Showing posts with label spring wildflowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spring wildflowers. Show all posts

Thursday 25 April 2013

A wildflower chat

My gardening companion and I had fun talking wildflowers recently on Your Day, a daily radio show (Monday-Thursday) produced as a public service of Clemson University Radio Productions. It airs throughout the state on the SC ETV Radio Network at lunchtime, running for an hour.

Normally, when I'm on, my SC Botanical Garden colleagues and I answer gardening and general plant questions, but this show was pre-recorded, so Tim (Spira) and I were able to focus on wildflowers, their ecology, where to see them, and share our enthusiasm for them with listeners.  Quite fun!

Tim's been out doing a lot of field work for his second book (the first was Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont: a Naturalist's Guide to the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia), so he's been following flowering of wildflowers since late in February.

There was lots to talk about as well as mentioning what we're looking forward to seeing, too, out in the natural world.

Listen to the April 18 conversation here (from Your Day's archives for that week.


Sunday 31 March 2013

Spring woodland wildflowers

A second visit to a botanical wonderland this weekend ("The Pocket" on Pigeon Mountain, GA) -- along the Shirley Miller Wildflower Trail found numerous treasures in flower.  The Pocket is a rich cove forest (so pH levels are nearly neutral), supporting a rich array of wildflowers. 

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are abundant and were in flower (actively visited by bumblebees on the day we were there).

Mertensia virginica

Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) was still in flower (it was in flower 3 weeks ago on our first visit).

Claytonia virginica
Yellow trout lily (Erythronium americanum) was in flower (younger plants and seedlings are abundant at this site). Its large flowers were impressive.

Erythronium americanum

And the fiddleheads of Christmas fern were striking!

Christmas fern fiddleheads