
A closer look at our discovery (
Part One) reveals the details of this sea of tiny blue flowers, details easily missed from a distance to those too busy for a bugs-eye view. It means getting down on your knees in the wet sand–a small price to pay for such a visual memory.And among the details of form and color in this closer view of Myosotis scorpiodes is the inflorescence type. A flowering plant’s “inflorescence” is the way it holds its flowers on the main and secondary stems. (Great page about flower types is at
Wayne’s World) This flower (and in fact the flower family to which it belongs) is characterized by this unusual type of flower growth form called a helicoid or scorpoid cyme. (More about that tomorrow in Part Three.) Getting an uncluttered shot to show this took some doing, so I’m especially pleased with this shot.
What I wasn’t pleased to learn, however, is that this plant is considered an INVASIVE, primarily of wetlands. As a plant brought here (for aesthetic reasons, most likely) and escaped from cultivation, it spreads readily in places like our sandy creek. Ann spotted it yesterday downstream on her drive to town.
Next Thursday I’ll be participating in (and photographing and writing about) a workday on the Blue Ridge Parkway to remove invasives from a parkway wetland area near the VA-NC line. More about that then, of course.
Forget-Me-Nots (blue, pink & white, picked from the cottage garden of our 90-year-old neighbor lady) were part of my wedding bouquet on a beautiful May day back in 1971. Each May I look forward to the sea of blue flowers that now grow in profusion in my flowerbed and also in random places around our little farmstead – much as you describe.
Thanks boyse953390ad0694cac69d70eb5568f1453