Saturday, July 27, 2019

A Stream of Summer Flowers


A trumpet vine flower looks giant with Veblen House as a backdrop. It was a pretty sight to see a hummingbird visiting one.

Culver's Root draws clouds of pollinators of varied sizes.


A week or two before, the Culver's Root took on an upside down chandelier look during a brief drought.

Tiger lilies are an asian species found along Princeton's streets this time of year. A couple native species survive in the wild in our area, though nowhere in Princeton to my knowledge.

Here's a contrast between the native black-eyed susan

and a bred variety that puts on a big show but doesn't seem to attract pollinators.

Cutleaf coneflowers are almost as pretty in their bud stage

as when they open up.

The first of what will likely be hundreds of native rose mallow Hibiscus flowers in our garden, freshly opened and freshly chewed upon.

There are a few specimens of storax around, with its pendulant flowers.

One of my earliest interactions with plants was popping the buds of the hostas that lined our patio when I was a kid. If the buds are just at the right stage of development, they make a loud pop when squeezed. This type of hosta isn't very common in gardens now.


Common milkweed outside some classrooms at Littlebrook Elementary provided food for a bumper crop of monarch butterflies last year.


Purple coneflowers bloom for a longer stretch than most other flowers, which makes them so popular in gardens.

Lizard's Tail is a native growing along the shores of Lake Carnegie. It also does well in wet gardens.

Earlier in the summer, the tall meadowrue were attracting colorful hoverflies, which true to their name hover next to a flower before alighting. Send a photo of an insect to BugGuide and someone will quickly identify it for you. In this case, Allograpta obliqua, a common oblique syrphid.


The hoverflies did their job, judging from the abundant meadowrue seeds now forming.

A gathering of bucks grazing in the field at Littlebrook Elementary.


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