Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Exercise Wildflowers

Much of last summer, I featured a weekly "Wildflower Wednesday".  It was an attempt to learn more about wildflowers.  I love to blog about flowers, but I have so much to learn.  It is not a subject I can consider myself an expert on.   I may be in an Author Blog Challenge, but sooner or later I just have to abandon the prompts and talk about flowers.

Sometimes, my readers teach me more than I teach them. And I have a feeling this post is going to be one of those times.


In a normal year, you would find these wildflowers on the Vestal Rail Trail just about now.  The Vestal Rail Trail, a "rails to trails" trail in upstate NY, is one of my favorite places to walk - and to take pictures. But this has been a strange spring, full of early surprises.  Over a week ago, I saw chicory and Queen Anne's Lace in bloom.  I almost half expect to see goldenrod any day now.

And on May 20, I saw some pretty amazing wildflower sights on the Vestal Rail Trail.  Some of these I'm not sure about.  One is a complete mystery.
This (I believe) is a viburnum.


I think this may be wild geranium.  But I am not sure.  Does anyone know?
Nor do I know what this mystery yellow flower is.
And finally...I thought these flowers might have been blackberries but they seemed too big.  The Trail has a lot of rugosa roses but they tend to be pink, not white. There were a lot of these blooming this year.  My guess is they are rugosa roses and not blackberries.

If you can identify any of my mystery flowers, please do! (UPDATE:  Please see comments for probable identifications of my wildflowers.)

My next goal is to be able to take pictures of things moving:  butterflies, bees, and birds.  My camera, a Sony, has a long lag between the time I try to snap the picture and the time the picture is actually taken.  It is very frustrating.  But there must be away around this.  Other than the long lag time, I really like this camera.

Do you like to take nature photos?
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3 comments:

  1. Jo MichaelsJune 5, 2012 at 12:36 PM

    The first photo looks like mountain laurel. The yellow resembles a dandilion. That last one there reminds me of dogwood flowers. Were they on a tree or a bush?

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    Replies
    1. bookwormJune 5, 2012 at 6:16 PM

      Thank you for posting and for helping me with this. I have someone else, in an email, who thought the first photo was a viburnum, possibly Viburnum dentatum. The second, she agreed was a wild geranium, Geranium maculatum. The third (the foliage definitely was not dandelion, which is what attracted my eye, she feels is rattlesnake weed, Hieracium venosum. The last one, she thinks is blackberry and not a rugosa rose. The canes were definitely full of thorns but I don't seem to recall blackberry flowers as large as these were. I am not anywhere near the level of Latin names, and want to thank those who helped me with this.

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  2. KimberleyJune 7, 2012 at 10:22 AM

    Yes, I was going to confirm that those purplish-pink flowers are wild geraniums. And the first one does look like viburnum; the leaves don't seem right for mountain laurel. We have a lot of those yellow dandelion-ish flowers in our yard, but they are definitely NOT dandelions! Not sure I like the idea of "rattlesnake weed", but so long as it doesn't attract the snakes, I guess it's OK!

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