Wildflowers: June 11, 2010

I will call this first plant Canada Mayflower or Maianthemum canadense or False Lily of the Valley.  It is a native plant that will eventually get green berries that turn a dull red.  It looks just like Lily of the Valley, but it is a little shorter.  I noted no fragrance..but I could have been all pollened out.

The next plant I believe to be a Cream Pea or Lathyrus ochroleucus.  It looks very much like a Wood Vetch..Vicia carolina..the vetches and the wild peas seem to be growing very good this year.  They are both very close in appearance.

Cotton Grass or Eriophorum angustifolium is really a sedge( a solid stem) instead of a grass( a hollow stem) , the plant world does this on purpose just to confuse me..it should be called Cotton Sedge. It looks like balls of cotton in the swamps.  Long ago is was used as a fire starter or for candle wicks, you could stuff your pillow with the seeds heads too.  Recently I read where this plant is a hikers friend as it is a sign of a very deep peat bog..if you hike in June when it is blooming, or can identify the seed heads the rest of the summer.  Where I have seen it growing, no one in their right mind would walk..but hey you never know...there could be some out of their mind hikers out there ready to be one with a peat bog.

Early Meadow Rue or Thalictrum dioicum is a plant native to Minnesota that will have either male or female flowers..and I am not sure which one's these are..I am not sure that it is important...but I will take some more photos and see if I can figure out the difference between dangling and yellowish and threadlike and a greenish white. 

Sometimes looking at these wildflowers causes more questions, and I have to spend more time out standing in the field (Ha)  or the ditch or the swamp..I hate the swamps. Sometimes the window for photographs is just days, and then if the freaking wind blows ninety miles an hour photographs are hard to take, sometimes I take so long that Far Guy offers to come and hold a plant blowing in the breeze.  Sometimes he tries to make a shield out of his body to block the wind, so I will be done already. He is very patient most days and we both love the sense of adventure that can be found on a beautiful Minnesota summer day hunting for what is blooming next:)