June Flower List

Today is Prairial 30 in the French Republican calendar and the last day of Prairial, the month which means meadow in French. Next month is Messidor, meaning harvest.

Since it’s a day ending in 0 in the French Republican calendar, it’s associated with a tool, not a plant, and the tool for today is the Hand Cart (Chariot in French—doesn’t that sound a whole lot more romantic than Hand Cart?)

But instead of writing about hand carts, I went out and walked around the block and noted down every flower in bloom on my block:

Trees:
Dogwood
Linden (finally!)

Weed:
Hairy cats-paw
Deadly nightshade
Bindweed
Knapweed

Almost over with:
Iris—I picked the last one from my garden and brought it home
Rhododendron

Flowers I know:
Spanish lavender (the kind that looks like it has purple wings)
St James Wort
Fuchsias (on balcony)
Bells of Ireland
Foxgloves
Roses
Peonies
Forget-me-nots
Petunias
Snapdragons
Calendula
Alyssum
Pinks (dianthus)
Lupine
Herb Robert (which may actually be a Dovefoot Geranium)
Yarrow
Carnations
Feverfew
Candytuft
Poppies
Hollyhock
Jupiter’s beard, St. James wort
Buttercups

Flowers I don’t know:
blue star flower (sometimes striped blue and white)
purple-pink flower on long stalk (a mallow?)
plant with silver leaves and yellow daisy-like flowers
dark purple tiny trumpets on bush (maybe a penstemon?)
tiny orange flowers on small dark bluish-green ground cover
purple bells on long slender stalks (also come in white)
white trumpets;
pale groundcover with little yellow flowers
silver fern-like leaves and white daisy-like flowers (same as number 3 above?)
yellow flowers that grow bunched up close on the stalk, dark green leaves
tiny purple flowers on a plant with striped yellow and green leaves radiating from a central point like stars (I think this is a wallflower)
long purple spires on tall slender stalks (this just bloomed in my garden too!)

I found a great website that can help me identify some of these unknown plants:
www.jkssite.com

But sometimes I like the names I make up more. I have been calling the ceanothus, the grape jelly plant, because it smells like grape jelly, long before I learned its real name and
I still prefer mine.