyone smile except me, unless you are really curious about plants. I don't have pictures of the blossoms of either one.

But they sure had me stumped for a while. It's trickier to ID plants without the flower.

We saw both of these growing beside roads and the trail in huge patches.

This one was completely new to me. The plants were 5-6 feet tall. Not that I know everything, but I'm a little surprised when I find large patches of plants in the Northeast that I don't think I've ever even seen before.



Turned out it was pretty easy to identify because of the winged stems. Its common name is... are you ready for this?... Wingstem. Verbesina sp.



It has clusters of sparse yellow daisy-like blooms. Maybe some year I'll catch the flowers.

The next one had me completely stumped. We saw it last year, and again this year. I couldn't even guess at this one. It looked most like a ragwort, but I didn't think it was one. The stalks are about 2 feet tall, and the stems are purple. With the deeply cut leaves, it's quite pretty.

After the hike we visited a mansion and its gardens (more on that later), and this plant also appeared in the gardens. Turns out it's an Artemesia. Common name mugwort. There are several plants with that common name, but this one is Artemesia lactiflora.



It's flower is a pretty nondescript tower of greenish-white clusters. The vegetation certainly looks nice, though. My picture doesn't do it justice.

So there you are. A rather blah post, but it made me happy to learn these plants, and it's my blog. So there. (PS... although I identified these and a few others, I brought home even more pictures of ones I can't identify.)

I'm off to work pretty soon, but tomorrow I've planned an adventure. Stay tuned.

And I will come back to more plants, ones with pretty flowers.

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