The gorge is blooming! Check out these photos from dedicated long-time volunteer and Gorge Leadership Team member Tim Boyle. Can you identify these native plants? See even more great photos here.This is an exciting and colorful time of year to go for a hike in the gorge, or have a picnic up at Giggly Hills and check out the prairie plantings.
3 comments:
This must be absolutely gorgeous to see in person. I loved looking at the rest of them at the link you sent
Thanks! I bet there are even more things in bloom now.
Let's see, I should know these names since I took the pictures, but then again if my memory of names was as good as my memory of images I probably would have been a botanist instead of a picture taker.
Anyway, here goes,
Upper-left:
Echinacea purpurea (That's right, Echinacea, as at the apothecary) or Purple Coneflower. This ones a tad bedraggled.
Upper-right:
Asclepias incarnata or swamp milkweed (yummy monarch caterpillar food, poison to most other insects. The "milk" tends to glue their mouths shut. Ain't nature grand?)
Lower-left:
Asclepias tuberosa or Butterfly weed, also called "Chigger-weed" but I'm not sure why. Poisionous to humans if you ingest enough roots or sap.
Lower-right:
Verbena stricta or hoary vervain, I guess. There are so many kinds of vervain it makes my head spin. I always see the collar of purple flowers and instantly think: purple prairie clover! Don't believe everything you think you see...
See you at Giggly!
TB
Well, well, well! Who's the smarty pants? Could it be a Gorge Leadership Team member? Of course it is!
Thanks for the beautiful photos Tim, and for all the extra info on these wonderful plants!
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