By Janice Lindsay
Contributing Writer
At first I thought I was speaking with Mother Nature herself. I had phoned Mother Nature’s Florist and a woman answered. Who else could she be?
But I soon realized that this woman was an imposter. I had phoned to order flowers for a couple about to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary. I requested a basket of daisies because, I explained, they were married when wild daisies were blooming and they must have seen daisies on their way to the wedding.
The real Mother Nature would love that idea.
The phony Mother Nature showed no interest. I’m sure she knew all about gorgeous cultivated blossoms growing in her greenhouse or shipped there in refrigerated trucks. But probably, on her way to work, she didn’t notice the hundreds of wildflowers that the real Mother Nature has sprinkled along New England roadways, blossoms that are cheerful, varied, and resourceful. Anybody can enjoy them. For free. All you have to do is look.
Consider the wildflowers. They grow without human help. Each finds its own little niche – moist or dry soil, sun, shade, forest, meadow, beach, riverside, mountaintop, sidewalk crack. Isn’t it miraculous that, while millions of seeds must fall in inhospitable places, so many find exactly the right spot?
And so many have chosen to grow near my very own house! Violets, buttercups, star flowers, clovers, blue-flag iris, daisies, yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, asters, goldenrods, and so many more. They blossom generously, whether any human person cares or even sees them. All they require from me is: Nothing. Don’t cut them down, don’t pull them up.
So I admit that I, in my comfortable shoes and practical hat, on roadside or on trail, I might stop when I spy a blossom I can’t immediately identify. In the past, I traveled with a flower book. Now I snap a photo with my phone and take it home to the books. There are apps that identify a wildflower on the spot: I haven’t added one of those yet. (I have only the app for birds, but that’s another story.)
Wildflowers can be so confusing. My beginner’s wildflower book offers 658 photographs of flowering plants common in eastern North America. The more advanced book illustrates 1,553 “of the most common species” in North America; that is, only the most common 1,553 species, figuring that a normal person doesn’t need to be able to identify 50 kinds of sunflowers or 81 types of buttercups.
Still, I crouch beside the road examining a tiny white daisy-like flower with long thin petals, snap its photo, and can’t find it in my books.
Sometimes I stop worrying about the flower’s name and just enjoy its company.
Speaking of names, Mother Nature might have designed the wildflowers, but she must have had human help naming them, help that was not always that helpful. We have lovely, flowing names that delight both the tongue and the soul, like day lily, forget-me-not, and Canada mayflower. But it’s disappointing to spot a cluster of tiny white five-point-star blossoms shining in a thicket and discover that it’s called bastard toadflax. And who named cow vetch? Or the silver-leaf scurf pea? Or the spiny-leaved cow thistle?
I wish I could reach the real Mother Nature on the phone. I’d ask if she would like help re-naming some of her colorful creations. But the big question I would ask is the same question I ponder when I consider our amazing varieties of birds, fishes, insects, and other wild creatures. Why did she think we deserve so many?
Contact jlindsay@tidewater.net
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