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Author Topic: what is this flower vs2  (Read 9831 times)

Offline Cindi

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Re: what is this flower vs2
« Reply #20 on: May 08, 2008, 10:23:03 am »
That is a beautiful picture, the pink motherwort flowers, apparently the bees love them.  I have grown the motherwort with the orange flowers, the bees don't like them, I think the tubular flower petals are too deep, but the hummingbirds love them.  This is plant that is easily grown from seed and blooms the same year.  I was astounded at the beauty of these great huge plants that were about 8 to 9 feet tall.  Full of the beautiful orange flowers, with the leaves growing opposite on the stems.  Beautiful plants, I have already many that I seeded from the seeds of the plants that I gathered last year.  But let me tell you, when gathering the seeds from these plants, one must be very careful because they are the thorniest things that I have ever see and can puncture the fingers like there was no tomorrow.  This is a picture of one of the flowers. 

I grew the pink Motherwort from seed last year.  The plant here is a perennial, it grew a whole whack of leaves but no flowers.  This year the plant is growing like wildfire and should be putting out those beautiful pink flowers sometime, I have no clue when the flowering time it.  The orange flowered one I grew last year was only an annual as far as I could tell and is a completely different growth than the pink flowered species.  It will be interesting to compare the difference between the two plants, meaning, the perennial pink flowered one and the annual orange flowered one.  I will take pictures for surely.  I can't wait for the pink flowers, I think that they will be much smaller than the orange coloured ones, and I know that I have read that the bees love the pink species intensely.  Have the most beautiful and wonderful day, Cindi

Motherwort goes by so many different names, the ones that come to mind are:
Motherwort
Leonurus cardiaca
Lions Ear
Wild Dagga



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonotis_leonurus

http://www.missouriplants.com/Pinkopp/Leonurus_cardiaca_page.html
There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.  The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.  The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee.  Robert Service

Offline Keith13

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Re: what is this flower vs2
« Reply #21 on: May 08, 2008, 12:28:29 pm »
Cindi

The pink ones I found and took a picture of as far as I know were not planted by anyone they are on the edge of a sugar cane field that is heavily tilled. These flowers are growing amongst a bunch of scrap iron and broken boards pushed into a pile by the farmers along a canal bank so the farmer cannot disc this area. Therefore the flowers will grow, and my bees will benefit. It is a bunch of plants easily over a hundred in a probably 75-x 15-foot area. it was a nice little discovery hopefully they will bloom all summer.

Offline doak

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Re: what is this flower vs2
« Reply #22 on: May 08, 2008, 01:10:44 pm »
Should bloom until September. doak

Offline Keith13

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Re: what is this flower vs2
« Reply #23 on: May 08, 2008, 01:28:20 pm »
AWESOME