It’s spring – the trees are in leaf, flowers are appearing. I cut our modestly sized front lawn a few days ago, and found forty – count ‘em, forty – common spotted orchids had moved in. Cutting the lawn is going to be a pain for the next few months, but I won’t mind in the least. The orchids are not rare at all, and we often have a few, but this is going to be a fabulous display.
So that’s where the idea for the thread comes from – interesting plants growing wild in your area. In fact, my own nomination isn’t the orchids (splendid though they are); I’ll go for hops growing wild in hedgerows. We’re not far from the border with Kent (traditionally the land of hops), and there are old oast houses not far from us (on this side of the border, actually). So hops were cultivated in the area. Each year I’ll cycle past four hedgerows where I know they grow – I have no idea whether they are a truly wild strain, or originated as escapees from a hop garden. But it cheers me to know that they are thriving.
Common spotted orchid
Hedgerow hops
So tell me what’s growing wild near you. It doesn’t have to be particularly rare (though it can be) – just whatever interests and pleases you, as you make your way around the locale.
What have you got?
j
We’ve got a lot of Pride of Madeira growing wild around here. The purple flowers are beautiful, and the plants can be impressive when they get large, but I’ve learned that if one starts growing in your yard, get it the heck out of there before it grows into a 20 foot tall monstrosity that takes hours of back-breaking work to remove. They grow REALLY fast.
Nothing I know of currently but we somehow got a wild marijuana bush in our yard when I was a kid.
I see maypops plants and seeds for sale in catalogs and on-line (example) and they have always grown wild around here. (The same goes for Asclepias tuberosa, which when I was a kid was not only not considered a desirable flower, but was treated as an unwanted weed because for some reason it was associated with chiggers.)
Now that we’re going on a daily “death march” (walk) every day, I see amazing cactus, and if someone is out, they’ll often give me a piece. I got pieces callusing as I write!!
Venus flytraps only grow in a small area of the coast in NC about 100 miles from me
I have a Zanthoxylum or Hercules’ Club.
We call it a ‘toothache tree’,
It’s an ugly tree. We almost cut it down thinking it was diseased. It has spiny lumps allover it.
I looked it up and found out what it was. If you chew the leaves or bark it numbs your mouth. It tastes really bad.
Not quite. They grow in costal North and South Carolina, largely in Carolina Bays. (Along with other carnivorous plants such as sundews and Sarracenia sp. Pitcher plants but not–as far as I know–the Dope poster Carbivorous Plant.)
There are at least 40 varieties of orchids found in Rhode Island. Some of them are widespread but several are only found in the swamp lands, with specific locations sometimes not made public. Most of the trees here are pretty dull, we don’t get much of that great fall foliage found throughout New England, there’s too much coastal lowland for those kind of trees. We do have ginseng, but that’s not uncommon in the northeast US.
Not too near me but within the state The silversword. I thought Maui was the only place in the world it grew, but that link says it’s also on the Big Island.
I discovered Indian Pipe growing near our garbage cans a while ago. It was curious enough looking that I thought it might be a mushroom at first – turns out that It’s a non-photosynthesizing epiparasitic (a parasite that feeds off of another parasite) plant.
I have lady’s tresses, a native Arkansas orchid at my place in the woods. I mowed around them, but they never came up in the same place the next year.
