WE DON’T HIBERNATE #2
Where or where is spring? Aaurg! Winter won’t go away. Nevertheless we’re busy.
Here are a few pink-flowered plants to remind you that there’s hope.
Welcome spring with Geum triflorum Prairie smoke, hardy in Z 1-8 meaning it survives everything everywhere. Its hair-like, pink seed heads, like the hair on a troll doll, follow the purplish-pink dangling cup-shaped flowers. Native Americans used this native American plant to cure coughs, sores, wounds and “fuzzy thinking.” The roots both cured vaginal yeast infections and made a love potion! Hmmm. 1st collected for gardens in 1609. And Meriwether Lewis collected it on the Weippe Prairie, at the villages of the Nez Perce in Idaho.
Lilium speciosum rubrum Z 4-9
You know how in late summer the garden looks a little tired? This perks it up with fragrant, deep pink spotted blossoms with recurved petals. English periodical Botanical Register described it: “surely if there is anything, not human, which is magnificent in beauty, it is this plant.” Collected on Deschema Island off the coast of Japan in the 1690’s.
Allium karataviense Turkestan onion Z 5-9
Award winning Allium from the Stans – (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afganistan). It flowers in spring with a softball sized blossom. But to me the rosette of wide, glaucous, arching leaves is its feature. Deer and rabbit resistant, but bees and butterflies like its pollen. 1st described in 1875.
Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’ Hairy chervil, Cow parsley Z 5-7
I love this for its airy, rose-pink umbels and fern-like apple-scented, fragrant foliage. It flowers in spring to early summer. Delicate-looking, but it’s not. 1st described in 1671.
Stay tuned for more ‘we don’t hibernate’ Plants!