Moonflowers on August 17th and more

 

 

 

 The moonflower seeds I planted months ago have their very first flower, and it smells wonderful.  I saw the cone starting to develop this morning, and wanted to catch a picture of it, but I forgot to.  I was distracted by the development on the Devil's Walking Stick Aralia spinosa (seen below the moonflowers)

 

Ipomoea alba, white moonflower


Aralia spinosa, Devil's Walking Stick, Prickly Ash, Hercule's Club
We call it Devil's Walking Stick around here, because of the prickly long wooden stem that hurts if you accidentally grasp it while walking through the brush later in the year.
 
 

We have passionflower vines!  It can take a while to establish them from seed.  I planted these maybe three years ago, and they must have 'took' but not done well.  This year, we found them growing happily alongside the moonflowers.  Maybe this is the year they will bloom, too?  Passiaflora caerula, blue passionflower, it says on the plant ID app.  I saw a passionflower vine blooming in an abandoned trail the other day, too - it was gorgeous and smelled wonderful.  However, I would not want to be around that scent for too long.  Unlike the moonflowers, it has a 'cheesy corny' undersmell like 'white cheddar' cheese puffs.  But, that might just be me.  The moonflower doesn't have any of that smell, just a high crisp clear tone.


Out in the fields : The cat's ear is waning, the hawkweed (larger yellow flowers, bigger seeds) is showing up more.    The Ipomoea pendulata (the wild moonflower that blooms in the day) has stopped blooming as much, it is starting to go away.  The lobelia is still blooming.  The lespedeza sericea is in full bloom with tiny white flowers everywhere on it among the leaves.  The goldenrod is blooming just as the sticks go up in the cornfields indicating things are getting ripe.  The woolly croton (hogwort) and the little yellow mimosas (I know they have another name but I forget) are blooming on the hillsides and attracting bees and pollinators of all kinds.

And school has started.. a bit different, but today was the first day.

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