Just a simple flower

Here is a pretty common green-eyes flower I ran across today during my walk. People often overlook the beauty found all around us in the simplest things.

Butterfly

On today's walk we found this White Peacock butterfly sunning himself upside down on a stalk of grass.

Another Exotic Plant

Here is a photo of another plant we found close to a stream on our 5 mile walks. It is Colocasia esculenta, more commonly called taro, or in this variety, dasheen. Taro is considered an aggressive weed that has escaped garden/lawn cultivation into the wild. People grow it in the U.S. for the lush, large heart-shaped leaves. It has long been a staple native source of fiber and starch. They grind up the corms and make taro root powder. You can also roast or boil the corms directly but they can't be eaten raw because of bitter oxalic acid that is broken down by the cooking process. It's kind of a "good news/bad news" plant because it is a food source and beautiful but it does displace native plants in this country. I like it for its tropical atmosphere.

Wild Squash

Here's a real oddity we found while on our walk today. We were traveling over a small creek and I looked down on the bank to see what looked like gourds on a vine growing there. I looked it up and it is Cucurbita moschata, an edible squash related to the butternut squash! What in the world was it doing growing there? I could only find the one clump of vines in the area so it is a real puzzle.

More Finds On Our Walks

Today we walked down Church Road, a country road inhabited by a handful of "good ol boys". Here is a pretty climbing butterfly-pea flower I found at the side of the road.

On the way back home we went behind the abandoned Catholic church into a wooded area. There is a hunting club nearby where the "good ol boys" alternate shooting deer and swilling beer. These wonderful guys have a lot of hunting dogs. Apparently over the years when the dogs get sick and die they just toss them behind the church. I suppose that is their sentimental version of a Christian burial. Anyway, there are a large number of dog skeletons laying in various spots behind the church. So they wouldn't have died completely in vain I took a few of the bones for us to study next term in Anatomy class.

A Weed By Any Other Name...

On our walks it doesn't take a lot to amuse me. I enjoy looking at the unusual weeds along the way, including these. The first one's name stumped me for awhile because it didn't have its usual flower stalk. This odd looking plant has extremely sharp thorns on the leaf tips. It would look great in an outdoor cactus and succulent garden. It is a purple thistle.

The next photo is obvious. I've always loved groups of wild ferns. They have an exotic appearance that reminds me of the tropics.