Thursday, April 8, 2010

I don't walk through Fern Valley for three days and everything flowers!

If you enter from the back, that is from the parking lot by the Youth Garden, you'll see the shrubby Prunus maritima flowering on the left side and prostrate Phlox subulata across the trail. Walk a bit farther in and theres much more Phlox, both pink and white on the island in the middle of the trail. There's a pretty Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis in the front of the picture. Another hundred feet or so and you pass a trianglular island where a trail comes in from the left. Right now it's full of flowers Trout Lilies, Erythronium americanum, and leafy Mayapples, Podophyllum peltatum.
Take the right turn just past the island and you're in the "shady cultivars". This beautiful Halesia is down the middle trail.

Dozens of taxa are flowering; I would have photographed more, but I had to get home sometime. Native azaleas are just starting; there's an orange Rhododendron austrinum, flowering midway down the parking lot, and various other species inside the collection. Aesculus pavia, the Red Buckeye is a standout across the road from the parking lot. There's another Aesculus I didn't even know existed , Aesculus sylvestris, on the brink of flowering in the shady cultivar area. I found Joan nearby putting out display labels on new plants.

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