I keep learning more names of wildflowers that I am getting to watch bloom. Lyreleaf sage. Venus' looking glass. Weedy dwarf dandelion. Russell's monarda. Tickseed. The names aren't always the prettiest. I'm continually disappointed with spiderwort, which is a beautiful flower and a terrible name.
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| Spiderwort. |
I have been learning more about local wildflowers slowly over the years. Last winter I ordered a whole bunch of wildflower plugs from a nursery, and while paging through the catalog, I was surprised to see a lot of the "weeds" that grow around our place for sale. It made me look at all the plants at our house and on the farm with different eyes. Someone would pay money for
that? was my thought again and again. But of course, here I was paying money for plants that I don't have growing wild, that other people probably have too much of.
This past winter, I visited with Jay Randolph, Ben Geren park superintendent, who is reestablishing native prairie habitats in areas around a public golf course and park in Fort Smith, AR. He was telling me, over the course of a day-long conversation, that there is a moth whose population levels are "of concern," though not endangered yet per se, called the rattlesnake master borer moth. It only feeds on that one kind of plant, rattlesnake master, so I ordered some to plant this winter. We have to help our moth friends out! But just think of how many relationships there are like this in nature. I think it's enough to know that these complexities are there, and to try to reestablish native plants in a diverse setting, and hope that we're doing some small part in healing the interdependencies that our predecessors have broken. Give back more than you take, is what Robin Wall Kimmerer says, which sound like good words to live by, and garden by, to me.
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A ladybug sitting on a Venus' looking glass,
which is in front of a sage plant in bloom. |
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