Aug. 16, 2015 - Flowers - Maine and Prince Edward Island

Here are some flowers Diana and I saw on our recent trip to Maine and Prince Edward Island. Blue-eyed Grass is not a grass; it’s in the iris family. It’s a close relative to Blue Flag Iris. This is a short plant, usually only a foot tall. It produces long, thin (1/8 inch wide) leaves; one of them is visible in this photo. The plant probably got its name because these leaves look so much like grass. This photo was taken in Prince Edward Island National Park.

GrassBlueeyedPrinceEdwardIslandNationalParkCavendishCanada20150625

Bog Laurel is an evergreen shrub that rarely grows taller than 8 inches. This photo was taken, not surprisingly, in a bog at West Quoddy Head State Park in Lubec, Maine. The flower is only ½ inch across. It has 10 stamens which tuck their anther heads into pockets at the edges of the petals. When the flower is fully open, there is spring-like tension on the stamens. A large-bodied insect, like a bee, landing on the flower releases the tension and the anthers deposit pollen on the insect. The insect visits another Bog Laurel flower where the same thing happens, and pollen is transferred to complete the fertilization process.

LaurelBogWestQuoddyHeadStateParkLubec20150615

Another plant I found in the bog was this Starflower. The whole plant is about 4 inches tall and the star-shaped white flower is only ¼ to ½ inch across. Each flower has 7 petals, an unusual number in the plant world.

StarFlowerWestQuoddyHeadStateParkLubec20150615

The timing of our trip coincided with the flowering stage of Purple Lupine. It was quite common to see Lupine flowers in the road ditches and in some open fields. I’ve always found it hard to get a good photo of a field of Lupine. However, in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, we found a hill that was just covered with Purple Lupine. It was a pretty steep slope and that helped to concentrate the flowers for this photo. Notice all the different colors of the “Purple” Lupine.

LupinePurpleCavendishCanada20150625

This photo and the next two were all taken at Prince Edward Island National Park. This close-up shows one lupine flower head in the back that hasn’t started to open yet. The flower head in front shows that it starts to open at the bottom and works its way up from there.

LupinePurplePrinceEdwardIslandNationalParkCavendishCanada20150621

Here’s a pink Purple Lupine starting to open.

LupinePurplePrinceEdwardIslandNationalParkCavendishCanada20150621

This one is open almost all the way to the top.

LupinePurplePrinceEdwardIslandNationalParkCavendishCanada20150625

Poppies are not wild flowers but I thought this was a very pretty arrangement of them. It was taken at our motel in Lubec, Maine. There are some wide-open flowers but still plenty of buds waiting to burst open. Look in the lower left corner and you will see a bud just starting to pop out.

PoppiesLubec20150619