Friday, April 28, 2006

Blue Wildflowers

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... More About Trees and Plants...



Blue wildflowers

Little blue wildflowers are growing all over the bank at my neighbor's house. (The cardinal is, of course, a ceramic tribute to the real thing.) I have to go back up there this evening, so I plan to take the wildflower book so I can try to identify these.

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Update:

Bugleweed or ajugaI plucked one of the little flowering stems and brought it home to research. Its photo appears at left. A film cannister is serving as its vase.

I think I have an identification after much looking in the books. I believe it's bugleweed, aka bugle or ajuga or ajuga replens. It's not in my Kentucky wildflowers book at all, but it does appear in the Peterson Field Guide to Wildflowers. I'm sure it was omitted from the Kentucky book because it's really not a wildflower at all. It is an alien species (imported plant) from Europe.

Here are some very nice closeups that show the odd little flower. Its lower lip seems to stick out, and it has almost no upper lip at all. Its stamens protrude a little from the flower. It has a square stem because it is a member of the mint family. Cultivars are used as ground covers.

My heading for this post, "Blue Wildflowers," is completely wrong, but I won't change it because I've learned that messes up Blogger searches.

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hey Gene:
I change my titles all the time! It messes up my code; I know. Now yonder search engines are locking up? Good!
My time is limited yet I can't seem to get it right the first try... or even the second. Later, ~(:-_))kfh
ps: I photo clicked your pix...

Genevieve Netz said...

Apparently Blogger creates its search engine information when you post it the first time. I am still waiting for the Blogger search to find the posts on the category thing I set up. I guess it never will.

And apparently if you change the title to a post, Blogger makes a whole new page and new search engine information, and it deletes the old page but it doesn't delete the old search engine information.

I have a hard time getting it all right the first time, too. Sometimes I edit these things half a dozen times after I post them. It probably drives people crazy if they are using a blog-reader, because it shows an update everytime even if I only tweaked one sentence.

Trixie said...

Those are quite pretty little flowers, aren't they? And what a perfectly proportioned "vase"! Thank you so much for all the photos you post, especially the plants. You're helping to train me to pay more attention to small details.

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