Eye Candy

It’s amazing how just a little change in soil pH changes the flora in the area.

Everywhere I’ve gardened before in the East Tennessee area, the soil pH has been around 6.0-6.5, with one garden spot even in the 5’s!  This particular piece of ground in Crab Orchard has a pH of 6.8.  Yes, 6.8–just almost a perfect 7.0 for most garden veggies.  Well, the pH may be great, but there’s still a lot of weeds, bugs, clay soil, blah, blah, blah.

This post is not about garden soil.  It’s about the native wildflowers growing in the area.  Wildflowers I haven’t had on my property before.  I was absolutely delighted when in the woods I spotted Spigelia marilandica on the farm…..

Also known as Indian Pink (there’s nothing pink about it, btw), this is one of the most stunning wildflowers in the area.   This particular plant has 6 blooms lined up along the stem–amazing!  It’s growing on an east-facing slope along the driveway.

This time of year is great for observing all the beautiful wildflowers, but also a time of collection–seed collecting, that is.  To propagate these flowers one must carefully watch the blooms as they fade and go to seed.

Geranium maculatum, aka Wild Geranium, bloomed a few weeks ago, and it’s a lovely woodland flower worth propagating.   Also known as “Cranesbill”, when the bloom turns into a seed head it becomes a long spearlike shape that could be construed to look like a crane’s bill I guess……

 

Here are seeds I collected just a couple of days ago.  The one on the extreme left is an unripe seed head–the “cranesbill”.  Notice the swollen area at the bottom of the “bill”.

The next seed head to the right in the photo is ready for collection.  I think it’s really neat how each seed is attached to a tendril that curls up around the “bill”, and each one looks like a little chandelier!  At this stage one must be careful in handling them because the seeds come off really easily.  These are to be sown immediately upon collection and then one must wait for the babies to appear so they can be nurtured and planted back into a shaded area for the cycle of life to begin all over again.