Not wild, though I didn’t plant it. The camera continues to be terrible at showing subtle coral shades, so I tweaked the blues to try and make it look like it really looks.
Speaking of fabulous native plants, there’s a whole patch of whorled milkweed growing wild up by the road and this makes me incredibly happy. I tried to grow SO MANY milkweeds in NC. So many. You have no idea how many. And they all died, except one. This species here.
Every year, on the worst and crappiest scraped clay hillside, the whorled milkweed would come back. Never got big. Never had a monarch. But it wouldn’t die.
In this new garden where almost everything is different, it’s like seeing an old friend.
Goathead seed pods look like their name, but once they puncture your feet, shoes and bike tires you will think they look like nasty little devils.
(not my photo)
I haaaaaaate puncturevine - I encountered it first in the Bay Area, with my damn bicycle tire. Then later I found it with my too-hot, de-sandaled feet. It's awful hard to stand on a stickered foot while trying to find a clear spot for the other foot ... the result is generally excruciating hopping.
Oh yeah... I've seen some branches with dry seeds on paths around San Jose before, and thought, "Wow, nature made these *specifically* against bicycles." But I never realized what a green, flowering version of it looks like. Good to know.
Also called goathead. My entire back yard was one matt of these when I moved in. There is a reason I'm proud of how it is now. My dad pulled 10 30 gallon bags of these during one visit.
These smell amazing! One subspecies has wild variation within a single patch, some individuals smell like fruit loops, some like roses, some like green apples, it’s a good time. Smell them around dusk for best effect and a chance to spot the hawkmoth pollinators!
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In this new garden where almost everything is different, it’s like seeing an old friend.
(not my photo)