{"id":1301,"date":"2009-07-12T09:47:21","date_gmt":"2009-07-12T13:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iomaire.com\/?p=1301"},"modified":"2009-07-13T20:05:47","modified_gmt":"2009-07-14T00:05:47","slug":"roadside-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/2009\/07\/12\/roadside-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Roadside Flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> on the morning of June 27th (where I met Ginger Hillery<\/a>), 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Flower.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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<\/a> that identifies it as phlox divaricata<\/em>, wild blue phlox.<\/p>\n

\"Flower1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

\"Flower2.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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

\"Flower3.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Flower4.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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<\/em>) and the plant is Butterfly Milkweed (asclepias tuberosa<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"Flower5.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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<\/em> spp.)<\/p>\n

\"Flower6.jpg\"<\/p>\n

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<\/em> or a similar species.<\/p>\n

Here is a link<\/a> that shows a nice picture of it. The common name is Adam’s Needle.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1301"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}