Pink and Red Wild Flowers for Your Garden
Pink and Red Wild Flowers for Your Garden
The Climbing False Buckwheat (P. scandens) straggles over bushes in woods, thickets, and by the waysides throughout a very wide range; yet its small, dull, greenish-yellow and pinkish flowers, loosely clustered in long pedicelled racemes, are so inconspicuous during August and September, when the showy composites are in their glory, that we give them scarcely a glance. The alternate leaves, which are heart-shaped at the base and pointed at the lip, are similar to those of the morning glory, and are on petioles arising from sheaths over the enlarged joints which, in this family, are always a most prominent characteristic. The three outer sepals, keeled when in flower, are irregularly winged when the three-angled, smooth achene hangs from the matured blossom in autumn, the season at which the vine assumes its greatest attractiveness.
The Arrow-Leaved Tear Thumb (P. sagittatum), found in ditches and swampy wet soil, weakly leans on other plants, or climbs over them with the help of the many sharp, recurved prickles which arm its four-angled stem. Even the petioles and underside of the leaf’s midrib are set with prickles. The light green leaves combine the lance and the arrow shapes, and take on a beautiful russet-red tint in autumn. The little, five-parted rose-colored or greenish-white flowers grow in small, close terminal heads from July to September from Nova Scotia to the Gulf and far westward.
Seaside or Coast Jointweed or Knot-Grass (Polygonella articulata; Polygonum articulatum of Gray) is a low, slender, wiry, diffusely spreading little plant with thread-like leaves seated on its much-jointed stem. It rises cleanly from out the sand of the coast from Maine to Florida, and the shores of the Great Lakes. Very slender racemes of tiny, nodding, rose-tinted white flowers, with a dark midrib to each of the five calyx segments, are insignificant of themselves; but when seen in masses, from July to October, they tinge the upper beaches and sandy meadows with a pink blush that not a few artists have transferred to the foreground of their marine pictures.
Another wild flower known as the Corn Cockle; Corn Rose; Corn Or Red Campion; and Crown-Of-The-Field, has the scientific names of Agrostemma Githago and Lychnis Githago of Gray. These plants product magenta or bright purplish crimson flowers about three inches wide at the end of a long, stout stem. The plants grows erect between one and three feet tall, branches little, and has many leaves. The stems tend to be covered with fine white hairs and the leaves are long, narrow and pointed.
This wild flower likes to grow in wheat and other grain fields, or dry places. It flowers from July to September and can grow just about anywhere. It’s most commonly found in central and western states, as well as Europe and Asia.
The Corn Cockle attracts butterflys, moths and bees and reproduces itself readily and easily. The seeds it produces can make you sick.
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