Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical advice on growing food and flowers, improving soil, and making the most of small spaces. Start anywhere — the garden will meet you.
(Solanum Dulcamara) Potato family Flowers - Blue, purple, or, rarely, white with greenish spots on each lobe; about 1/2 in. broad, clustered in slender, drooping cymes. Calyx 5-lobed, oblong, persiste...
(Washingtonia longistylis; Osmorrhiza longistylis of Gray) Carrot family Flowers - Small, white, 5-parted; in few rayed, long-peduncled umbels, with small bracts below them. Stem: 1 1/2 to 3 ft. high,...
(Spathyema fetida; Symplocarpus fetidus of Gray) Arum family Flowers - Minute, perfect, fetid; many scattered over a thick, rounded, fleshy spadix, and hidden within a swollen, shell-shaped, purplish-...
(Cypripedium reginae; C. spectabile of Gray) Orchid family Flowers - Usually solitary, at summit of stem, white, or the inflated white lip painted with purplish pink and white stripes; sepals rounded...
(Dodecatheon Meadia) Primrose family Flowers - Purplish pink or yellowish white, the cone tipped with yellow; few or numerous, hanging on slender, recurved pedicels in an umbel at top of a simple scap...
(Bursa Bursa-pastoris; Capsella Bursa-pastoris of Gray) Mustard family Flowers - Small, white, in a long loose raceme, followed by triangular and notched (somewhat heart-shaped) pods, the valves boat-...
NARROW-LEAVED LAUREL (K. angustifolia), and so on through a list of folk names testifying chiefly to the plant's wickedness in the pasture, may be especially deadly food for cattle, but it certainly i...
(Streptopus roseus) Lily-of-the-Valley family Flowers - Dull, purplish pink, 1/2 in. long or less, solitary, on threadlike, curved footstalks longer than the small flower itself, nodding from leaf-axi...
(Prunella vulgaris) Mint family Flowers - Purple and violet, in dense spikes, somewhat resembling a clover head; from 1/2 to 1 in. long in flower, becoming 4 times the length in fruit. Corolla tubular...
(Limonium Carolinianum; Statice Limonium of Gray) Plumbago family Flowers - Very tiny, pale, dull lavender, erect, set along upper side of branches. Calyx 5-toothed, tubular, plaited; corolla of 5 pet...
(Castilleja coccinea) Figwort family Flowers - Greenish yellow, enclosed by broad, vermilion, 3-cleft floral bracts; borne in a terminal spike. Calyx flattened, tubular, cleft above and below into 2 l...
(Magnolia Virginiana; M. glauca of Gray) Magnolia family Flowers - White, 2 to 3 in. across, globular, depressed, deliciously fragrant, solitary at ends of branches. Calyx of 3 petal-like, spreading s...