Thursday, May 3, 2012

Cactus Flower


I'm always surprised when anything blooms out here of its own free will. Appropriately enough, this yucca flower's petals look like little licks of flame. So pretty! But, oddly, scent-free. (Yeah: ouch.)

At any rate, I remain snowed under with work (or should that be blown over, given the time of year?), but will get around to say hello to everyone regardless.

What wildflowers, if any, bloom in your neck of the woods? 

27 comments:

fishy said...

Right now you can get high just walking outside! The magnolias, jasmine, roses and honeysuckle are all in full scent...er...bloom. It is glorious if a bit intense. In Zone 7 we have so many wild bloomers it would not be possible to name them all.

One of our classics is wisteria which will completely drape a hundred foot pine in purple panicles and scent the air for miles. It is a vision.

Karl said...

Good afternoon Moi,

We have lots of little yellow things and little purple things and little white things. I don't know the name of any of them. There pretty and the Bees like them. That's good enough for me.

Personally, I'm waiting for haltertopus bodacious and bikinitopus maximus to come into bloom. Should happen very soon. It's one of the benefits of living on the water.

Karl said...

There = They're. Where's Czar when I need him?

Jenny said...

We got nothing wild that blooms this time of the year. *sigh* My tulips are finally up and I think they could use a sweater. Sorry you're still snowed under, but I'm glad you're busy and making $$.

That's a pretty yucca.

LẌ said...

That reminded me of the Torch Ginger I had in my yard on Maui.

Here in TX, the Bluebonnets have just finish blooming. Everything will wither away in the Hellish heat soon...

moi said...

Fishy: Jasmine! One of my favorite smells. Some people think it's too heady/fleshy, but to me it's just one of the all-time divine smells.

Karl: I have a lot of little purple, white, and yellow things, too. So do you have your spy glass out for the other two species? I can just see you, waving all friendly-like . . .

Boxer: I had an amazing bloom of tulips this year. The bulbs the previous Southern Belle owner put in years and years ago. I regularly neglect them and planted my bearded iris right over their heads, but this year, they sure showed me.

lx: Similar! I wonder if they're in the same family? This one is a yucca in my yard that blooms every year, but I've never see it this fiery before. Usually, it's almost uniformly yellow.

fishy said...

Your Yucca is very stately and dramatic looking. Is this a once a year event? Or is there a blooming season?

LOL @ Karl

czar said...

Karl: Czar's right there with you -- often typing too fast and not thinking and making the same mistake. In my profession, such a mistake is dangerous -- not your presumptive kind of danger, but lethal nonetheless.

I've been making smoothies lately (fruit and green), and I've read some recipes saying that dandelion greens are good for you. I pulled up a few in the yard yesterday, and sure enough, they look exactly like the turnip greens I've been using. I'll wait until next year to incorporate them, though.

moi said...

Fishy: It tends to bloom every year, but I've never seen it this red.

Czar: You need to talk to Boxer about smoothies. She's the Queen of mixing all that healthy stuff together into one tasty (ah-hem) concoction. (I love dandelion greens in salads.)

Buzz Kill said...

I have a bunch of clover coming up on the part of the lawn the voles haven't torn up. If there was anything else growing wild - the backhoe took care of it.

moi said...

Buzz!: Are you in Home Improvement Hell yet?

Anonymous said...

Hi Moi,

Missed you on Haiku Monday, hope you get some time off this weekend.

I tried to post an answer to your question, but I guess it did not work. I put up a bunch of photos of what is blooming here at my page called http://tidewrack.wordpress.com/, to answer your question.

That yucca is striking. What is the species? All we have here is a white one with lily-like flowers.

Serendipity

Aunty Belle said...

Yucca? Can ya eat that?

We's in full flower--even the weeds: clover, dandelion, lantana. But..back to yucca--the biggest florida weed is the palmetto bush. An' the onliest revenge that kills it is to knock it down, yank out the heart--hearts of palm--an' feast on it!!

Ya have a new blog??

New post on Porch--also flora themed.

Happy ya have work, but miss the playtime.

moi said...

Serendipity: Pretty flowers! Thanks for sharing. I believe this is Yucca harrimaniae.

Aunty: Bwahahahahaha! And we all know what HIDES in those palmetto trees, too, right? Juan Carlos and all his leetle frien's. Yeeesh. Yuck. Shiver.

Aunty Belle said...

Moi, uh-huh--all the leetle frien's is why Aunty doan allow no palm nuthin' in the yard. I say an orgy of hearts of palm eatin' will go a long way toward pest control in this state.

BlazngScarlet said...

Oooo .... that's a purty yucca!
Anything that I had blooming was killed with the frost and snow I had last week.
I wish I had Fishy's jasmine, honeysuckle and magnolias! Those are 3 of my favorite scents ... and something I miss about living down south.

*sigh*

moi said...

Aunty: Yes. But let's not GO THERE about the folks that eat the lil bugs, too. Double YEW!

Blazng: Those are three of my favorite flower smells as well. Along with iris and lilac, which, fortunately, we have in plenty around here. BTW, have you ever sniffed Annick Goutal's Le Chèvrefeuille? It's a gorgeous honeysuckle-based fragrance. About the best that I have sniffed.

grins said...

That is really beautiful. We have tons of agave products in stores here.
Growing up here, I love the sage and Indian paint brushes.
I'm actually thinking of planting Mountain flowers. I haven't much else to do.

czar said...

Come to think of cactus flower, I've been waiting for a 1970 version of Goldie Hawn to bloom outside.

Pam said...

Hi Ms. Moi, this is beautiful. I always liked yucca trees, my mom used to have them in our "rock garden" ... those blooms are really unique. Around here, the wild flower is a purple thistle that evidently is very bad to have infiltrate your area. And they are rampant with the rain and early Spring. But we had our first tiger lily bloom this week and lush, green grass is a joy to my heart. I don't expect it to last long as if it is this hot now, what will summer bring? Yellow grass, that's what. Glad you are busy in a good way. My new boss was out in NM this past weekend.

moi said...

Curm: We get a lot of Indian Paintbrush, too. I love it. The thing with most wildflowers around here is that everything is so small and low to the ground. You really have to LOOK.

Czar: A 2012 version of Goldie isn't bad, either.

Pam: Oh, my lawn! What a horror show. I really need to get someone in to make it all better. We have purple thistle as well, but our big showing is the yearly bloom of towering sunflowers in July/August along the roadsides and in the fields.

Aunty Belle said...

Is thar a Haiku host this week?

Karl said...

@ Aunty Belle: Yes ma'am.

http://grumpygranny.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/haiku-monday-challenge-crossroads/

BlazngScarlet said...

I have not .... but I will have to search it out and give it a sniff.

chickory said...

i love that Yucca flower and youre right it is like a flame. I thought your land was astonishing and I really want to come back. the fragrant west is how I think of it. Like Fishy said, the south is very floral. I can smell honeysuckle everywhere and that really is a wild plant. We have buttercups and daisies - lots of pink sedge and that horrible purple thing Ihate but hummingbirds love. Cant wait until you get out from under and start rippin on the culture again.

LaDivaCucina said...

I still don't have a handle on the native flowers of Southern Floduh because, I NEVER see them! I might as well be in Beverly Hills, so many tropical flowers are planted but native? Who knows? Date palms dot the street but they are certainly not from here! I actually have a book on "A Gardener's Guide to Florida's Native Plants." One day when I'm riding my bike in the Everglads and not swatting at little bitty bitey black flies or avoiding lazy sun baking alligators, I might flip through it.

Meanwhile, I'll tell you about a camping trip I took with my first husband around Australia...rain, rain and more rain! In fact, the news said every where we went, "It's the first year that river ran so high..." "Most rain we've seen in a decade...." Well, the rain was good for one thing because I got to see all the wildflowers in bloom in the desert of Uluru (or Ayers Rock as the whities say) Huge fields of purple, white and yellow flowers blanketed the desert! I'll never forget it.

moi said...

Blazng: You can order a sample for $3.00 on Lucky Scent, so you don't need to commit to a whole bottle, which is a little spendy.

Chickory: Come back, come back, come back!

La Diva: I bet seeing that desert bloom was something! We get that around here on occasion. One day, dry and dusty, the next the ground is a carpet of color. The most bizarre thing that ever happened after a monsoon, though, was the eruption of hundreds of toads! I thought it was the 'pocalpyse!