100 Species Challenge

1. Strawberry
2. Black-eyed Susan
3. Rose of Sharon, Althea
4. Potentilla
5. Vinca

6. Grape Hyacinth

Yesterday was a lovely day, and while we were outside I suggested to AnnaBeth that she start sketching plants as a way to get to know more about them. Sitting down and drawing something like a flower involves really taking a good look at it. And putting a title on the drawing involves making sure you know the name and how to spell it.

After looking over some of the choices, concentrating on things that were currently flowering, she decided to draw some of the grape hyacinth.




These grow from bulbs, and pop up every year. I suspect that something eats our bulbs, as they don't seem to be multiplying as much as I expected. One thing I didn't realize is that apparently the bulbs are pickled and eaten by people in Greece and Italy. I love finding out about edible landscape, so I plan to look into that a little more later this week.

Grape hyacinths are actually part of the lily family.

This is an interesting page about grape hyacinths. Wouldn't it be cool to plant a river like that? But it probably wouldn't work here -- it would be eaten away (this is the story of our landscaping adventures here -- everything gets eaten by the local wildlife).

More about the 100 Species Challenge here, and a link to all of my 100 Species entries is in the sidebar.