Ok, admittedly I am straying from "gardening" here...at the intermission of my daughters' horse show today, I took a walk along the front road boundary of the property to look at .....
WEEDS!!
Of course, I had to take pictures!! This is what I found...
I thought this was "Queen Anne's Lace," but I was wrong! It is actually Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) flowers are white with 5 petal and no sepals, and it's biennial. One plant can produce over 30,000 seeds!!! Plants, when eaten, are poisonous to most animals. Poison hemlock is native to Europe and was introduced into North America in the 1800s as an ornamental.
This is Common mullein, a biennial forb native to Eurasia and Africa. Plants are unbranched and can grow to more than 6.6 ft. (2 m) tall. The first year plants develop as a basal rosette of felt-like leaves covered with woolly hairs. The plant bolts in the second year. The fruit is a ovoid capsule that splits releasing many seeds that germinate in water. Common mullein was introduced to North America in the mid-1700s as a fish poison.
I have no earthly idea what the heck this thing is...but I sure think it is cool looking! Do you know what it is????
On another note, it's hard to believe, but I actually had to water today! As much rain and showers we have had this week, the Virginia, almost summer sun, zaps the moisture right out of the soil. A GardenGoddess's work is never done!!
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