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Monday, May 2, 2016

May Flowers Big and Small May 2, 2016

Today I am linking with-

Today's Flowers hosted by Denise

Macro Monday 2 hosted by Gemma and Mystical Magical Teacher

In a Vase on Monday hosted by Cathy

I Heart Macro hosted by Laura

When photographing my Japanese Maples for Foliage Follow-up last month, I took notice of their tiny flowers, which I usually overlook.


I even cut some flowers and foliage, which make an unseasonable fall impression-

The flowers are now forming seed pods, and the formerly orange-tinged Amber Ghost has become a paler shade of white.


Adding to my list of flowering carpets, a favorite little lawn flower is Bellis perennis, which I obtained by digging up a few from a parking lot soon to be paved.

It looks pretty in the lawn where it has to fight with the grasses-

 But does even better on the inhospitable gravel driveway where it shines for its drought tolerance-

Another carpet that basically only flowers a little in spring, but is a marvelously tough ground cover for dry shade and spreads wonderfully, always looking neat, is hardy Geranium macrorrhizum-



All this came from a single plant that spread all by itself, under a Bigleaf Maple!  Never gets watered through our dry season!  It will not do as well in sun.

And now for my Monday vase, answering Cathy's challenge to find flowers for a vase to enjoy, my Lily of the Valleys have started to bloom, and smell wonderful, so I couldn't resist plonking some in a vase with some remaining Forget-Me-Nots and a few of those rascally Herb Roberts.


I also, while out weeding every day, notice some very tiny "weed" flowers, which have a mesmerizing effect on me and compelled me to make a tiny vase, compared also with the larger tame version of the Forget-Me-Nots.  Some members of the Borage family have mystical powers to spread themselves far and wide.


The plate in this photo is from my original china my parents gave me when I got married, It is Lenox 'Melissa'.  My father's grandmother was a Lenox, but the business was run by male members of the family so was not part of his inheritance.  Lenox is my father's middle name.  A Yankee from New Jersey married a Southern belle from South Carolina, my mother, imagine that.  But the strange part is that both of their fathers were born in South Carolina.

The tiny white flowers tend to be highly invasive and make a tiny ground cover fine in the grass but seem to threaten some of my plants in the garden-

 The tiny flashes of deep blue are pretty, I haven't noticed any bad effects from this one, not as vigorous or invasive in the lawn-

A comparison of the tiny wild Forget-Me-Nots with the regular ones,

And regular FMN on the lower left compared with the slightly smaller and less varied in color flowers of another famous Borage family flower, Brunnera, which is very well-behaved but can self-sow-

FMN can make quite a flowering carpet,  which can actually act to slow down other weeds for a while in spring-
 but eventually turns into a mildewed mess here, and the tiny seed pods have a sticky quality from tiny hairs that cling to clothes and gloves, so this year I am waging full scale war on them and bagging all the plants and flowers I can find in hopes there won't be many next year.

Another extremely invasive flowering carpet is Herb Robert, though I have to say it is known for being a medicinal herb and also can suppress other weeds very well with its dense growth and perhaps a little allelopathy thrown in, so it can transform some weedy areas of my 2 acres into this-

And has very cute little flowers-

  I hope you have made fewer mistakes than I have in planting invasive plants out of ignorance.   What plants have become problems for you?    -Hannah



















27 comments:

  1. Hello Hannah - looking at small things can be so rewarding. I love the daisies and seasonal bouquet. Our Lily of the Valley is almost out,it reminds me of France and old postcards.

    Thank you.....Happy May!
    Ruby

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    1. Thanks, Ruby, I can see little apples setting on my trees, so May is promising lots of fruit in June and July.

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  2. Hello Hannah, gorgeous collection of plants and flowers. The herb has pretty blooms. Enjoy your day and the week ahead!

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    1. Thanks, Eileen, I enjoy the beauty in all of
      nature.

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  3. Wonderful post Hannah, love the flowers and also how you have added the Japanese Maple leaves to one of your vase arrangements. Very creative and you have a great eye for flower arranging. Thank you for continuing to support Today’s Flowers with these lovely photographs. Have a great day!

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  4. Thanks, Denise, I felt like celebrating some of the tiny flowers that no one seems to notice, and yet they are very beautiful.

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  5. I can see you are a geranium lover too. The Geranium macrorrhizum I walked past this morning in a corner of my garden, is ready to flower. I had forgotten its name and your post made me look it up, for the umpteenth time :-)
    I actually like the smell of the herb Robert and let it grow wherever it likes, as the leaves pretty too.
    Sadly, one geranimu I really liked, has disappeared. It was a new garden variety, and those are always a little dodgy. Blue flowers and called G. Rozanna. All fpour plants, in different parts of the garden, have vanished. Do you know/grow it?

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  6. Yes, I am quite the geranium lover. One in particular, G. oxonianum 'Claridge Druce', self-sows trememdously and has spread through some of my beds so well that it ended my weeding problems, except lately an annual grass has moved in I will have to weed out. I have Rozanne, I love it, from one plant it spreads into a 6' circle covered with blooms all summer and in to fall. I can't imagine why all your plants in separate locations would all go missing at once! It doesn't self-sow, sadly.

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  7. I'm puzzled over the lack of comments this week, if you try to comment and have a problem please email me at z8hannah8z@gmail.com

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  8. Some of my favorite May flowers in your vase!

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    1. Thanks, Donna, I actually have a lot of other flowers I should have used....

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  9. What a lovely variety of flowers! I have discovered a miniature forget me not that makes a great companion to most other plants.

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    1. Thanks, Betty, I have finished my war on Forget-Me-Nots for this year, not a single lovely blue patch left. I will see if that made an impact next year. At least they are easy to pull out. I still think the flowers are darling, though. I get to enjoy the tiny Brunneras still.

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  10. Lovely vase Hannah, and how brave of you to pick Herb Robert... I find the smell so off-putting! When I first moved here I was grateful for it filling in the gaps on the bare rockery, but along with the forget-me-nots it has been weeded out to a minimum, although I agree the flowers are very pretty! Oh, and an invasive plant I planted (given to me by a neighbour!) was the Chinese lantern plant 'Physalis alkekengi' which has horrible roots that run for miles underground it seems.... You live and learn!

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    1. Thanks, Cathy, The Herb Robert has such delightful ferny foliage, I actually kind of like the smell. I do like how it overwhelms the weeds in some places, since it is so easy to pull out. But I try to get it out of some beds. I haven't planted the Chinese lanterns so thankfully have not experienced them, though they are cute in a vase.

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  11. What a beautiful series Hannah. Thanks so much for sharing the love up-close with I Heart Macro :)

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    1. Thanks, Laura, the tiny flowers make good macro subjects.

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  12. beautiful blooms of all kinds. :)

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    1. Thanks, Theresa, so many flowers and weeds at this time of year.

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  13. Beautiful flowers, Hannah! I love the bellises and the tiny forget me nots and the lily of the valley. Enjoy your weekend!

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    1. Thanks, Gunilla, I'm never sorry about the Bellises or Lily of the Valley, at least.

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  14. I love forget-me-nots but I can understand your desire to thin out/eradicate the weedy version. Still the 2 varieties of FMNs do look nice together. The only ones growing in my own garden are the Chinese variety but they've yet to self-seed for me.

    My biggest planting mistake may be the Cotula lineariloba but at least it seems easy to remove. The prior owner planted mint (!!!) in one of the raised planters in the vegetable garden and I've been trying to remove that for the last 5 years. Geranium incanum and Centranthus ruber are also invasive here but I don't know if a prior owner planted them or whether they blew in on their own - both are worse than Stipa tenuissima in my book, yet are commonly sold in local nurseries.

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    1. I guess I haven't grown the Chinese FMN's, mine are incredibly prolific. The Cotula you grow has such big flowers, Kris. I grew one type that kept going for several years but eventually disappeared. The mint I like finally managed to spread into my vegetable bed and now I am very sorry I ever planted it.

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  15. Life is full of wonders.
    But we know little about them due to our negligence.
    And because we know things on the surface.

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  16. Yes, even the tiny flowers are beautiful. But mostly we never notice them, Rainfield.

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  17. Do you know the name of the very tiny white flowers with a splash of purple on them? I just noticed them in my yard today and like you I had to make a miniature bouquet, they are just so cute! But I have very few so my arrangement is quite small.

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    1. I found the answer, Creeping Speedwell, Veronica filiformis.

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