Category Archives: Plants

Passionflower

Found in the woods on 12 June 2008:

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Here’s one just opening on 4 June:

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There are still a few blooming. The flowers look nice on the plant, but don’t last if you pick them.

Many of them have already made fruits. I hear you can eat those.

Burning Some Piney Woods

Every few years it’s good to burn the woods! If you don’t burn piney woods, they turn into oak woods. Burning cuts down on the small oaks, vines, and undergrowth, puts potash in the soil, and lets the pines come up. Longleaf especially benefits from burning, since it survives burns especially well, and it only sprouts if its seeds land on bare mineral soil (not leaf litter or vine buildup).

I lit these woods 20 February 2008. Pictures by Gretchen.

Yellow jessamine

What are those yellow vine flowers that smell like jasmine? Yellow jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens), native to the U.S. southeast (and the South Carolina state flower, although these examples grow in Lowndes County, Georgia).

But don’t eat them; they contain a compound similar to strychnine and said to be as effective as hemlock. Nonetheless, sometimes used as a sedative.

Pictures by Gretchen.

What are Those Lilies?

The pictures of Easter Lilies from a few days ago obviously aren’t the big Japanese lilies commonly sold as Easter Lilies; they’re a native plant, found in their native habitat in Lowndes County, Georgia.

Everybody around here recognizes them, and seems to call them either Easter Lilies, or “those lilies you see in the ditch by the road.” Nobody seems to know any other name for them, neither common nor botanic.

So Gretchen and I journeyed two hours south to the strange land of Gainesville, Florida, to attend the Gopher Tortoise Council spring meeting, taking a few samples of “those lilies” in hopes that the assembled botanists and biologists could identify them. And they could! Continue reading →