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The Bluebell Place, April 28th, 2018

We went on a 7 mile bike ride this past Saturday in what we call the BLUEBELL   PLACE which is a trail along the Schuylkill River, on the other side of the river from Valley Forge Park.  It is MILES of bluebells just outside of Philadelphia.  We visited this site just to bathe in the beauty of the place and enjoy one of our very favorite plants, the Mertensia virginica. 

There was some decent variation of the species on site, here is a pink variety. We also saw some pale  blue specimens. Lesser celandine was the most annoying invasive covering much of the area most likely previously inhabited by Mertensia at this time of the year. We tried to not let this bother us too much as we were here to enjoy a happy spring day.
 As you can see here, the trail is very inviting and also very long, which is why we chose bicycling. There are benches all along that one can stop at to enjoy the view.
   Here you can see the Lesser Celandine taking over. If local residents and volunteers could adopt a small, doable section and hand pulled these, maybe it could help mitigate the problem. Here is a pale blue variety! 

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Iris versicolor at Concourse Lake, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, June 3rd, 2017

This is flowering in our back yard, in our urban vacant lot turned native plant garden, and at the native plant park in our neighborhood, as well as in the parking lot of the Please Touch Museum, also in our neighborhood.  Enjoying it while it is here for this fleeting moment. Now thinking about collecting some seeds from our specimens and propagating this wonderful native species of Iris!