Seattle-area plants have decided fuck it, it’s spring, and they are springing. Boo and I went for a walk in the back yard during a rare break in the rain. I got dozens of lovely floral photos out of that brief wander. I never know what’s going to be in our yard – S drags new plants home constantly. He’s worse than me with rocks. But, like my rocks, the plants are generally pretty, so none of us shall complain. I do occasionally give him a mild teasing.
This particular lovely now dwells alongside our creek. It’s fairly short, and it’s contemplating the ground, and it’s a fairly subdued color from above, so you barely notice it’s there at first.
Well, I figured that wouldn’t do for a good Mystery Flora post, so I got down on the bank below it, squatted down, and shot up.
Intriguing!
Well, of course, I couldn’t see what I was doing with all the backlighting and glare from that evil yellow hurty thing washing out my camera screen, so I kept snapping away from various angles. This slight profile shows a single thorn on the stem.
Bit like a shark’s tooth, innit? And to me, the thing’s beginning to look a bit like a rose, even if there aren’t many petals to it.
Even the leaves look like the ones I’m so familiar with from spending lots of time smelling sweet roses. And I know from our native roses that a spectacular number of petals is not actually a requirement for a flower to be a rose. Then again, I know many flowers look like roses and aren’t. And I have no idea where this thing came from. S often rescues some very odd things from the gardens he’s hired to replace, and brings them home to live with us for a time. For instance, we have some rather weird black Japanese grass lurking about in various corners of the yard right now. You can see it in the background here as Boo samples an herb.
I’m sure your identifications will be better than my guesses. While you identify that, I’m going to get back to trying to wrestle an intelligible tale from those Mount St. Helens blast deposits.
A hellebore (aka winter rose). Possibly something of this variety, or just a particularly stunningly-coloured wild-type. Poisonous!!! But so pretty. And I love the name.
Oh yeah, thats a hellebore. The color is a good clue as well. It is also know as a “Lenten rose”.
Also nice to see a specimen I could recognize. Often the mystery flora aren’t seen around here. I’m in northern Virginia.