One of the first spring wildflowers, Purple Archangel or Purple Dead-Nettle can take advantage of a warm period in the middle of the winter to bloom for a few days. It is a very attractive flower on a small scale; as weeds go, this one is hard to object to very much.
See the full description on the Lamium purpureum page at the reference site.
Groundhog or no groundhog, we are having an early spring. Hairy Bittercress is one of the first wildflowers to bloom, and it is all over the place now. Here we see the basal rosette of leaves that is prominent early in the season; later the flowering stems will be longer and leafier.
For more pictures and a full description, see the Cardamine hirsuta page in our reference site.
A member of the knotweed or buckwheat family that likes damp ground; these were growing in a swampy meadow near Wexford. It has the clusters of tiny flowers typical of the family, but the ball-shaped—almost clover-like—clusters are distinctive. The leaves are shaped like elongated arrowheads, which gives the species its name in both Latin and English.
The plant is native to the whole eastern half of North America; curiously it is also native to East Asia.
Formerly Aster puniceus. These common blue asters like slopes above streams and squishy wet ground. These grew on the bank of a brook near Wexford. They are quite variable: Britton & Brown say that “races differ in pubescence, leaf-form, and leaf-serration,” meaning that anything you say about the shape of the leaves or how rough or hairy they are has to be followed by the words “or not.” The leaves of these plants were rough and sandpapery, and the stem quite hairy. The name puniceum, or Punic (“having to do with Phoenicia”), was doubtless suggested by the deep Tyrian-purple color of the stems.
Butter-and-Eggs is very common in the city, and along roadsides in the suburbs. It can sprout almost anywhere; it blooms for a long time; and it seems impervious to abuse. It’s one of our most beautiful weeds, and if it were at all rarer it would be a treasured garden flower. Father Pitt has accumulated a number of pictures of Linaria vulgaris since 2011, which was the last time we looked at this plant on this site.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
LINÀRIA [Toum.] Hill. TOADFLAX. Calyx 5-parted. Corolla spurred at base on the lower side (in abnormal specimens sometimes regularly 5-spurred). Capsule thin, opening below the summit by 1 or more pores or chinks. Seeds many. —Herbs, with at least all the upper leaves alternate (in ours), flowering in summer. (Name from Linum, the Flax, which some species resemble in their foliage.)
Erect or ascending, with narrow entire leaves.
Flowers yellow.
L. vulgaris Hill. (RAMSTED, BUTTER AND EGGS.) Glabrous, erect, 1.3 m. or less high; leaves pale, linear or nearly so, extremely numerous, subaltérnate; raceme dense; corolla 2-3 cm. long or more, including the slender subulate spur; seeds winged. — Fields and roadsides, throughout our range. (Nat from Eu.)
