Thursday, July 1, 2010

Wild in the Woods

Small patches of wild mint have appeared along the field path behind our home. This particular patch pushed out the surrounding weeds to claim its spot in the sun.

More common throughout the overgrown field is the striking yellow and white plant below.  In fact it is called common nightshade. While it is beautiful to look at, its berries are very toxic.  They are perhaps edible when completely ripe, but due to their toxicity before ripe, it is a bad idea to try one.
Our last flower for this morning is a sneezeweed so named because its dried flowers were once used to make snuff. The snuff was then sniffed in order to make the sniffer sneeze, thus ridding the sneezer's body of evil spirits. (I can think of a few people that could use some dried sneezeweed. Don't you?)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Huh, I've been seeing wild mint around lately without knowing what it was! I learned something new today!