Flowers of Eastern Maryland

Warning! This is a long post. The individuals responsible for this site take no responsibility for any lack of productivity, severe boredom, anaphylactic shock, or any other mishaps, maiming of small children, or shenanigans that result from the reading of this post. You have been warned.

As the title indicates, this post is dedicated to the flowers of eastern Maryland, specifically the flowers to be found in and around my parent's yard. And yes, for those of you who are wondering, this is a feeble attempt on my part to find something to do with my new digital camera.

I'm happy to report the following:

• Total time spent preparing this post: around 4 hours of photography, research, and writing.
• Menial household tasks avoided by claiming to be "working on something" (which my family, of course, inferred to be schoolwork as I knew they would) : 7
• Number of sodas/glasses of tea consumed while writing this post: 3
• Number of excellent pieces of web-based literature created: 1

Hydrangea

Family: Hydrangeaceae
Genus: Hydrangea
Species: macrophylla

Cultivar: All Summer Beauty

Bloom Color:
Rose/Mauve
Blue-Violet

These are especially significant to Melissa and myself because hydrangea were the flowers we had hanging off the ends of the pews at our wedding. It's too bad mom's weren't in bloom at the time of the wedding, we could have saved a bunch of money on our car insurance... I mean, flowers.

Daylily

Family: Hemerocallidaceae
Genus: Hemerocallis

Cultivar: Bonanza
Introduced by Ferrick 1954

As their name implies, these flowers are only open during the day and close up each night. However, I think ours may be a tad rebellious; I found a group of them open well after dark the other night. Naturally I was inclined to ground them for breaking curfew, but they're already permanently grounded so I was left with little recourse.

Jackman Clematis

Family: Ranunculaceae
Genus: Clematis
Species: x jackmanii

Bloom Color: Purple

These are a favorite of mine. This plant is actually a climbing vine, which has currently climbed all over an entire 6' x 10' section of the fence around mom and dad's pool. I zoomed in quite a bit for this picture; the original picture was just a massive wall of purple flowers.

Yucca plant

Family: Agavaceae
Genus: Yucca
Species: flaccida

Danger: Plant has spines or sharp edges; use extreme caution when handling

Bloom Color: White/Near White

Okay, perspective time. The black fence that can be seen in the background is 6 feet tall. You do have to take into account that the Yucca plant is in the foreground and therefore would look taller than the fence anyway, but I can tell you that I am 6'2" and this plant has at least a good two feet on me.

The thing I like the most about this Yucca plant is the fact that two years ago this plant was badly diseased and therefore mom wanted it removed; it was just ugly: the leaves were all withery and spotted, it never bloomed, and mom was having landscaping done around the pool and wanted it taken out.

So she hired a plant hitman (aka: me). Mom has often employed my services in the past when she's had plants which needed to "disappear." She likes working with me because I'm efficient, affordable, and I don't ask a lot of questions. All I need to know is my target's location.

Unfortunately, Yucca plants don't kill so easily. Apparently, the Yucca plant is comprised of the portion seen in the picture and a massive subterranean bulb. I discovered this in my attempt to remove the plant and ended up removing over 40 lbs. worth of Yucca bulb. Obviously, I missed some.

On a positive note, however, the plant is no longer diseased, it's 3 times the size it was before, and now puts up multiple stalks with blooms each year. I can only imagine the size of the bulb now...

Incidentally, (I realize I've spent quite a few inches talking about the Yucca plant, so a few more won't hurt. ) for anyone who is interested, I highly recommend looking up the Yucca plant. In doing some research on names of plants for this post I was very interested to learn that the Yucca plant actually comes in quite a few different varieties, some of which are actually large tree-like plants that I would probably have described as "palm trees" before.

Spirea

Family: Rosaceae
Genus: Spiraea
Species: x bumalda

Cultivar: Anthony Waterer
Synonym:Spiraea japonica

The spirea plant is a small leafy shrub which produces thousands of these little pinkish flowers on each bush. I've been quite interested to watch these plants; as the summer has progressed their flowers have gone from a very light pink to a much darker, almost magenta, shade.

Azalea

Family: Ericaceae
Genus: Rhododendron

Honestly, I posted this picture, not because it's that great an example of an Azalea bush (those green leafy stalks are actually weeds), but because I was very impressed with my new camera's ability to capture the bee. I've got a neat photo of this same bee where I was able to stop his wings by using an insanely fast shutter speed, but the picture itself is fairly unattractive. All this talk of bees kind of makes me want some pickles...¹

A special thanks to Dave's Garden (No relation, but he does have a rockin' name.) for providing much of the information contained in this post. The site is actually an amazing source of information; I've only repeated the smallest selection of the information they provide.

-Dave

¹For those who don't get that joke: shame on you for not being a regular reader! You can click here to become one of the cool people who are in the know!