Walk on the Wild Side

Here’s my first wildflower “lesson” for parents with kids at home this week. Today’s a beautiful, albeit cloudy, spring day, so let’s just take a short walk in the back yard or a little ways down the sidewalk. You can first make a list of these common flowers, have kids take photos of what they find, and go back home to ID them on the Internet; or you could look at my pictures first and see how many of them you can find on your walk. Here's the list: 

Spring beauty

First, these—the ubiquitous spring beauty.
They’re all over my back yard right now, so if I look out at a certain angle I think for a second, “Wait—is that WATER?” because they can appear white from a distance, in a large group.

There’s variation, though, in the color, so if you see really pink ones separated from a group of lighter-colored ones, you might be fooled about what they actually are.

Light-pink and dark-pink spring beauty

A sweet little spring flower that’s just started blooming in easy-to-spot masses—one of my favorites—is the bluet (below, with Spring Beauty behind it). 

It goes by the scientific name Houstonia, and there are several types. It’s tiny, but whenever I start actually seeing bluets, I know spring’s arrived.

Everybody knows how to find dandelions, so I won’t include them; but another yellow wildflower you can see everywhere right now is the butterweed—not to be confused with the bitterweed, which truly lives up to its name, if you’ve ever tried picking them in the summer or fall.

Butterweed

Butterweeds are taller, they don’t seem to stink, and you’ll find them many times in damp places—ditches, for instance, that are sometimes but not always full of water.

Don’t confuse butterweed with buttercup.

Buttercup

You can tell these apart just by noticing that the buttercup is usually closer to the ground, and shiny, as if somebody’s walked around and painted the petals with clear nail polish. It’s around now in a lot of places.

At my old house in Macon—ca. 1892—I’d observed one spring these lovely babies springing up, and it wasn’t until I did some research on them that I found out they’re actually prairie-type flowers (appropriate for the Macon area, of course), and they aren’t really all that common anymore, because of habitat loss.

Carolina anemones, or windflowers

So you probably won’t see them in a town. They’re called Carolina anemones (or Carolina windflowers), and I was overjoyed to find them a couple of years ago at the end of my long driveway. I guess the area where I’m living right now is another one of those (like my Macon back yard) where prairie soil wasn’t completely removed or disturbed too much. Here it is with a clump of purple deadnettle behind it. There's a lot of that coming up right now. It looks something like henbit, on steroids; henbit was blooming a few weeks ago.

Henbit, from the Paducah Sun

Carolina windflower in front, purple deadnettle in back

Look for the windflower and consider yourself lucky if you find it.

But don’t get it mixed up with the next two plants here, the first of which is the common wild garlic.

Wild garlic, middle, and spring beauty, right and front

My dog loves to sniff these little things—and I have no idea why, except maybe that dogs like stinky stuff. And spring beauty is in front of them in this picture; the garlic is the tall, yellow-centered flowers at the back.

This is daisy fleabane.

Daisy fleabane

Sounds like a person's first and last name, right? It’s called “daisy” because, I guess, it resembles that flower, in miniature, but the “fleabane” part comes from an old belief that you could sprinkle the dried flowers in a house to get rid of fleas (thus, the “bane”). Of course, it can’t do that. Its scientific name is Erigeron annuus. By the way, the word "daisy" came from "day's-eye," because the flower opens in the day and closes at night. And second by-the-way: "daisy" is "margarita," in Spanish.

Another little white flower, easily overlooked, is the mouse-ear chickweed.

Mouse-ear chickweed

To ID this one, pay attention to the cleft (split) at the end of each petal in the tiny thing.

This isn't technically a wildflower, but since they're blooming in my yard (from bulbs), I'm going to include them--"snowdrops." They're an old-fashioned flower you don't see just everywhere. Notice there are green dots all around the edges of each flower.

I haven't yet found shepherd's purse. It does look like what its name says it is.

Brittanica

And, speaking of white flowers, don’t overlook the white Dutch clover, which is everywhere now but original to Europe.

People introduced it as forage for food animals, and we find our good luck among its leaves! Or, if you like, you can tie the long stems together and make clover necklaces, bracelets, or—if your patience or skill are lacking—little rings.

There are several other clovers—yellow hop clover,

Yellow hop clover

Persian clover, rabbit’s-foot clover (THAT is fun to find!), the red clover we see along highways—but they don’t seem to be around just yet. Do some research on them so that you can recognize them when they do show up. By the way, once you FEEL rabbit’s-foot clover, you know what you have. It’s kind of very light purplish-pink and so soft, it really IS like a rabbit’s foot.

I took this picture to show you something you’ll start seeing soon: lyre-leaf sage.

Lyre-leaf sage, the purplish stuff

It’s slightly purple, mostly low on the ground right now, no flowers yet. Don’t mix it up with the thistle, which will let you know, unpleasantly, if you do.

Thistles, to the left, to the right!

The sage hasn’t started getting tall yet, so if you reach for a purplish, fuzzy plant that IS getting kind of wide and tall, double-check before you try to touch it. Here’s what the lyre-leaf sage will eventually bloom into:

from Crooked Bear Creek Organics

Like purple deadnettle, lyre-leaf sage is a member of the mint family. How can you tell? Both of them have square stems!

I didn’t get a picture of toadflax; they were already coming up on the coast last week, but I didn’t find them this morning in my neighborhood. You may have them where you live, though. They are SMALL flowers on a TALL stem. Here's a picture from the North American Butterfly Association:

Toadflax

Finally, here are some shots of different wildflowers, several of them in one small area near my house. How many can you identify now? Answers will be in the comment section below this blog post. 

Ælfwine

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3