Doesn’t it always happen? You’re driving along and you see the prettiest flower on the side of the road and you can’t stop or pull over to take a closer look. It happened to me quite frequently on this trip, but on the way back from the Grandin Village Community Market on the morning of June 27th (where I met Ginger Hillery), I decided to take the Blue Ridge Parkway back to Floyd instead of traveling on 221. The bicyclists and motorcyclists were out in force and the scenery was gorgeous. I got behind a slow-moving car and, rather than passing it, I pulled over when I came to a beautiful meadow of flowers. I got out my camera and started taking pictures of flowers I do not know the names of.

Fred First kindly took the time to look at the pictures and gave me his best guesses. Identifying plants on the basis of photographs is subject to a good deal of error – the best way is to have the plant in hand.

I lied. This one was on my property and it is a pale pink. It seems as though it likes shady forest floors as a habitat. This one is probably a phlox. I found a Wikipedia entry that identifies it as phlox divaricata, wild blue phlox.

Now, this one I found in a book that I have. It is a coneflower (rudbeckia sp.), I think. Very pretty – not that I am biased in any way, since yellow is my favorite color!

You got me ….. Fred thinks it is in the clover family. Update: Beth identified it as red clover and this link shows a picture of it identical to mine. Thanks, Beth! The scientific name is trifolium pratense.

This is obviously in the aster family, because of the structure of the flower. Is it a daisy? Interesting bug on one of the flowers, huh? Bees aren’t the only insects to visit flowers! This one is probably erigeron strigosus.

This one was a bit further on – near where Starbucks Rd. intersects the Blue Ridge Parkway. There was a big patch of these flowers and the butterflies were having a feast – there were 50 or more of them flitting from flower to flower. The butterflies are Great Spangled Frittilaries (speyeria cybele) and the plant is Butterfly Milkweed (asclepias tuberosa).

Interesting structure – I don’t know if this is an immature flower and it opens more fully later or not …. These are unopened buds of the white boneset (eupatorium spp.)

This, I also learned from my book, is an agave. But there are several kinds of agave that grow in the area – which one is this? Until now, I always thought of agave as a tropical plant. In South Florida, they are called “century plants” because they take a very long time to blossom. Once they blossom, they die. They have some very sharp thorns on the ends of the leaves, too! According to Fred, this is agave filmentosa or a similar species.

Here is a link that shows a nice picture of it. The common name is Adam’s Needle.

Thanks for the assistance, Fred! I’ll learn the plants of Floyd County one at a time, but I’ll never approach Fred’s expertise. Plant identification is just not one of my strong points – using plant keys in botanical books is just a real puzzle to me!