To gardeners, a weed is a plant growing where it isn’t wanted.  Chickweed is certainly a weed to anyone who tends lawn or garden, but what is it to the wildflower enthusiast?  Depends on which chickweed you mean. There are two alien invasive chickweeds, common chickweed (Stellaria media) and mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium fontanun).

But there are two native chickweeds that are a joy to see on the trail.  Here’s field chickweed (Cerastium arvense)

and here’s star chickweed (Stellaria pubera)   Chickweeds are in the Caryophyllaceae (pinks family).

Three different wildflowers, all in bloom now, fit the description.

toadshade Trillium sessile; Liliaceae (lily family)

pawpaw Asimina triloba; Annonaceae (custard apple family)

wild ginger Asarum canadense; Aristolochiaceae (birthwort family)   

Not all wildflowers are herbaceous; sometimes you need to look up and out.

redbud Cercis canadensis; Fabaceae (pea family)

sassafras Sassafras albidum; Lauraceae (laurel family)

flowering dogwood Cornus florida; Cornaceae (dogwood family)

Today, in search of American bladdernut, a tree that I didn’t even know existed until I ran into it (almost literally) last spring.

No Flower of the Day today.  Out of town and trying not to spend too much time on the computer.  I woke up last night thinking that I mis-identified a plant; the picture I posted last Wednesday might be swamp buttercup, not spring avens.

Obsessed much?

So far this year I’ve identified 48 species of flowering plants in 21 families.  Currently, the family with the most species is the Brassicaceae (mustard).  It will soon be overtaken by the rose and pea families, and eventually the aster family  (last year, one out of five species I identified was in the aster family).  But for now the brassicas rule.

Here are some of the cresses.  Apologies that most of the pictures are not so clean.  Sometimes I’m in too much of a hurry and just take snapshots of plants to prove that I saw them.

lyre-leaved rock cress (Arabis lyrata):

smooth rock cress (Arabis laevigata):

Pennsylvania bittercress (Cardamine pensylvanica):

hoary bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), an alien and common lawn weed:

field pennycress, aka peppergrass (Thlaspi arvensi), another alien (the characteristic upper stems leaves not yet open when I took this photo):