Mertensia virginica is a lovely spring ephemeral that I saw this morning at the Lakeshore Preserve. Earlier this month there were clumps of generic looking green leaves along woods trails in several spots in both the Arboretum and the Preserve. After several misidentifications, the purple and blue flowers have finally made this one easy to call. Many of these plants are now about 18 inches tall, with six to a dozen per cluster. Listen to this sentence from my flower guide, "the flowers are arranged in a 1-sided inflorescence that matures from the base outward (scorpioid cyme)." This means the flowers grow on one side of the twig, I think. At least the picture agrees with my translation. The indented bell shape of the flowers is extremely different from most others, and gives this plant a unique droopy appearance.
No comments:
Post a Comment