Wildflowers in the Spring, Summer and Fall

Chickory

There are so many beautiful wildflowers.  It is sad that I never noticed them - until I became a little more serious about photography.  Now I find them everywhere - and they are beautiful in every shape, size and color.

Butter and Eggs

"Butter and Eggs" is a delightful name for a wildflower - one that grows abundantly in the open fields and the sides of the road.  A tiny flower, very complex in its beautiful form, it makes me smile every morning when I walk the dogs.

Chickory is a brilliant wildflower - blue, often a common weed along the side of the roads.  Stop and look some day.  I think you'll never miss seeing them again.  What looks to be a common weed is very beautiful.  How true of life.

Chickory
Cichorium intybus
Aster (Asteraceae)

Butter and Eggs

Linaria Vulgaris
Common Toadflax

How precious is this flower?  It is perennial, blooming early in Spring.  The Dog-tooth Violet, or Trout Lilly, is an Erthronium americanum, Liliaceae.

I can't seem to identify this small  blue flower.    Can you help?  It could be the Forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica), yes?  Clusters of tiny simple blue flowers, soft blue, with yellow center.  How lovely.  It loves moisture and rich soil, growing wild in almost full shade at one of my creeks for waterscape photography.   A joy of the wet woodlands.

There are many different kinds of violets, tiny incredibly beautiful flowers.  New Jersey is blessed with such an array and these may well be viola sororia, a common blue violet.  But I'm thinking this could also be the Long-spurred violet, Viola rostrata. 

And a mysterious white flower - delicate and fragile.  This wonderful white bouquet wildflower could be a cut-leaved toothwort (Cardamine concatenata (Dentaria laciniata).  It is from the Mustard family (Brassicaceae) and seems to like woodlands that are rich and moist.

This is a the Eastern daisy fleabane - erigeron annuus.  It grows on our Hill of Beauty.

I'm struggling to identify these wildflowers correctly - and it isn't easy to do.  Part of the problem is that I have not been paying sufficient attention to the entire plant. 

I have always thought this yellow flower to be the Bulbosus Buttercup (Ranunculus bulbosus) - a beautiful flower in the early spring.  Family - Ranunculacae - Buttercup.

I love to find and photograph this flower - which I think is a bloodroot - Sanguinaria candensis.  Made in heaven.  So delicate in the seemingly barren wet woodlands. 

This little plant took me a while to ID - but I believe that it is of the Portulacaceae family, Claytonia virginica - or better known as the Spring Beauty!  And yes, it is.  Actually a sight for sore eyes after a long cold bitter winter.  Stoop down low to the ground to look at this closely.  It is a complex flower with guide lines for bees to follow - how ingenious.