WildeHerb is a collection of wild herb and wildflower sightings.
Check it out, North Dakota to the rescue!
Sunflowers are blooming brightly in North Dakota!
Some fields are reported as 80-90% in full bloom while other fields of planted sunflowers are just getting going.
At any rate the photos look lovely. Being there in person would be awesome!
WOW!
That’s all I can say. Go to the Stonehedge celebration link below (it’s safe!) and scroll down to see the field of poppies near Kidderminster, UK. The other pics are nice too, but I wish I could have been there in person to see these gorgeous red poppies:
We don’t get enough sun for growing poppies and other summer-loving flowers here on the mountain ridge. I guess that’s what you get for planting a house in the forest.
Totally appreciate the cooling effect of the shade though. 🙂
So, they say variety is the spice of life. That’s a mantra I try to live by…why settle for mediocrity?
Plants do make the news once in a while, but after you read the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew report on the state of the world’s plants, you might wonder why we don’t hear about plant news every day.
A cover story by the BBC specifies that, “Scientists have estimated that there are 390,900 plants known to science.” An amazing 369,000 of that total are flowering plants!
Wow! 391K is a LOT of vascular plants. Roughly 2,000 new plants are described each and every year, so the tally will climb up from there. The number of plants and their identities were gleaned from several different databases which are specified in the report.
A very interesting and thought-provoking part of the 84-page report is the information highlighting the uses to which humans put about 10% of the known plants.
Plant uses were categorized and the number of plants in each category as follows:
Medicines, materials and food sources top the list with the most plants in service. Many of the plants highlighted here on wildeherb.com could fit into multiple categories, especially environmental uses, medicines, invertebrate food and social uses.
Climate change, habitat loss and invasive plants are discussed in the report as are plant diseases, extinction risks and the global trade in plants.
Visit State of the World’s Plants to read more and download your copy of this informative report.