Wednesday, October 7, 2009

100 Species Challenge

1. Strawberry
2. Black-eyed Susan
3. Rose of Sharon, Althea
4. Potentilla
5. Vinca
6. Grape Hyacinth
7. Tiger Lily
8. Lespedeza
9. Plantain
10. English Ivy

11. Boneset

A couple of weeks ago while I was mowing the lawn I was thinking that I needed to identify these plants that are growing around the edges of our yard

and sort of hanging into the lawn itself, at which point I run over them with the lawn mower because they're in the way.

Except I kept forgetting about it, so I never looked them up.

But today I discovered that Susun Weed has youtube videos. Who knew? I love Susun Weed. She knows so much about plants and nutrition and healing. So I noticed that this one had been uploaded recently and was about flu (very topical) so I clicked on it:

HEY! That looks like the plant in our backyard!

I grabbed Annabeth and announced that we were going to go do some science -- plant ID time!

Googled various websites for more pictures like these. And discussed the ways we identify a plant -- how are the leaves placed? the flowers? What is special about what we're seeing? Are we in the normal range of this plant?

Too bad ours are a bit past their prime for making a tincture. If they're back next year, we'll be harvesting some. I think we had a lot this year due to the cool, wet summer -- that part of the yard tends to stay damp. In the meantime, I finally get that the name "boneset" isn't about broken bones. I need to look up and learn more common names of this plant.

1 comment:

movinginspirals said...

Interesting to learn the history of the name boneset... love the video. I'm enjoying this series of posts very much. You have me thinking of trying my hand at the 100 Species Challenge come spring.