vandaliatraveler:Appalachian Summer, 2018, Volume One: Tall Thimbleweed. I’ve decided to inaugurate

vandaliatraveler:Appalachian Summer, 2018, Volume One: Tall Thimbleweed. I’ve decided to inaugurate my summer wildflower series with another of Appalachia’s beautiful native anemones, tall thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana). Unlike the other two anemones featured in the spring series, rue-anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides) and wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa), tall thimbleweed is a stately, upright-growing perennial herb with a tendency to mound like a small shrub, courtesy of vegetative offshoots produced by branching rhizomes. Two sets of compound leaves, one basal and the other cauline, form in whorls around a long, flowering stalk. The leaves have three to five lobes with toothed edges. A lovely white flower emerges from the end of the stalk in mid-June to July; its button-like center is surrounded by numerous outstretched stamens with yellow anthers. After it finishes blooming, the flower is replaced by an elongated, thimble-like fruit, which gives the plant its common name. As it matures, the fruit transforms into a cottony tuft containing tiny brown seeds, which are dispersed by the wind. Tall thimbleweed grows best in full sun to part shadein dry, open woods and forest margins.Let me recommend @vandaliatraveler and this amazing plant series! And as usual I’m gonna chatter b/c some of my faves are in here, such as this one:This is such a neat native plant! I bought a packet of seeds from Prairie Moon (btw they’re an awesome company, and you can learn a ton of things from their seed catalogs) and while only a few of the seeds I planted around germinated… first off it’s amazing they germinated b/c I put them in really terrible soil.. and all you really need is one plant to get you started on growing a bunch.I found one healthy baby plant that had germinated, pulled it out of the horrible place it’d decided to live (on the edge of the driveway, in gravel and clay), and transplanted it into the Deck Bed where the soil is way better. Then I just let it set seed, and let the seeds fly off to do their thing, and now it’s starting to pop up around. We can be so hot and sunny and dry, I’m always looking for native plants that can happily survive on the sunny south sides of slopes. So many of the famous woodland Appalachian plants I love and run across are found on moist, north-facing slopes, or along the water. This one? It does not care. It does want light though. Any plant with the name ‘weed’ in the common name is sure to spread well, so make sure you like it before you plant it.This one has the cutest little flowers, and it feels… otherworldly.  -- source link

More pics about