The pale cream flowers are distinctive, although occasional deep yellow variants occur. This is the largest-flowered cinquefoil that commonly grows wild in our area. It came from Europe and has established itself in vacant lots, unmown fields, and other places where humans have altered the landscape. These plants were blooming in a vacant lot in Beechview.
The leaves have five or seven parts, almost but not completely divided at the center.
Sometimes called “Wild Morning Glory,” Hedge Bindweed loves hedges and chain-link fences. It is very weedy, but its flowers at least repay us for the nuisance. White is the usual color, but pink-and-white bicolors are fairly common. These plants were blooming in Beechview.
For a description of the species, see the Calystegia sepium reference page.
A member of the mint family whose furry little flowers grow in the leaf axils, forming a column in the center of the plant while the leaves project perpendicularly. The flowers themselves look soft and fuzzy, but the rest of the plant is unpleasantly prickly. This dense stand was growing along Fifth Avenue in Soho.
For a description of the species, see the Leonurus cardiaca reference page.
Dayflowers have intensely blue flowers (from which the Japanese make an intensely blue dye) that open from a crescent-shaped spathe and are gone by the middle of the afternoon. Usually only one flower opens in the spathe at a time, but once in a while we see two or even three together.
For a description of the species, see the Commelina communis reference page.
Lemon Balm, or just Balm, was brought over to this country for its delightful scent and flavor and for its supposed medicinal properties. It was believed to cure melancholy, among other things, and certainly gathering a handful and making a tisane from it is a good way to raise one’s spirits. Often planted in herb gardens, it easily escapes, and the tiny seeds wash downhill and form colonies anywhere they find a foothold. It can become quite weedy, but its delightful scent and many uses make it hard to resent. These plants were growing along a fence and by a sidewalk in Beechview.
The name Melissa, from the Greek word for a bee, reminds us that this plant makes bees happy, too, and who doesn’t want happy bees?
For a description of the species, see the Melissa officinalis reference page.
