Friday Fabulous Flower - Deptford pink

Not all invasive, exotic plants, aliens, immigrants, are bad.  The Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) isn't a problem of any sort that TPP knows of and it makes itself quite at home in a prairie.  It appears to blend into the forb ensemble quite amicably.  Mostly it goes unnoticed because it's a very slender, small-leafed plant up to about 2-2.5 feet tall topped by some very pretty, but very small flowers (about 1 cm in diameter).  It would be a nice addition to a wild flower perennial garden, and will grow in some very poor soil under pretty dry conditions. The plant sways easily in the wind, and since the target is small, photographing the flowers in the field is a challenge; here's a shot that was grabbed while collecting data the other week.  Like pinks in general the petals are notched or toothed at the apex, and in this species pink petals splotched with white.  Deptford is a town in the UK where this plant grew abundantly; somehow this name stuck with it in North America.  Our local variety tends to be a bit paler pink than populations elsewhere.

Friday fabulous flower - white trout lily

Running a bit late this week, but the last two days have been really busy.  It's always like this at the end of the semester and the beginning of the field and gardening season.  And even worse, TPP had to waste time mowing some lawn, which was a bit tricky because of the clusters of bulb leaves to avoid.  Some times when you're busy and when you've got a lot to do you tend to overlook the little quiet things that are happening here and there.  In various places in our gardens are patches of native plants that pretty much take care of themselves.  Along the fence separating our gardens from the neighbors' dog run is a large patch of trout lily (Erythronium albidum).  This plant appears in many places around our shade gardens, and generally you simply look down on it from above, but when you get down and take a squirrel's eye view you really get to see just how fabulous this flower is.  It's a wonderful wild flower and easily naturalizes; it spreads, but slowly.