Question for the Hive Mind: Purple Flower

My mother would like to know what this is, and I have no idea:

Location: shady yard, Iowa. She didn't plant it deliberately but would like more of them. Anybody recognize it?

UPDATE: Thanks.

By the way: Mom acknowledges that it maybe isn't the healthiest larkspur in the world, but considering that she's done nothing to care for it (she never even planted it there in the first place), she figures it's doing pretty well for itself.

Pretty pictures: Purple and Blue

I've been taking tons of pictures lately, and then not doing much with them, blogularly speaking. Part of this is because I've been taking so many that the thought of trying to sort them all out makes me exhausted before I even start. Today, I'm going to at least try to get a few of them out of the way.

Hyacinthus orientalis NOID. In somebody's yard, here in town.

Glechoma hederacea. Ditto. I like this picture not because it's a great photo in and of itself, but because it's closeish to an accurate depiction of the weird luminous quality G. hederacea flowers have in certain lighting situations. Like all blue/purple things, they rarely photograph in anything close to accurate color, but I'll settle for them glowing slightly. The leaves are reddish, incidentally, because this photo was taken when it was still pretty cold at night, and Glechoma turns reddish in the cold. Like a lot of plants do.

Bacopa 'Colossal Blue.' Or possibly Sutera 'Colossal Blue.' I've lost track of which one is supposed to be current. This was at the ex-job, and whether or not I find it interesting depends mostly on what I'm comparing it to. So like, comparing it to the overall options available in the outdoor annual category, I think it kinda sucks. But comparing it to the other Bacopa/Sutera varieties I'm familiar with, all of which were white, it's interesting. A quick googling suggests that I should actually be even less impressed than I am, because this is far from the only lavender Bacopa in the world.

Lobelia erinus 'Laguna Sky Blue.' This was more impressive in person than in the photograph. I'm not sure what went wrong with the picture. I don't think I'm likely to try to grow Lobelias again, having had uniformly negative experiences with them, but there's no arguing that they're pretty.

Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost.' Also at the ex-job, and unfortunately a little bit past prime bloom, but nevertheless blue, so it fits, so here it is.

Delphinium 'Summer Skies Pacific Giant.' Delphinium cultivar names appear to be getting as ridiculous as those of orchids.

Viola sp. From our lawn. The plant's nothing special, but I thought this picture turned out remarkably well. Hence my remarking on it.

Viola sp. I don't actually remember where this one was taken. They're everywhere right now, you know.

Scilla siberica? An older photo, from someone's lawn. Really like this picture too.

Anchusa arvensis. Taken at a garden center that's not the ex-job. I hadn't actually heard of this before this year, and now that I've heard of it and seen it, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Pretty pictures: Blue

I know. We've done this already. Very recently, in fact. But hey, can I help it that suddenly all the flowers are blue lately?

Commelina communis. Very pleased with how this photo turned out. The new camera has a tendency to de-saturate the color; things often look washed-out and dull, especially after they've been uploaded to the blog. I can pump up the color saturation if need be, but that doesn't always work out that well. This photo didn't need much modification.

Okay, this is a cheat. (Puschkinia scilloides var. libanotica? Scilla sibirica) It isn't blooming now. But I had the picture from this spring that I never used, and it fits here. So.

The park closest to the house (there are at least three in town, which is two more than one would expect for a town this size) has a bunch of chicory growing along the edge of the parking lot it borders. Said chicory is apparently being deliberately encouraged; I'm pretty sure it could have been mowed or weed-whacked if this were a priority. And it is awesome.



Really this whole post was an elaborate excuse to post lots of pictures of Cichorum. I really like it. If I can figure out how, and if it's left standing long enough, I intend to take seeds and start them in the back yard somewhere, though that's a lot of ifs.



This is a partial cheat, in that this photo wasn't taken this summer, or even this year. In 2008, well before we'd even seen our current house, the husband tracked down an old schoolhouse that was for sale out in the country southwest (?) of Iowa City somewhere, and we went and looked at it, but nobody was home when we got there, so we settled for just looking around the outside. These were planted outside, along with pink Achillea, and I have never had any idea what they were. We visited in early July, so they're something which should be blooming now, though I haven't recognized them anywhere in town, and these are, unfortunately, the best pictures I have.

The owner actually pulled up while we were milling around aimlessly outside, and showed us around the inside, and it was extremely charming -- one neighbor, across the street, and then no others as far as the eye could see. It was up on a hill, with a beautiful view. The floor plan was weird: basically there was a tiny kitchen you walked into, a tinier bathroom just off the kitchen, and then one big huge room with maybe 16-20 foot (4.9-6.1 m) ceilings, hardwood floors, tall windows all the way across the south side, and part of the west side. It was amazing. The owner was visibly anxious about selling it, and I remember her asking whether we were really serious about it, and not to say we were if we actually weren't. We said we were, and in the moment, this was honest, but after we left, when we were talking about it, we realized that there was no way we could -- it was lovely, but needed too many repairs, especially to the basement. I've hoped ever since that ride home that she managed to sell it. She was really nice.

But so anyway. If you know what the flowers are, say something.

UPDATE: Kitty, in comments, suggests that it could be an Anchusa. From looking around on-line, I'm thinking possibly A. azurea?

SECOND UPDATE: Or perhaps Delphinium grandiflorum, says Don. Hard to confirm or reject either of these absolutely, since both Anchusa and Delphinium would fit within the range of photos kicked up by Google and davesgarden.com. The Delphinium looks a little closer in overall size and foliage.

THIRD UPDATE: Okay, okay, geez, it's Delphinium.

Okay, this is a Delphinium, right? I mean, I thought that's what it was when I first saw it, but then when I went to verify this from on-line pictures, I couldn't find anything that had foliage that matched this. Then I was going to call it a NOID, but that seemed stupid, since the flowers matched a lot of the Delphinium photos so well. It seemed really obviously a Delphinium, just with the wrong foliage. So could someone please assure me that I got it right? I don't care about an exact ID; I just want to know that my instincts about genus were correct.

Pretty picture: Delphinium 'New Millennium Stars'

Don't have a lot to say about this, aside from the obvious (that it's pretty). This particular variety has taken its sweet time to bloom -- the perennials are already discounted, for chrissakes -- but I suppose you'd have to say it was worth the wait.

Both of these pictures will get much larger if opened in a new window. That was accidental (I'd set the camera to take large pictures for a different thing, and then forgot about it until after I'd taken these), but it worked out well. The picture below is especially cool in extreme close-up.

Pretty picture: assorted blooming plants from work, Part 2 of 2

My camera is frustratingly unable to capture certain shades of purple accurately. The pictures may be crystal-clear and gorgeous, but all the red always gets sucked out of the purple. It's actually kind of a problem. Adding red with Irfanview doesn't help, because the red also gets added to everything else: it's no use getting the flower the right color if the clouds are pink and the leaves are yellow. It's frustrating, but I soldier bravely onward.

Daucus carota, Queen Anne's lace
There are some plants that people seem to love to hate. Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), or perhaps kudzu (Pueraria lobata), for example. Queen Anne's lace seems to be sort of the opposite: it's the plant people kind of hate to love. It's not particularly practical -- you can't really eat it or make baskets out of it or repel insects with it -- but it is, undeniably, pretty in that Julia set kind of fractally way, and that appears to be enough.

We don't actually sell this at work, but I felt the post needed another picture, so it got in. (I'm actually a little surprised we don't; it wouldn't be our first invasive plant, see next picture.)

Eichhornia crassipes
This one actually disturbs me a little bit. We do sell water hyacinth, despite the fact that it's a known invasive and is very disruptive in the ecosystems to which it's been introduced (via blocking light from deeper water, starving the water of oxygen, displacing native plants, and so forth). Granted that it wouldn't be invasive here, since it's not able to survive freezes (though I haven't seen it definitely stated that the seeds, which are plentiful, couldn't overwinter), but it's not like a fair amount of damage couldn't be done in a single season, too, under the right circumstances. On the other hand, the flowers are quite pretty. There's a weird peacock sort of quality to the top petal that intrigues me.

Angelonia 'Serena Purple'
I actively dislike Angelonia, for unfair reasons. Our entire stock (four or five different varieties) got a bad spider mite infestation toward the end of the spring and couldn't really be snapped out of it, so we had to throw it out. Or at least we wound up throwing most of it out; I think the plant in this picture is one that we managed to salvage. It's an attractive plant when it's healthy, but it goes downhill so fast.

Salvia nemorosa 'Marcus'
This one's nice. I'm not really a fan of any of the millions of different Salvia smells, but this one is less offensive than most, and the blooms are a genuinely pretty color, and seem to last for a long time. So it's not so bad.

Delphinium 'Purple Passion'
This is the most shameful example of the camera not giving me the right color when it comes to blues and purples. The real thing is both darker and redder. I've not actually spent much time dealing with, or noticing, the Delphiniums, until the last couple weeks, so I don't have much to add to that. I suppose I could say that I like the word. Delphinium. It's nice.