A Meadow Walk

Turkey Tracks: June 14, 2020

A Meadow Walk

AC and I visited a local meadow yesterday, and it is carpeted with wildflowers. I’m sure it will be mowed very soon, so I couldn’t resist picking a few and bringing them home to enjoy, but also to identify the ones whose names I did not really know.

On the left are buttercup and blue-eyed grass. I separated them out as they are delicate and would be lost in the big mixture, and I wanted you to see them. The buttercup is actually a tall plant and can light up where it grows with yellow stars waving in the breeze. They are so cheerful. This one had been mowed, so the plant was small.

The blue-eyed grass is short and has one bloom that peeks out from the upper surface of the meadow plants. You don’t really see it at first, until your eye settles on it’s little spot of blue. It’s in the Iris family. I think of this type of wildflower as being one of the “quiet” ones, but whose presence makes up the richness one encounters in a meadow filled with wildflowers.

I’ve always called the white daiseys that are blooming everywhere now Marguerite Daisies. It’s really called an Ox-Eye Daisy and is in the chrysanthemum family. It is really a composite flower, as the yellow center is a grouping of disk flowers that are very tiny. The white pets are a ray flower that grows around the yellow center. Who knew? I didn’t. They pick well and last in an arrangement. Right now, they are knee high under my clothesline—which is not in use given the brown tail caterpillars.

The clovers we would all know: red and white. I was fascinated today with the fact that some of the white clovers were almost variegated with delicate, blush pink petals in the mix. This discovery actually requires slowing down and looking much more closely.

The orange flower is Hawkweed, also known as Devil’s Paintbrush. It’s very hairy! The stem, especially. Like the ox-eye daisy, the outer orange petals are really separate ray flowers.

The yellow version of the orange is called Yellow Devil or King Devil.