Thursday, June 18, 2009

Pretty pictures: roadside flowers

Spontaneous (?) roadside garden, just off of Highway 218 near Hills, IA.

It's unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be a video up on YouTube of the Camper Van Beethoven song "June," 'cause that would be a near-perfect accompaniment to this post. Oh well.

The husband had errands to run in Iowa City on Monday, and he'd also just spread polyurethane on the living room floor for, like, the sixtieth time (we're getting coat 61 as I write this), so I went with him to get away from the fumes. In the process, I wound up taking pictures of some of the plants along the side of the road. These are better ones. Many of the actual plants in question have been mentioned here last summer, specifically in this post, so I tried to at least find different ways of photographing the same plants.

Securigera varia, purple crownvetch.


Lotus corniculatus, birdfoot deervetch.


NOID. Didn't know what it was last year, either.


It does seem like there's a lot more of it this summer than last, though, for whatever that's worth. It's pretty, though difficult to photograph.


3 comments:

John de said...

Beautiful pictures!

Your purple flowers are Cow Vetch (Vicia cracca), which I really love. Not a native wildflower, but so striking.

Happy Hermit (happilyhiddenhermit@gmail.com) said...

I love these photos , and am glad to know the names. We moved to IC last august , so I didn't really get a chance to meet all the local flowers.

Being from texas I am used to the colorful roadside flowers , now that the local flowers here have started in I feel more at home.

Much Appreciative

Hermes said...

What lovely pictures, particularly that first one. Over here so many roadside plants are sprayed out of existence.