Mystery Flora: Sweet Spring Stars

Here’s a bit of Frivolous Friday fun with flowers! Aoife came at the exact right time of year. Springtime in Seattle is filled with blooms: it seems like absolutely everything wants to put on a display. Even on a short walk around the neighborhood, you can see thousands of lovely blooms in all shades. These delicate pink stars were falling over a fence, and so we of course had to stop to get a closer look.

Image shows a sheet of green leaves and clusters of small pink flowers spilling over a gray wooden fence.
Mystery Flora I

I really love plants like this that drape over things. And these are really fabulous on closer inspection, because the flowers are stars!

Image is a close view of one of the small clusters. The flowers are pink, star-shaped, with a very prominent central anther and smaller stamens.
Mystery Flora II

Wandering around new-to-me parts of Seattle this spring has reminded me how little I know about the native and ornamental plants around here. It seems like there’s about a billion different ones. And nearly all of them not only have beautiful flowers, but vibrant green leaves that are all like “LOOK AT US!! WE ARE VERY GREEN!!!!” It can be overwhelming at times.

Image shows the leaves, with some clusters of flowers visible. The leaves are fairly large, oval-shaped with a well-defined drip tip, and prominent veins.
Mystery Flora III

And, of course, the flowers are all, “We will not be outdone,” and sort of explode all over the place.

Image shows a large cluster of the flowers, overwhelming the leaves.
Mystery Flora IV

I swear to you, after growing up in Arizona, living here is like being transported to Faerie. I just wish I knew what everything was. But thanks to you, I can recognize about 1000x the plants I could identify when I first got here, so you all rock! Bonus rock if you know what our darling little stars are.

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Mystery Flora: Sweet Spring Stars
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2 thoughts on “Mystery Flora: Sweet Spring Stars

  1. 2

    these are really fabulous on closer inspection, because the flowers are stars!

    Or at least stellate in flower morphology* – stars being natural hydrogen fusion reactors in the sky! / Pedant mode. ;-)

    One of my local faves is the Astroloma humifusum (Native Cranberry : http://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:apni.taxon:696119#tab_gallery ) which has long red tubular flowers with a white star at its tip. Good Aussie groundcover plant and bush tucker although certainly not as gaudily spectacular as your pink stars here!

    @1. phidias : Thanks – certainly out of my jurisdiction here. A quick check of wiki & the links therefrom finds this Weigela florida** ‘Pink Princess’ :

    http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=e302 which looks very similar although your one seems to have more vivid colour – could be a natural individual variation or cultivar or maybe something to do with exact chemistry and fertiliser use maybe? I don’t really know enough to say.

    * See : http://theseedsite.co.uk/flowershapes.html

    ** Despite the name this plant comes from “northern China, Korea & Japan” or so the source linked says.

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