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Monday, August 24, 2009

Plants of My Street Part 4: Late(r) Bloomers and Stonecrops

There have been so many orcas around to watch and report about, but that doesn't mean I've stopped noticing the plants here on San Juan Island. Especially on my walks to and from work, I've been keeping tabs on the flowers in bloom, so I thought it would be good to post an update in the series of Plants of My Street.

Stonecrops are a group of plants I was largely unaware of until this spring's trip with a botanist to Yellow Island, but now I notice members of this succulent family all over local rocky outcroppings. There are several different species just along the rocky cliff on my street. The most common is broad-leaved stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium):


Like most of the local stonecrops, broad-leaved stonecrop produces yellow flowers, shown here in bud form:


There are a couple other Sedum spp. too, such as this one, but I'm not sure of the specific species:


My first Plants of My Street post featured wildflowers back in the first week of May, but a lot of other later bloomers have emerged since then. Many of them these species were originally introduced but have since naturalized. Here are some highlights:

Orchard morning-glory (Convolvulus arvensis) with some smaller Robert geranium (Geranium robertianum) flowers. I love this shot - the geranium flowers look like stars against the darker background.


Broad-leaved peavine (Lathyrus latifolius), being checked out by a bumble bee (Bombus spp.)


Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota)


California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)


Dull Oregon grape (Mahonia nervosa) berries


Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

2 comments:

Warren Baker said...

Good to see the foxglove Monika. They finish in june here.

Monika said...

Warren - I've been collecting these photos over the last couple weeks, so our foxgloves are definitely all bloomed out by now. That particular photo was taken in July.